The Navy’s New Battleship Program: Costs and Implications for the Shipbuilding Industrial Base

Summary

In this report, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the potential costs of the Navy’s new nuclear-powered battleship procurement program. It also assesses how the new battleship and frigate programs outlined in the Navy’s most recent shipbuilding plan would affect the shipbuilding industrial base. CBO’s findings are as follows:

• The total cost of the Navy’s new nuclear-powered battleship program would be about $275 billion (in 2026 dollars) over the 2027–2056 period. The first ship would cost about $23 billion. For the 15 ships that would be purchased through 2056, the cost would average slightly more than $18 billion per ship.
• Under the 2027 shipbuilding plan, compared with the 2025 plan, the Navy would purchase substantially more large surface combatants. The average annual amount of funding needed to buy surface combatants would rise by slightly more than two-thirds, from about $11 billion to $19 billion.
• By 2035, the Navy’s 2027 plan would more than double the tonnage of large surface combatants that shipbuilders would need to produce. Overall, the tonnage of large surface combatants to be constructed would need to increase by 60 percent, while the tonnage of small surface combatants would decrease by about 40 percent. Accommodating such a sizable increase in the production of large surface combatants could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry.

The Cost of the Navy’s New Nuclear-Powered Battleship

On December 22, 2025, the Administration announced that the Navy would develop and build a new class of large surface combatants, designated as the Trump class guided missile battleship. That ship would be the most heavily armed surface combatant the Navy has ever built; it would carry antiair, land-attack, and antiship missiles, hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, large lasers, and a rail gun (a weapon that uses electromagnetic energy to fire nonexplosive projectiles at hypersonic speeds).

After announcing the program, the Navy indicated that it would award sole-source contracts to Leidos Gibbs & Cox for assistance with surface ship design engineering and to Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding for assistance with designing the ship. Bath and Ingalls currently build many of the Navy’s surface combatants and amphibious warfare ships. In its budget submission to Congress, the Navy estimated that the first ship of the class, known as the lead ship, would cost $15.1 billion (in 2026 dollars) and that the average cost of the second and third ships would be $10.2 billion. Those estimates were for a conventionally powered ship—that is, one without nuclear propulsion.

In May 2026, the Navy released its shipbuilding plan for fiscal year 2027, which is sometimes called the Golden Fleet plan.1 Under that plan, the service would purchase 15 battleships between 2028 and 2056, and those ships would be nuclear powered. That detail contrasts with statements by senior Navy officials earlier this year that constructing a nuclear-powered battleship would take too long and be too costly.2 The new class of battleships carries the designation BBGN, which indicates a nuclear-powered guided missile battleship.

Using available information about the battleship program and historical information about the costs of existing surface combatants and nuclear-powered ships, CBO estimates the following:

• The first ship of the BBGN class, which would be ordered in 2028 and would have a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons, would cost $23.4 billion (in 2026 dollars). (Full-load displacement is the weight of water a ship displaces with its contents—crew, stores, ammunition, and fuel and other liquids. Displacement is measured in long tons, also known as imperial tons.)
• Subsequent ships of the class would average $18.0 billion.
• The total cost of building 15 battleships between 2028 and 2056 would be approximately $275 billion.

Those estimates are highly uncertain and rely on CBO’s assessments of the ship’s design and the overall battleship program. Other factors could also make costs higher or lower than CBO’s estimates.

By comparison, CBO estimates that for a conventionally powered battleship with a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons, the lead ship would cost $21.3 billion, and the 14 follow-on ships would average $15.9 billion each, for a total of $243 billion. The total cost of $275 billion estimated for the 15 nuclear-powered ships would be about 13 percent greater.

Switching to nuclear power would reduce the battleship’s operating costs over time by eliminating the need to purchase fuel. CBO does not have enough information to estimate those potential savings, which would depend on the final design of the ship and the specifications of the conventional propulsion plant it otherwise would have used.

Specifications of the Battleship

The first ship of the Trump class nuclear-powered guided missile battleship, the BBGN-1, would be named Defiant. That represents a departure from the Navy’s traditional ship-naming convention, in which the class name determines the name of the lead ship. It more closely resembles the Coast Guard’s practice, in which the class name differs from the lead ship’s name.

