The Trump administration revealed the Trump-class battleship in December. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The first Trump-class battleship will cost north of $17 billion, with three of them totaling more than $43 billion, according to budget documents.
Why it matters: We’re finally learning a bit more about the battleship project, unveiled in December as part of the administration’s Golden Fleet.
- Also included in that initiative is the future frigate, based on HII’s far-more defined National Security Cutter.
John Phelan, who up until last week was the U.S. Navy secretary, told reporters the dollar figure is an “early, initial estimate.”
- “We’ll see where we really settle down, as we get through that and start to rationalize some of the costs,” he said on the sidelines of the Sea-Air-Space conference in Maryland.
- “We’ve been talking to two different vendors … and then it’ll be a function of how we get through that design process with them and then their capacity in their yards.”
- The U.S. struggles to build and maintain its current warships. Take, for example, the USS Boise, which the Navy pulled the plug on after it sat pier-side for about a decade.
- Additional demand could tax public and private yards.
- “We are looking at a couple of different ways to relieve some of the pressure that might put on the industrial base,” Phelan said. “I think we have to still define that a little bit more.”
- The Navy is still debating whether to make the battleship nuclear powered.
- Preliminary specs published by the service show the battleship armed to the teeth — laser turrets, a railgun, as well as room for hypersonic and nuclear weapons — and manned by at least 650 sailors.
- Construction is expected in 2028.
Phelan fired
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired Phelan last week .
The ouster of the Navy’s top civilian caught many off-guard and adds to the pile of military officials who have either abruptly exited or been pushed out of their posts under Trump 2.0.
“Phelan didn’t understand he wasn’t the boss. His job is to follow orders given, not follow the orders he thinks should be given,” a person familiar with the situation told Axios.
The same person said Phelan and Hegseth did not “get along.”
Phelan and President Trump are said to have a good relationship. The two have texted about rust on warships. But Hegseth felt Phelan had bypassed the chain of command too much with a direct line to Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach is near Phelan’s mansion, another source familiar with the situation said.
The firing comes amid a naval standoff with Iran and some three weeks after Hegseth removed Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and two other military leaders.
Axios
