- CBO estimates the 15-ship program at roughly $275 billion through 2056, with the lead ship at $23.4 billion
- The Navy’s estimate for a lead ship was $15.1 billion, though that figure covered a conventionally powered design
- Newport News Shipbuilding would perform final assembly
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Navy’s new nuclear-powered battleship would cost about $275 billion to build over three decades. The office published the analysis on Wednesday at the request of the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee.
The first Trump-class vessel, BBGN-1, would cost $23.4 billion, with the 14 that follow averaging $18 billion each. The Navy’s budget submission estimated $15.1 billion for a lead ship and $10.2 billion for the second and third, but those figures reflected a conventionally powered vessel rather than the nuclear design the service settled on.
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How Did CBO Reach Its Estimate?
The office worked from historical analogies rather than program data, since the ship remains early in design. It calculated lightship displacement at 28,000 tons, then applied an average cost by weight drawn from the lead ships of three classes: the Ticonderoga cruiser and the Arleigh Burke and Zumwalt destroyers. That average came to $485 million per thousand tons.
Two adjustments followed. CBO added a cost growth factor reflecting shipbuilding’s tendency to outpace general inflation, averaging 16 percent over the program. It added another 12 percent for current industrial base difficulties, pointing to rising labor hours on destroyers already in production.
The office called its estimates highly uncertain. A conventionally powered ship of the same displacement would run $243 billion for the program, it found, making the nuclear choice about 13 percent more expensive to build.
Which Shipyards Would Build the Ship?
HII Newport News Shipbuilding would handle final assembly, according to congressional testimony CBO cited, noting that the HII division is the only new-construction yard certified for work on nuclear-powered surface ships.
That creates a scheduling problem CBO flagged directly. Newport News is behind on three carriers and on submarine work, and the office said adding the battleship could extend those delays and the battleship’s own construction timeline.
Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding have built every large surface combatant the Navy has ordered for 40 years, and both could handle a 35,000-ton hull. Neither holds nuclear certification. Both are also running late on destroyers, with deliveries of funded DDG-51s averaging five years behind schedule.
The Navy awarded sole-source design work to Leidos Gibbs & Cox for surface ship design engineering and to Bath and Ingalls for ship design support.
What Would the Battleship Carry?
CBO described the ship as the most heavily armed surface combatant the Navy has built. The design calls for 128 Mark 41 vertical launching system cells plus four tubes for Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles, alongside two high-powered lasers and a rail gun.
The Navy said the ship would carry the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. That would give it more firepower than anything in the fleet outside the 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, CBO said.
At 35,000 tons full-load displacement and 840 to 880 feet, the ship would be more than three and a half times the size of an Arleigh Burke destroyer. Lead ship BBGN-1 would be named Defiant.
