The U.S. Navy’s new shipbuilding plan includes one of its most surprising ideas in decades: a nuclear-powered Trump-class battleship, also known as BBG(X).
The Navy’s 30-year plan shows 15 BBG(X) purchases, with three planned between fiscal years 2027 and 2031 at a projected cost of about $43.5 billion. These modern battleships are not meant to be Iowa-class throwbacks. They are envisioned as massive missile-carrying surface combatants with deep magazines, command-and-control space, hypersonic weapons, directed-energy systems, and enough electrical power to support future weapons like lasers and railguns.
But the plan raises some major questions. Would a few enormous battleships actually solve the Navy’s missile-capacity problem, or would smaller destroyers, frigates, unmanned vessels, and carrier aircraft spread that firepower more effectively? How does BBG(X) compare to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Ford-class aircraft carriers, Japan’s Mogami-class frigates, and future Navy FF(X) plans? And can the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base actually build nuclear-powered battleships while already struggling to deliver submarines, destroyers, carriers, frigates, amphibs, and logistics ships on time?
In this video, we break down what the Navy says the Trump-class battleship is supposed to do, why magazine depth matters, how many VLS cells the fleet could get from other ships, why reloading missiles at sea is still a major problem, and why the Navy’s new battleship plan depends on a lot more than just building a bigger ship.
00:00 – Intro
01:22 – Why the Navy wants the BBG(X)
04:40 – BBG(X) vs. Arleigh Burke and others
08:12 – Cost, comparisons, and the reload problem
12:35 – Railguns, lasers, and other future weapons for BBG(X)
16:14 – Can the Navy actually build these
Recorded on: May 14th, 2026
Written by: Kyle Gunn
Edited by: Savvy
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