The Navy has released some details about the characteristics of the new battleship class, although those details were for a conventionally powered version of the ship. The battleship would have a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons or more, a length of 840 to 880 feet, and a sustained speed in excess of 30 knots.3 The Navy revealed those specifications before deciding to use nuclear propulsion on the ship, a change that would significantly increase the cost of the ship and affect its design.

If built to those specifications, the ship would be the largest surface combatant in the world and larger than any surface combatant built for the Navy since World War II.4 It would be more than three and a half times the size of the Navy’s Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer and more than twice the size of the Zumwalt class guided missile destroyer (see Table 1).

The battleship’s main battery would include missile cells for antiship, antiair, and land-attack missiles and, presumably, the ship’s nuclear cruise missiles; it would also include launchers for hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) missiles. Other elements would include large lasers, a rail gun, and a variety of defensive systems such as guns, smaller missiles, decoys, and optical dazzlers intended to counter and disrupt unmanned aerial systems. If some of those technologies were not available when construction began, the Navy could still build the ship, reserving space and power for their later installation.

The BBGN would add considerable firepower to the Navy’s fleet. The Navy has stated that the ship would be equipped to carry the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, or SLCM-N. The number of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles the ship would carry is unknown but would probably be small given the Navy’s descriptions of the nuclear cruise missile program. Nevertheless, carrying nuclear weapons would give the battleship more firepower than any ship in the fleet other than the Navy’s 14 Ohio class ballistic missile submarines, which carry 70 percent of the nation’s deployed strategic nuclear warheads. The ballistic missile submarines that will replace those ships—the Columbia class—are currently being built and are expected to cost about $10 billion each.

The BBGN’s capacity for conventional missiles would also exceed that of most other Navy ships. The battleship is expected to carry 128 Mark 41 vertical launching system (VLS) cells in addition to four CPS missile tubes, each of which would contain 3 missiles, for a total of 12. (If the Navy were to forgo CPS on the battleship, it could substitute an additional 32 VLS cells.)5 Only the Navy’s four guided missile submarines, which carry as many as 154 land-attack missiles, have a comparable missile complement, and those ships are expected to be retired within the next four years. The CG-47 Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers, which are also expected to be retired within the next four years, carry 122 missile cells each, and the most modern DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers carry 96 missile cells each. A new DDG-51 destroyer costs more than $3 billion. Thus, if the average BBGN cost about $18 billion, the Navy could buy five destroyers for the price of one battleship. However, over an expected service life of 40 years, those five destroyers would cost far more to operate than one nuclear-powered battleship because they would require more sailors and overall maintenance and would consume fossil fuel.

The only Navy ships whose costs are comparable to CBO’s estimate for the BBGN are the Ford class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The Navy currently has 11 Nimitz class aircraft carriers and 1 Ford class aircraft carrier, with 3 more under construction. CBO estimates that future Ford class ships under the Navy’s 2027 shipbuilding plan would cost about $22 billion each. Aircraft carriers do not carry missiles, unlike surface combatants and most submarines, but they have an air wing composed of several dozen aircraft that can fly hundreds of sorties over days or weeks to launch bombs and missiles.

For several years, the Navy has been developing a new class of destroyer called the DDG(X).6 That ship was intended to have some of the same capabilities as the BBGN, but its full-load displacement would have been about 14,500 tons, or less than half that of the battleship. The Navy has stated that the much larger battleship would avoid “undesirable capability and weapon system compromises” that would have been required by the DDG(X)’s design.7 Therefore, instead of pursuing the DDG(X) program, the Navy will continue to produce DDG-51 destroyers for longer than projected in its previous 30-year plan and will develop the BBGN as a new “clean-sheet” design.

How the Battleship Would Be Built

The total number of BBGNs that the Navy would buy remains uncertain. When the program was announced, the Administration said it would begin immediately with 2 ships, to be followed by 8 more. In a presentation at the 2026 symposium of the Surface Navy Association, the Navy stated that the program would ultimately include 15 to 25 ships.8 The 2027 shipbuilding plan calls for the construction of 15 ships over the next 30 years: 1 in 2028, 1 in 2030, 1 in 2031, and then 1 every other year through 2056.

