The Navy’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan released May 11 reveals the Trump-class battleship will be nuclear powered and armed, while extending to a 15-ship class..
“The nuclear-powered battleship is designed to provide the fleet with a significant increase in combat power by longer endurance, higher speed, and accommodating advanced weapon systems required for modern warfare,” according to the plan. “Adding capability at the highest end of the high-low mix, the battleship’s primary role is to deliver high-volume, long-range offensive fires and serve as a robust, survivable forward command and control platform, it is not a destroyer replacement,” the plan says.
The plan’s description of the battleship argues the former DDG(X) program it grew out from was being forced to make “undesirable capability and weapon system compromises.”
Beyond using nuclear power for the ship, the shipbuilding plan says one advantage of the size and energy density of the battleship is “the ability to deploy theater nuclear weapons from surface units forces our adversaries into difficult strategic calculations, bolstering our overall deterrence.”
Currently the only Navy forces that field nuclear weapons are Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) that will start to be replaced by Columbia-class boats in the 2030s. The Navy is also working on the Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N) program to field low-yield nuclear-capable cruise missiles from Virginia-class attack submarines.
The document emphasizes the energy density and size of the battleship will allow it to field the weapons promoted in the initial announcement, including electronic warfare tools and high throughput lasers that could reduce reliance on “high-cost single-use munitions for both attack and defense.”
The document also hints at the Navy’s battleship acquisition plan.
“This will be the first clean-sheet surface combatant designed in more than 30 years, and we are deliberately incorporating modern digital engineering, advanced production practices, and AI [artificial intelligence] enabled design tools to reduce cost and schedule risk from the outset,” the shipbuilding plan says. “To strengthen this approach, we are adopting proven best practices from foreign partners with advanced shipbuilding techniques.”
The Navy said this means it will front load production engineering to start with high design maturity before construction begins, use precision modular construction methods, and tightly integrate design, planning, and production teams to minimize rework and accelerate throughput.
The plan underscores that the battleship will use a digital-first approach modeled on commercial shipbuilding that aims to accelerate design, reduce manual rework and create a direct link between design and production as well as focus on modular architecture.
“The Battleship will employ a highly modular architecture that enables distributed construction across the industrial base while allowing U.S. shipyards to focus on final assembly, integration, and testing. This strategy strengthens workforce stability, increases industrial base resilience, and delivers a more predictable, affordable path to fielding the capability,” the plan says.
The document also outlines the Navy’s outlook for the battleship class with hopes to ultimately procure 15 battleships through 2056 with the first ship in fiscal year 2028, one each in 2030 and 2031, then one every other year through 2056.
Recent fiscal ‘27 budget documents showed the Navy expects at least the first three battleships to take up to eight years from start of construction to delivery.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published a version of this story.