ANALYSIS: 65 billion for ghost ships — Trump’s "Golden Fleet" defies industrial reality

Huntington Ingalls and the Bottleneck Syndrome

There are exactly two shipyards capable of building nuclear warships in the United States: Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia, and General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. Two. For the entire U.S. Navy. For the naval power that claims to dominate two oceans simultaneously.

Both of these shipyards are already operating at full capacity. The Columbia-class submarines—the replacements for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, the backbone of U.S. nuclear deterrence—are facing delays of several years. Every month of delay on a Columbia is a month during which the U.S. nuclear triad quietly weakens. And now, they’re being asked to handle a doubling of orders.

The Invisible Labor Crisis

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan acknowledged the problem at the WEST conference in San Diego on February 12, 2026. His solution: to build ships that are simpler to manufacture than combat vessels, which require complex radar systems and nuclear propulsion. In other words, to work around the problem rather than solve it.

It’s as if an overwhelmed hospital announced that it would double its surgical procedures by starting with bandage changes.

The U.S. maritime industrial base faces a structural shortage of welders, pipefitters, naval electricians, and propulsion engineers. It takes four to six years to train a qualified naval welder. Money does not create skills. It does not create hands. It does not create time.

The Price of Proclaimed Dominance

The $65.8 billion allocated to shipbuilding is part of a total defense budget of $1,500 billion for fiscal year 2027. One and a half trillion. To put this figure in perspective: Russia’s defense budget for 2025 was estimated at approximately $110 billion. China’s was officially $225 billion. The United States plans to spend in a single year the equivalent of five to six combined Russian military budgets.

And yet, despite this colossal financial asymmetry, the U.S. Navy is unable to maintain its existing fleet. Ships in service spend months undergoing maintenance. Deployments are getting longer. Crews are burning out. Money is flowing freely, but the ships aren’t keeping up.

What the budget cuts to fund the ships

The same budget proposes a 10% cut in non-military spending. Education, healthcare, civilian infrastructure, scientific research—everything is being squeezed to feed the war machine. This choice is not insignificant. It reveals a hierarchy of priorities where projected power takes precedence over built power. Where the symbolism of the ship trumps the reality of the school.

A country that no longer trains its engineers will not build the world’s most advanced ships. It’s simple math. And yet, no one in this administration seems to be doing the math.

Reagan promised it. History has spoken

This isn’t the first time a Republican president has promised a massive naval expansion. In 1981, Ronald Reagan launched the 600-ship fleet program. He started with 479 ships. By 1987, the fleet had grown to 594. But Reagan had an industrial base that no longer exists. American shipyards in the 1980s employed three times as many workers as they do today. The Cold War justified long-term investments that Congress approved without partisan debate.

Trump is proposing a more ambitious doubling of the fleet with an industrial base that is one-third the size. The comparison with Reagan is not flattering. It is devastating.

The Illusion of Historical Precedent

There is another specter in this story: that of the 355-ship fleet promised during Trump’s first term. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2018 made it a statutory goal. Seven years later, the Navy has fewer than 300 ships. The goal was not merely missed—it has slipped further away. Each year, more ships are decommissioned than are delivered. The fleet is shrinking while the promises grow.

And yet, we are asked to believe that this time will be different.

The White House document and its inadvertent admission

The White House budget document contains a revealing sentence: “As the world’s waters become increasingly contested, it is imperative that the United States be able to effectively deliver the various naval platforms required.” This sentence is an admission. It acknowledges that U.S. maritime dominance is no longer a given. That other powers are challenging the space the U.S. Navy once considered its natural territory.

China is launching warships at a rate that Pentagon analysts openly describe as alarming. The People’s Liberation Army Navy has surpassed the U.S. Navy in the number of vessels since 2020. It is building a third aircraft carrier while the United States struggles to maintain the eleven it already possesses.

The Pacific Forgives No Delays

In the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and around the Senkaku Islands, China’s naval presence is intensifying every quarter. Patrols are closing in. Incursions are on the rise. Chinese warships aren’t a hundred times more powerful than anything else. They’re simply there. Present. Numerous. Operational. Meanwhile, the Trump-class battleships exist only in a press release.

Naval power is not measured in announced billions. It is measured in ships on the water. And in this regard, the United States is losing ground every year.

Nuclear Deterrence on Hold

Buried in the list of ships funded by this budget is the Columbia class. These ballistic missile submarines will replace the Ohio-class submarines, which have been in service since the 1980s. Without the Columbia-class submarines, the maritime component of the U.S. nuclear triad will disappear. This is not a rhetorical exaggeration. It is a technical fact. The hulls of the Ohio-class submarines are nearing the end of their structural service life. Every year of delay on the Columbia-class submarines is a year in which the credibility of U.S. deterrence erodes.