The Navy does not currently plan to have Bath Iron Works, in Maine, or Ingalls Shipbuilding, in Mississippi, perform the final assembly of the battleship, even though those shipyards have built all of the Navy’s large surface combatants over the past 40 years. During that time, no other shipyard has performed that work, although in recent years, Bath and Ingalls have outsourced small amounts of work to other facilities to speed construction in the DDG-51 destroyer program. Both shipyards have the facilities and the technical expertise to build a 35,000-ton battleship, but neither is certified by the Navy to perform nuclear-power-related work in ship construction. And both are facing challenges in building destroyers on schedule: Deliveries of DDG-51s for which Congress has already appropriated funding are delayed by 5 years, on average. According to the Navy’s budget justification documents, the average amount of time needed to deliver a destroyer after its funding has been appropriated is 11 years; between 2000 and 2009, that average was 5 years.9

Although many shipyards—especially Bath and Ingalls—would be involved in building parts, sections, and modules for the battleship, senior Navy leaders recently stated in testimony before Congress that the final assembly of the ship would be performed by Newport News Shipbuilding. That shipyard is the only new-construction shipyard already certified for work on nuclear-powered surface ships. The battleship’s final assembly would take place at Dock 12, which is currently used to build aircraft carriers.10 Newport News Shipbuilding is behind schedule on constructing three aircraft carriers, as well as many submarines. Adding the final assembly of a nuclear-powered battleship to the shipyard’s workload could lengthen the delays for those programs, in addition to delaying the construction of the battleship itself.

How CBO Estimated the Cost of the Battleship

To estimate the cost of the battleship, CBO generally followed the approach it uses to estimate the cost of other Navy ships and Coast Guard cutters.11 In particular, CBO relied on historical analogues to estimate the ship’s size and cost. CBO’s estimate of the ship’s cost incorporates three assumptions about the program: that the lead ship would be ordered in 2028, as specified in the Navy’s budget documents; that the Navy would purchase 15 ships and build them at the rate specified in its 2027 shipbuilding plan; and that one shipyard would perform the final assembly of the ship, but others would build sections or portions of the ship. With those assumptions, CBO estimated the cost of the program in several steps.

First, CBO estimated the ship’s lightship displacement. (Lightship displacement is the weight of the water a ship displaces without a crew, stores, ammunition, or fuel or other liquids.) The Navy has not yet provided information about the battleship’s prospective lightship displacement, so CBO’s estimate was based on the average ratio of lightship displacement to full-load displacement for the five most recent surface combatant programs: the CG-47 Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser; the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class Flight IIA, the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class Flight III, and the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class guided missile destroyers; and the current design of the FFG-62 Constellation class guided missile frigate. For those five ships, the average ratio of lightship to full-load displacement was 80 percent (see Table 2). Using that ratio, CBO estimated that a new large surface combatant—a battleship—with a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons would have a lightship displacement of 28,000 tons.

Second, to create a basis for estimating the cost of the lead battleship, CBO calculated the average inflation-adjusted cost by weight of the lead ships of the three most recent classes of large surface combatants: the CG-47 Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer, and the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class guided missile destroyer. In CBO’s estimation, those lead ships cost an average of $485 million per thousand tons of lightship displacement, excluding the costs of developing their detailed design specifications and nonrecurring engineering costs associated with the first ship of a new class.12 Lead ships are notoriously difficult to build and almost always experience substantial cost growth.13 Thus, a historical lead ship, rather than other ships in a class, is likely to be a more accurate guide for estimating the costs of the lead ship of a new class.

