An ambitious project to create a "golden fleet" for the US Navy, announced by Donald Trump in December 2025, has faced a serious financial recalculation. According to fresh data, the cost of building the "Trump" class battleship squadron will exceed initial forecasts by 50%.
As reported by RBK-Ukraine citing The New York Times, the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has published a report revealing the true scale of expenditures. While the Pentagon previously relied on more modest figures, the price tag is now in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Cost of the First Battleship and Scale of Expenditures
The financial gap became evident immediately after a detailed analysis. The cost of building the first "Trump" class ship is estimated at $23.4 billion. This is $8 billion more than initially stated by US Navy representatives.
The situation with subsequent vessels has also changed. It was previously planned that each of the 14 following ships would cost the treasury $10.2 billion. Now, this figure has risen to $18 billion. In total, the implementation of the project to build 15 military giants will require the state to spend $275 billion.
Nuclear Factor and Missed Deadlines
The key reason for the sharp increase in the project's cost was a change in the technical concept. A few months after the initial announcement, Trump decided to equip the new battleships with nuclear reactors. This decision replaced the standard gas turbine engines traditionally used on the fleet's destroyers and cruisers.
The transition to a nuclear power plant radically complicated the construction process and increased the budget. Experts from the Congressional Budget Office warned that the project implementation will take significantly longer than planned. The construction of the first battleship could stretch to 8 years or more.
This casts doubt on the optimistic forecasts of the president himself. In December 2025, Trump stated that the first two ships would be ready in just 2.5 years. At that time, he emphasized that the new vessels were intended to "preserve America's military superiority, revive the shipbuilding industry, and instill fear in enemies".
Now that the real cost and timelines are known, the question of when exactly the "golden fleet" will set sail remains open.
