The House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) rejected an amendment to the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill to cut funding for the new Trump-class battleship but did agree to a report on how the Navy will manage another nuclear-powered vessel.
During the full committee markup last week, ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) offered an amendment to reduce the battleship’s advanced procurement funding by its full $1 billion amount. The amendment failed by a vote of 26-30.
Smith argued part of his objection is about thinking of getting the U.S. to meet national security needs “in a more affordable way. This is the exact opposite of that. This, I believe, is currently estimated to cost north of $20 billion. Whatever the number is, I’m going to give you one of the surest fire Kalshi bets you will ever have: take the over. Whatever they come up with, the number, it’s going to wind up higher.” A Kalshi bet refers to a federally regulated prediction and wagering market.
The Defense Department should instead focus on more small and attritable autonomous systems that can still meet firepower needs, Smith added.
HASC Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) was the only lawmaker to speak in favor of the battleship during the amendment’s debate, repeating what top Navy officials have said in defense of the concept.
“The battleship is not a new concept. There has been a requirement for a large surface combatant for decades,” Rogers said. “The battleship was born out of the studies conducted on the DDG(X) during the Biden administration. We currently lack a ship with enough space or power to support the combat systems we need for future conflicts like hypersonics and high energy lasers.”
Cutting the battleship funding would prevent procurement of long-lead materials and stalling advancements in the ship design process, Rogers argued.
However, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), ranking member of the HASC Seapower and Projection Forces subcommittee, countered that the administration announced the battleship last December without any of the designs, studies or analysis that usually precedes starting a new ship class.
While the Republican majority maintained the battleship’s funding authorization, one provision in the Seapower subcommittee’s package of en bloc amendments includes a provision requiring the Navy secretary to provide a report on the strategy to design and build a battleship BBG(X) without interfering with the existing nuclear-powered shipbuilding plans.
Authored by Courtney, the amendment states the committee is “concerned about the possibility of strain on U.S. nuclear shipyards and maritime industrial base posed by the aggressive schedule proposed for producing a nuclear-powered BBG(X) platform.”
The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan released last month revealed the service ultimately decided the battleship would be nuclear-powered, using the reactor used in the Ford-class aircraft carriers.
The current bill plans to spend $390 million for detail design and $610 million for long lead items despite no existing design and compared it to previous failed Navy shipbuilding programs from the last several decades, Courtney said.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) piled on, calling battleships obsolete and said he would bet the battleship program would vanish within a few years once Trump is out of office.
“I’m going to make a prediction, this vanity project is going to vanish. It’s going to vanish in a few years, when Trump is gone, Republicans come to their senses, and stop defending the vanity projects of Donald Trump. Because it doesn’t make any sense,” Moulton said.
Other than the chairman, “there’s not a single Republican defending this on the committee right now. In fact, I’ve noticed several Republicans just depart over the last few minutes of this debate, not wanting to be caught here while this amendment is debated,” Moulton pointed out.
A Navy official told the Seapower subcommittee last month that the service thinks it can fit the battleship in between carrier production at Huntington Ingalls Industries’s Newport News Shipbuilding Dry Dock 12. The official also confirmed Newport News will be the final assembly yard for the battleship and the Navy is looking at boosting nuclear reactor production with BWX Technologies.
At the time, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said he was skeptical how the Navy could manage the industrial capacity to produce reactors for battleships on top of the existing capacity for reactors in carriers and submarines as well as balancing overlapping production for all three ship types.
Courtney’s amendment said the committee acknowledges that the timelines for completion of the three Ford-class carriers currently under construction at Newport News have previously experienced significant delays “due to a variety of reasons including supply chain and workforce challenges. The committee is concerned that these factors, coupled with a lack of physical shipbuilding capacity, could be further exacerbated by a new nuclear-powered surface vessel program and without careful planning could jeopardize Ford-class delivery.”
The amendment also said procurement for naval nuclear reactors typically occurs two to three years ahead of procurement of the vessel and reactor production timelines typically take six to eight years so “the committee is concerned that the accelerated procurement timeline for the BBG(X) program will result in a negative impact on this supply chain.”
The provision directs the Navy secretary to deliver HASC a report by March 2027 specifically covering the service’s strategy to design and build BBG(X) without interfering with existing shipbuilding plans, an assessment of the capacity of existing shipyards certified for nuclear-powered vessel construction to support construction of BBG(X) without delaying construction of other vessels, and an assessment of the capacity of the naval nuclear reactor industrial base capacity to support BBG(X).
Previously, the chairman’s mark included a provision that prevents the Navy from contracting for construction of the battleship program until after certifying the weapons systems planned for the lead ship are at a “sufficiently mature technology readiness level.”
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.