President Donald Trump walked into Mar-a-Lago on Monday and unveiled what he called a “Golden Fleet” — and he did it with the kind of showmanship Washington usually saves for ribbon-cuttings, not warships, according to Fox News.
He said he has approved plans for two “very large battleships,” ordered the Navy to start procuring them immediately, and pitched the effort as the opening move in a broader campaign to speed up America’s defense production.
Standing in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump made the announcement flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan, as renderings behind him showed a new “Trump class,” including one ship labeled the USS Defiant.
Trump said the United States is “desperately in need of ships,” arguing that some of today’s fleet has “gotten old and tired and obsolete.” It’s the blunt kind of assessment that doesn’t win points in a seminar, but it lands with anyone watching global naval competition heat up.
He also claimed the new ships would be “100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” That’s a headline-grabber, though the hard part is making sure the industrial base can actually deliver something close to the ambition.
Trump added, “We haven’t built a battleship since 1994,” framing the Golden Fleet as a return to heavyweight surface power. Even supporters should hear the subtext: The administration is daring the system — contractors, shipyards and bureaucracy — to keep up.
Trump said procurement would begin immediately for the first two ships and that the plan would scale to 10 vessels. He then set a bigger horizon, saying the total could eventually reach 20 to 25 ships.
He said the aim is to have the first two operational within two and a half years. If that sounds aggressive, it’s because it is — and it collides with years of warnings about shipbuilding delays and capacity constraints.
Still, Trump’s pitch was clear: build fast, build big, and rebuild the kind of fleet presence that doesn’t require a PowerPoint to be understood. The promise is deterrence by visibility, not just by spreadsheets.
Trump described the ships as heavily armed platforms combining missiles with traditional naval guns. He argued gun-based firepower can produce combat effects at a fraction of the cost of missiles — a not-so-subtle jab at the idea that everything modern must also be maximally expensive.
He said each ship would displace more than 30,000 to 40,000 tons and serve as a flagship of the U.S. fleet. It’s a vision of concentrated power, meant to signal staying power in a world that’s increasingly missile-heavy.
Trump said the battleships would carry advanced systems, including hypersonic missiles, electric rail guns, high-powered lasers and nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missiles now under development. He also promised state-of-the-art defenses and what he called “tremendous numbers of missiles.”
Trump denied the plan was aimed at China, saying, “It’s a counter to everybody,” and adding that it’s “not China” because he gets along well with President Xi. The line is classic Trump: dismiss the obvious assumption, then widen the target set to the whole world.
The announcement landed amid an ongoing debate in defense circles about what the future fleet should look like, with recent strategy emphasizing submarines, unmanned systems and more distributed surface forces. Critics argue large surface ships can be more visible and vulnerable in modern conflicts, while others say bigger platforms provide more firepower, endurance and command-and-control.
The capacity comparison hanging over all of it is stark: The Office of Naval Intelligence has assessed China has roughly 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, and the story notes the U.S. Navy operates about 294 warships while China has more than 370 ships in service.
Trump invoked World War II-era output, pointing to a time when the U.S. produced multiple ships per day, compared with today’s slower pace. Nostalgia is optional, but the manufacturing challenge is real, and it’s not solved by slogans.
He tied the Golden Fleet to a broader push to accelerate defense production, saying he plans to meet next week with major defense contractors to demand faster delivery timelines, more capital investment in factories, and limits on stock buybacks and executive compensation. Trump argued profits should go into production capacity rather than dividends and buybacks — a message that will test how “free market” executives feel when the customer is the federal government.
The story notes shipbuilding has become a White House-level priority, with a dedicated office created to oversee maritime industrial policy, even as defense leaders warn the industrial base is strained by workforce shortages, fragile supplier networks, aging infrastructure and persistent shipyard delays — problems made worse by shifting requirements and design changes after construction starts.