Using an average of three lead ships allowed CBO to capture the costs involved with building a high-end missile and air-defense combatant such as the DDG-51 and the older CG-47 as well as the costs of improvements in ship design such as those embedded in the DDG-1000 program. The capabilities and designs of those classes vary, and the construction of their lead ships represented different challenges for the Navy. Thus, an average provides a more robust basis for estimating the battleship’s costs. At the same time, the battleship’s capabilities would exceed the capabilities of those three ships. Of the three, the DDG-51 is the closest analogue to the battleship in capability, though not in design, and it is the most expensive by weight. Using the DDG-51 alone as the analogue would increase CBO’s estimate of the cost of the lead battleship by about 5 percent, or $1.2 billion.

Third, CBO adjusted its estimate to account for learning in the program as more ships are built. Learning represents the gains in efficiency that accrue over the duration of a ship’s production as shipyard workers gain familiarity with a particular ship class.

Fourth, as it does for all its cost estimates of Navy shipbuilding programs, CBO applied a cost growth factor reflecting the historical tendency of shipbuilding costs to rise faster than economywide prices. For a 15-ship program, that growth factor raises CBO’s estimates of the ships’ costs by 16 percent, on average. For the lead ship, the growth factor adds 2 percent. Because the difference between shipbuilding cost growth and economywide inflation compounds over time, the growth factor has a larger effect on the costs of ships built further in the future.

Fifth, CBO raised its estimates by 12 percent to account for current difficulties in the shipbuilding industrial base that did not exist when the lead ships of the CG-47, DDG-51, and DDG-1000 classes were built. In recent years, the number of labor hours required to build DDG-51 destroyers has increased substantially for ships in the same flight, or variant. In CBO’s view, that phenomenon reflects ongoing labor force challenges among the shipyards building the Navy’s large surface combatants.14 If those challenges abate over the next five years, then future costs could be lower than CBO estimates.15

CBO’s estimates reflect the assumptions that the construction of the first BBGN would begin in 2028, as indicated by the 2027 shipbuilding plan, and that the ship would take eight years to build, as indicated by the Navy’s budget documents. It is possible, however, that the BBGN will not be ready to start construction in 2028. That possibility is suggested by the Navy’s experiences with the ship’s predecessor program, the DDG(X) future destroyer, and by current delays in the construction of other ships.

The 2025 shipbuilding plan called for the Navy to order the first DDG(X) in 2032, which was later than anticipated in earlier shipbuilding plans. In a briefing to CBO and the Congressional Research Service when that plan was released, the Navy indicated that it might have to postpone the construction of the DDG(X) further, to 2034, because the design might not be ready in time for a 2032 start date. Shipbuilding programs that start before a ship’s design is well defined often encounter serious cost growth and delays.

In addition, ships that are under construction now have been taking much longer to build than the Navy anticipated when the funding for that construction was appropriated. Attack submarines, destroyers, and large amphibious ships now require 9 to 11 years to build, up from 5 to 6 years during the first decade of the 2000s.16 Ford class aircraft carriers are also experiencing longer construction periods and delays.

Given the history of the DDG(X) and the ongoing delays in producing ships, a clean-sheet design of a much larger ship is unlikely to be ready in time for production to begin in 2028. A ship as large as the BBGN would require significantly more work to design and more detailed digital models than the DDG(X) would have needed. To address concerns about the relatively short timeline for developing the BBGN’s design, the Navy plans to incorporate “modern digital engineering, advanced production practices, and [artificial intelligence]-enabled design tools to reduce cost and schedule risk from the outset.”17 But the Navy’s inability to complete designs for simpler ships, such as the FFG-62 Constellation class guided missile frigate, in a timely way suggests that the service will face challenges with the BBGN.

Uncertainty About the Battleship Program

Despite plans for its construction to start in 2028, the battleship is in the early stages of its design, and many uncertainties could affect the program’s ultimate cost. Some could lead to costs that are lower than CBO’s estimate, and some could result in costs that are higher.

Factors That Could Reduce Costs. Several issues related to the design of the BBGN could substantially affect the ship’s cost. If the ship’s full-load displacement is substantially less than 35,000 tons, then its cost is likely to be lower than CBO estimates. Although information from the Administration and the Navy indicates that the ship would displace about 35,000 tons, some press reports have stated that the ship’s full-load displacement could be as low as 30,000 tons.18 A reduction of that size would decrease CBO’s estimate of the ship’s cost by about 13 percent.

