WEST 2026 — The new Trump-class battleship is needed due to limitations the Navy has found with what it could outfit its destroyers with, requiring the service to find a larger hull size, according to by the service’s top surface warfare officer.
Speaking Tuesday at the WEST 2026 conference in San Diego, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane said that the service’s flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is equipped with the Aegis Baseline 10 Combat System, is “maxed out” and that “there’s nothing else we can put on that ship.”
Likewise, McLane said the service ran into some challenging design choices about what to include on the next-generation destroyer, highlighting the need for a larger hull like the battleship.
“You’re either going to get a gun or you’re going to get Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS). But we can’t have both, and unless we go to a larger hull size and make that investment, we’re really kind of at a deadlock,” McLane said. “So [the] battleship is exactly what we need.”
McLane said that he envisions testing technology the service knows it will need for the battleship on the Zumwalt-class destroyers, which he said are the “closest thing we have right now to a battleship.” That includes testing the CPS weapon system to launch hypersonic missiles, which are already being integrated onto the Zumwalt, as well as other weapons, he said.
McLane isn’t the only Navy official on board with the battleships. Rear Adm. Derek Trinque, the service’s director of surface warfare, voiced similar sentiments and said in January that the service found itself in a tight spot because the Navy’s next-generation DDG(X) program couldn’t accommodate both a gun weapon system and CPS, without compromising the number of vertical launch cells aboard the ship.
“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,” Trinque said then.
Trump in December announced plans to initially purchase two new battleships, and said that the class could range from 20 to 25 ships in total. Trump also said that the 30,000- to 40,000-ton ships — which will be significantly larger than the roughly 15,000-ton Zumwalt-class destroyers — will feature hypersonic weapons, electronic rail guns and high-powered, laser-based weaponry.
“While America has built many new warships over the years, they’ve tended to be smaller, much smaller, and not conducive to where we are and where we’re going — peace through strength,” Trump said in December.
Construction for the battleships is expected to kick off in the early 2030s, and the vessels will replace the Navy’s plans for the DDG(X) program, the service said.
The ships will be able to operate independently, integrate with a strike group, or command its own surface action group made up of other surface combatant vessels, according to the Navy.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated in January that the initial Trump-class battleship could cost up to nearly $21 billion if it’s ordered now, with costs only going up if the Navy waits. Additional battleships could cost between $9 billion to $13 billion if they are ordered now, according to the CBO.