SURFACE NAVY 2026 — Tough choices about whether to put hypersonic weapons or big guns on the Navy’s latest destroyer were one of the factors that put the sea service on a path to develop a new battleship, the Navy’s director of surface warfare said today.
Last month, President Donald Trump announced that the Navy would build Trump-class battleships to be the cornerstone of its new “Golden Fleet,” with the new vessels weighing about 30,000-40,000 tons and affording more size and power than today’s fleet of Arleigh Burke destroyers.
During a speech at the Surface Navy Association’s annual conference today, Rear Adm. Derek Trinque expressed his enthusiasm about the new program and offered some context about its genesis.
“I did not expect to be told to build a battleship when I got this job, and I will tell you, I’m extremely excited about it, and I mean that with no sarcasm,” he said.
The requirements, he said, grew out of the Navy’s DDG(X) program aimed at building a next-generation destroyer to succeed the Arleigh Burke class.
“We found ourselves in a weird situation” where in order to keep its desired number of vertical launch cells on the new destroyer, “we were going to have to make a choice between a gun weapon system and Conventional Prompt Strike,” the Navy’s soon-to-be fielded hypersonic weapon, Trinque said.
The Navy considered making two different variants of DDG(X) — one with a gun system and another able to launch Conventional Prompt Strike missiles — but Trinque added, “I don’t want to put those kind of limits on a fleet commander.
“And so when national leaders announced that they were interested in building a battleship, this was a great opportunity,” he said.
The battleship will have Conventional Prompt Strike, gun weapon systems, a “large number” of vertical launch systems, power for directed energy weapons — an “incredible amount of offensive strike capability” as well as command and control capacity that the Navy does not have in its current fleet, he said.
The Navy currently believes about 700 people will be needed to man the battleship, he added.
The Zumwalt-class destroyer will be the first ship class to receive the Conventional Prompt Strike weapon, and will fire the first test shot next year, he said.