The battleship’s ratio of lightship displacement to full-load displacement could also be lower than the ratio reflected in CBO’s estimate. If the ship’s ratio was closer to that of the CG-47 cruiser—about 73 percent—than to the five-ship average discussed above, then its cost would be about 8 percent less than CBO estimates. For example, if the battleship was designed to operate longer and farther with less logistical support than existing surface combatants, then it would have to carry more fuel, water, food, ammunition, and other supplies that would affect only its full-load displacement. As a result, its ratio of lightship to full-load displacement would be lower (perhaps even lower than that of the DDG-51 destroyers).

The Navy could also reduce costs by designing the battleship for producibility—that is, designing it in a way that minimizes the number of labor hours needed to build it, irrespective of its size. For example, the DDG-51 destroyer is internally tight and dense, which makes it more difficult to build than comparable ships built by South Korea and Japan.19 Those ships often have larger hulls with more margin in the design for weight to accommodate future systems or weapons and more space between decks, and they are less densely packed with machinery, equipment, and nonstructural systems; those features allow the ships to be built more easily, with less labor and, thus, at less cost. The Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer benefited from similar producibility features, although it experienced substantial cost growth because of other factors, including construction that started early in the design phase and reliance on a number of technologies that were still being developed. If the Navy and shipbuilders incorporated producibility features into the BBGN’s design and avoided the challenges that affected the DDG-1000, the BBGN’s cost by weight could be lower than CBO estimates.

Newer shipbuilding technologies and techniques could also make the battleship easier to build than previous classes of large surface combatants. Over the past several years, the federal government has provided substantial funding to support the shipbuilding industrial base. The 2025 reconciliation act (Public Law 119-21) alone appropriated over $5 billion for that purpose, on top of more than $10 billion appropriated since 2018. If advances in automation, modular construction, artificial intelligence, or other technology reduced the cost of ship construction, the BBGN could be easier and cheaper to build by weight than comparable ships built in the past. In its 2027 shipbuilding plan, the Navy recognized the need to design the ship using the most advanced production techniques available in order to meet the service’s goals for its cost and schedule.

Factors That Could Increase Costs. The factors that could raise the ship’s cost are generally similar to those that could lower its cost, in the sense that they are mirror opposites. For example, the ship’s full-load displacement could be greater than the 35,000 tons reflected in CBO’s estimate. Although the Navy’s public presentations have indicated a full-load displacement of 35,000 tons, the Navy’s budget justification for the battleship program indicated a potential range of 35,000 to 41,000 tons. An increase of 6,000 tons would raise CBO’s estimate of the cost of the lead ship by 16 percent.

The battleship’s ratio of lightship displacement to full-load displacement could likewise be higher than the 80 percent that CBO used in its estimate. If the ratio was closer to that of the DDG-1000 destroyer—about 85 percent—than to the five-ship average discussed above, the ship’s cost would be about 6 percent greater than estimated. The DDG-1000 class, which was designed in the late 1990s and 2000s, is the Navy’s most recent clean-sheet design of a large surface combatant. Thus, its ratio may be more informative than that of the DDG-51, which was first designed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Navy’s history with nuclear-powered surface ships also indicates that a higher ratio than CBO used in its analysis may be warranted: The five classes of nuclear-powered cruisers built by the Navy between 1957 and 1980 had an average ratio of 87 percent (see Table 3).20

The Navy has indicated that the BBGN will incorporate more survivability features than existing large surface combatants. Features that would make the BBGN more survivable than a destroyer (but perhaps less survivable than an aircraft carrier) would likely increase the cost by weight of the ship compared with the DDG-51, one of the historical analogues used in CBO’s estimate. Detailed information about those features is not publicly available.

