Overview
- The White House and Navy tout a very large Trump-class warship as the Golden Fleet centerpiece with hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike weapons and a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, with introduction discussed for the 2030s.
- Budget analysts cited per-ship costs of at least $10 billion and cautioned the program may yield only a few hulls or never reach the fleet.
- Experts point to a strained U.S. shipbuilding base with chronic delays and overruns as a core obstacle to building such large surface combatants.
- The concept clashes with the Navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations approach, which emphasizes more numerous, smaller, networked ships over a few very large vessels.
- Critics warn that fielding a nuclear-armed cruise missile raises escalation and misinterpretation risks and that the broader Golden initiatives could be prohibitively expensive, with one estimate for the Golden Dome ranging from $292 billion to $3.6 trillion.