The fact that the BBGN would be the most heavily armed surface combatant the Navy has ever built could also increase costs. It would carry a large complement of missiles, lasers, and a rail gun in addition to the Navy’s most advanced and capable radars, sensors, and combat systems. Integrating that many advanced systems on one warship could prove challenging and raise costs, as occurred with the DDG-1000.21

Finally, if the Navy moves too quickly to start building, it runs the risk of cost growth from concurrency—that is, from starting construction before the ship’s design is complete. A substantial overlap between design and construction has caused construction problems and cost growth in other Navy and Coast Guard shipbuilding programs, including the littoral combat ship and the Constellation class frigate.22

Comparing the Navy’s 2025 and 2027 Shipbuilding Plans for Large and Small Surface Combatants

CBO’s analysis of the Navy’s new shipbuilding plan associated with the Administration’s 2027 budget request is ongoing, as required by law, and is not yet complete. For this report, however, CBO made preliminary assessments of the funding needed to implement the 2027 plan for large and small surface combatants and compared those amounts with funding under the 2025 plan. In CBO’s estimation, under the 2027 plan, a larger number of surface combatants would be built, and those ships would generally be more expensive.

The 2027 shipbuilding plan would substantially increase the number of large surface combatants the Navy would purchase. Under that plan, the Navy would purchase 72 such ships between 2027 and 2056: 15 BBGNs and 57 DDG-51 Flight IIIs. Both classes of ship would be produced throughout the 30-year period. By comparison, the 2025 plan called for 51 large surface combatants: 23 DDG-51s and 28 DDG(X)s, a new class of guided missile destroyers. Under that earlier plan, the Navy would have stopped purchasing DDG-51s by 2037 and started purchasing DDG(X)s in 2032, allowing several years of overlap between the two classes. By 2038, all large surface combatants purchased by the service would have been DDG(X)s.

By contrast, the 2027 plan would include almost the same number of small surface combatants as the 2025 plan—79 ships over its 30-year period, compared with 81 under the earlier plan. A major difference, however, is that a new general purpose frigate in the 2027 plan, the FF(X), is smaller and less expensive than the FFG-62 guided missile frigate in the 2025 plan. In November 2025, the Navy announced that it would end the FFG-62 program by finishing the 2 ships that were (and still are) under construction but canceling 4 others that had been authorized by Congress. Then, in December 2025, the Navy announced that it would immediately begin a program to build a new frigate, designated as the FF(X), that would be based on the Coast Guard’s Legend class national security cutter. Using the most current information available about the program, CBO estimates that the FF(X) would be 60 percent as large as the canceled FFG-62. (The implications of that difference for the shipbuilding industrial base are discussed in the next section.)

CBO estimates that the average annual funding required for large surface combatants would more than double from $7 billion under the 2025 plan to $15 billion under the 2027 plan. Most of the difference between the two plans would result from purchases of more ships and from the much higher cost of the battleship compared with the ships in the 2025 plan.23 The average annual funding needed for small surface combatants would decline by 8 percent, to $4 billion (see Figure 1).

Effects of the Battleship and Frigate Programs on the Shipbuilding Industrial Base

The Navy’s 2027 shipbuilding plan would make two significant changes with respect to the production of surface combatants. It would add the battleship program (and cancel the DDG(X) program) and would change the Navy’s frigate strategy by calling for smaller frigates to be built at more shipyards. Those changes would affect the shipbuilding industrial base in different ways. In CBO’s estimation, by 2035, the 2027 plan would significantly increase the burden on the shipbuilding industrial base from producing large surface combatants but would lessen the burden from producing small surface combatants. CBO measures the burden on the industrial base using the tonnage that shipyards would need to produce, based on the lightship displacements of the surface combatants that would be built under the 2027 and 2025 shipbuilding plans. Over the 30-year periods covered by the respective plans, the total tonnage of surface combatants that shipyards would need to produce would be 12 percent greater under the 2027 plan than under the 2025 plan (see Table 4).

Large Surface Combatants

Under the 2027 plan, the Navy would build a battleship about every other year from 2028 to 2056 while continuing to produce two DDG-51 destroyers in most years.

Compared with the 2025 plan, the 2027 plan would more than double the tonnage of large surface combatants produced by 2035 and would increase that tonnage by about 60 percent overall over the next 30 years. The annual tonnage of large surface combatants produced would increase from about 16,000 tons today to 35,000 tons by 2035 (see Figure 2). Accommodating such a large increase in the production of large surface combatants could be a challenge for the shipbuilding industry.

The 15 BBGNs in the 2027 plan, with a lightship displacement of 28,000 tons each, represent 420,000 tons of shipbuilding work—more than the 28 DDG(X)s in the 2025 plan, which total 345,000 tons if each ship represents 12,300 tons of lightship displacement. In addition, the 2027 plan would more than double the number of destroyers the shipbuilding industry would need to construct. By 2043, shipbuilders would need to produce about 11,000 tons more per year, on average, under the 2027 plan.

Small Surface Combatants

By contrast, transitioning from the FFG-62 guided missile frigate program to the FF(X) general purpose frigate program would lessen the burden on the shipbuilding industrial base. Fincantieri Marinette Marine was contracted to build the first 10 ships of the FFG-62 class, although the Navy planned to add a second builder to the program at some point. The first FF(X) will be built by Ingalls Shipbuilding, which built the Coast Guard’s Legend class national security cutters on which the FF(X) is based. The Navy also plans to move FF(X) construction to additional shipyards as soon as practicable.

The Navy would purchase about the same number of frigates under the 2027 plan as under the 2025 plan. However, buying FF(X)s instead of FFG-62s would reduce the amount of frigate tonnage shipbuilders would need to produce by 40 percent in 2035 and by 45 percent, or 227,000 tons, over the next 30 years. In the 2030s, shipyards would need to produce an average of about 11,000 tons per year under the 2027 plan, compared with about 20,000 tons under the 2025 plan. The Navy has said that it will keep the initial design of the FF(X) relatively simple and add capabilities in future variants, though the 2027 shipbuilding plan does not describe those improvements or say when they might occur.24 That approach would likely benefit both the Navy and the shipbuilding industrial base, because as a smaller, simpler ship than the FFG-62 turned out to be, the FF(X) could be produced by shipyards that do not currently produce Navy combat ships.

Contracting with additional shipyards to help build the FF(X) (or any other combat ships) might make it easier for the Navy to increase production, but it would also carry risks. The Navy has contracted with Ingalls Shipbuilding to build the first FF(X) but has stated that one or more other shipyards would also build the class so that the service can rapidly increase the size of the fleet. Although the FF(X) is less complex than the FFG-62, a shipyard new to the program would likely need time to learn how to build the new frigate. In general, any new shipyard engaged to build ships for the Navy would face a similarly steep learning curve, so delays could be widespread if the Navy contracted with new shipyards for multiple shipbuilding programs. Even shipyards that already build Navy ships would face challenges in designing and building the first ship of a new class. Lead ships in Navy shipbuilding almost always take longer to build and cost more than initially estimated.25

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1. 1. Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan (May 2026), https://tinyurl.com/2x9nntdh.

2. 2. Jon Harper, “Navy CNO Says Golden Fleet Battleship Won’t Be Nuclear Powered,” DefenseScoop (January 14, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/s7cfnzc3.

3. 3. Ethan Gossrow, “U.S. Navy’s Top Brass Unveils Additional BBG(X) Battleship Information,” Naval News (January 16, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/uu8277s5. See also Ronald O’Rourke, Navy Guided Missile Battleship (BBG[X]) Program: Background and Issues for Congress, Report IF13142, version 3 (Congressional Research Service, January 20, 2026), www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13142.

4. 4. Aircraft carriers and some amphibious ships, which are not categorized as surface combatants, are larger.

5. 5. Lockheed Martin has developed a new method for building the Mark 41 system that could increase the number of missiles in a set physical space on a ship by 25 percent. Thus, a missile field on a DDG-51 class destroyer that contains 64 missile cells today could in the future be replaced with a system that contains 80 missile cells. If that method was used on the battleship, the 128 planned missile cells could potentially become 160 cells or, in the absence of CPS missiles, as many as 200 VLS cells.

6. 6. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan (January 2025), www.cbo.gov/publication/60732.

7. 7. Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan (May 2026), p. 21, https://tinyurl.com/2x9nntdh. See also Mallory Shelbourne, “New Navy Shipbuilding Plan: Trump-Class Battleship Will Be Nuclear-Powered, Carrier Design Is Under Review,” USNI News (May 11, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/ys5xm4nk.

8. 8. Ethan Gossrow, “U.S. Navy’s Top Brass Unveils Additional BBG(X) Battleship Information,” Naval News (January 16, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/uu8277s5.

9. 9. Testimony of Eric J. Labs, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, Congressional Budget Office, before the House Subcommittees on Seapower and Projection Forces and on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Testimony on Challenges Facing the Navy’s and Coast Guard’s Shipbuilding Programs and the Shipbuilding Industrial Base (April 22, 2026), www.cbo.gov/publication/62258.

10. 10. Sam LaGrone, “Modular Construction Key to Battleship Effort, Navy Official Says,” USNI News (May 21, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/zyfje3te.

11. 11. Congressional Budget Office, How CBO Estimates the Costs of New Ships (April 2018), www.cbo.gov/publication/53785.

12. 12. The cost of a lead ship typically includes those onetime expenses. For the battleship program, CBO estimated that those expenses would total slightly more than $5 billion.

13. 13. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan (January 2025), Figure 11, www.cbo.gov/publication/60732.

14. 14. For more information about those challenges, see Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan (January 2025), pp. 22–25, www.cbo.gov/publication/60732.

15. 15. There are some indications that those challenges are diminishing, as well as indications of continuing problems. Some shipyards, such as Bath and Electric Boat (which builds submarines), have substantially reduced worker turnover, and others have significantly raised wages to address that issue. Federal funding to strengthen suppliers of critical shipbuilding components has begun to increase redundancy in that area, reducing shipbuilders’ reliance on single suppliers. At the same time, workforce attrition persists at some shipyards, and projected production times for ships currently under construction increased between the Navy’s 2026 and 2027 budget submissions.

16. 16. Testimony of Eric J. Labs, Senior Analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons, Congressional Budget Office, before the House Subcommittees on Seapower and Projection Forces and on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Testimony on Challenges Facing the Navy’s and Coast Guard’s Shipbuilding Programs and the Shipbuilding Industrial Base (April 22, 2026), www.cbo.gov/publication/62258.

17. 17. Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan (May 2026), p. 22, https://tinyurl.com/2x9nntdh.

18. 18. Marcus Weisgerber, “Trump’s Battleship Will Be Nuclear Powered, Navy Says,” Wall Street Journal (May 11, 2026), https://tinyurl.com/3k8cnv36.

19. 19. Peter E. Jaquith, “Asian vs US Warship Design, Production Engineering, and Construction Practice,” Naval Engineers Journal, vol. 131, no. 4 (December 2019), pp. 55–58.

20. 20. In the past, some of those nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers had different designations, such as nuclear-powered frigates or nuclear-powered guided missile destroyers.

21. 21. In that sense, the battleship might be a little more like the Navy’s nuclear-powered cruisers from the 1960s and 1970s. The limited available historical data on the costs of those cruisers suggest that their cost per thousand tons in 2026 dollars was greater than the average that CBO used in its estimate.

22. 22. Government Accountability Office, Navy Frigate: Unstable Design Has Stalled Construction and Compromised Delivery Schedules, GAO-24-106546 (May 2024), www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106546.

23. 23. Only 2 percent of the increase in the costs for large surface combatants between the two shipbuilding plans can be attributed to an increase in the unit cost of DDG-51 destroyers after removing the effects of inflation.

24. 24. Antisubmarine warfare capability and VLS cells are two candidates for future improvements to the FF(X) that would add to the cost of the ship. CBO did not include such improvements in this analysis.

25. 25. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s 2025 Shipbuilding Plan (January 2025), Figure 11, www.cbo.gov/publication/60732.

Correction

The Congressional Budget Office has corrected this report since its original publication. Both the PDF and online versions were corrected, but for ease of reference, the location of the correction in the PDF is indicated below.

The following change was made on August 7, 2026:

Page 3, Table 1: In the last row (“Capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles?”), “No” was changed to “Yes” in the “Modernized Iowa BB-61” column.