The first Columbia was scheduled to be delivered in 2028. Experts at the Government Accountability Office consider this timeline to be extremely optimistic. And now, the same shipyards that are struggling to meet this schedule must also build gold-plated battleships, frigates, hospital ships, and oil tankers.

Electric Boat’s Impossible Dilemma

General Dynamics Electric Boat faces a choice that money cannot solve: every hour of work devoted to another program is an hour stolen from the Columbia-class submarines. Every welder assigned to a frigate is a welder not working on the submarine that carries nuclear warheads. The $65.8 billion budget does not create duplicate workers. It creates internal competition for fixed resources.

This is the central paradox of this proposal: the more ships you order, the more each ship falls behind schedule.

The Vote That Will Decide Everything

The budget proposed by the White House is merely a request. It “ultimately requires congressional approval,” as the Military Times soberly notes. This innocuous sentence encapsulates all the political suspense of the coming months. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees will scrutinize every line. Lawmakers from coastal states—Virginia, Connecticut, Mississippi, Maine—have a direct stake in these shipyards. Local jobs carry more weight than strategic coherence.

The precedent of inflated and then deflated budgets

The recent history of U.S. naval budgets is a succession of promises scaled back. The requested budget is almost never the approved budget. Promised ships are regularly delayed, scaled back, or canceled. The Zumwalt class was supposed to consist of 32 destroyers. Three were built. The Littoral Combat Ship program was supposed to revolutionize coastal warfare. Several were decommissioned before reaching their expected service life.

Every naval program begins with a spectacular promise and ends with a budgetary compromise. And yet, every new budget starts the cycle all over again as if history did not exist.

Build Simply to Build Quickly—The Bypass Strategy

John Phelan’s statement at the WEST conference deserves a more detailed analysis than it has received. The Secretary of the Navy explicitly stated that doubling production would require ships that are “easier to build” than complex combat vessels. This is a remarkable admission. It means that the U.S. Navy knows it cannot double the production of destroyers, frigates, or submarines. The doubling will be arithmetic, not in terms of capability.

Building sixteen support ships—oil tankers, cargo ships, hospital ships—is infinitely simpler than building eighteen combat ships. Weapons systems, AEGIS radars, vertical launch systems, radar stealth—everything that distinguishes a cargo ship from a destroyer—does not factor into the equation for simple ships. The figure of 34 ships is impressive. The operational reality is less glorious.

The question Phelan didn’t ask

If the Navy admits that it must circumvent its own industrial shortcomings by building simpler ships, what does that say about its ability to confront a Chinese navy that is producing Type 055 destroyers—among the most advanced in the world—at a rate of two per year? Simplicity as an industrial strategy works for rebuilding a fleet. It does not work as a deterrence strategy.

Why the Word “Battleship” Makes People Cringe

The concept of the battleship was abandoned by all the world’s navies after World War II. The last American battleship in active service, the USS Missouri, was decommissioned in 1992. The reason for this abandonment is well known to any student of naval history: battleships are massive, slow targets that are vulnerable to modern anti-ship missiles and torpedoes. The Falklands War in 1982—and the destruction of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano by a single British submarine—definitively buried the concept of the large armored ship as the king of the seas.

Reviving the term “battleship” in 2026 is therefore not a naval decision. It is a political one. The word evokes raw power, visible dominance, and the America of yesteryear. It appeals to an electorate that associates national greatness with the size of ships, not with the sophistication of their electronic systems.

What “Trump-class” Really Means

Naming a class of ships after a sitting president is unprecedented in modern American naval history. Ship classes are traditionally named after their lead ship, which is often named after states, battles, or heroes. The “Trump” class transforms an arms program into a personal monument. It makes it politically impossible for any successor to cancel the program without appearing to cancel the person.

This may be the most clever maneuver in the entire budget: making cancellation as politically costly as construction is financially.

An Ongoing War, a Budget That Benefits From It

This naval budget doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes as Operation Epic Fury against Iran is consuming Tomahawk missiles at a rate that experts describe as unsustainable—more than 850 cruise missiles fired in a single month. It comes as stocks of interceptors are dwindling. It comes as a Marine Reserve commander tells his men to “prepare their families.” War justifies the budget. The budget funds the war. The circle closes.

The Question of Priorities in Times of Conflict

When a country is at war, the distinction between long-term investment and immediate operational need breaks down. The $65.8 billion allocated for shipbuilding will not produce a single additional ship until 2029 at the earliest. The first frigates funded by this budget will not be operational until the early 2030s. Meanwhile, existing ships are wearing out in the Persian Gulf. Crews are racking up deployments. Hulls are showing signs of fatigue.

Investing in the future is necessary. But announcing future investments while the present is burning is somewhat unsettling.

Beijing Doesn’t Issue Statements—Beijing Builds

While Washington debates “golden battleships,” the shipyards in Jiangnan, Dalian, and Huludao are in full swing. Between 2018 and 2025, China launched more naval tonnage than any other nation has since World War II. It doesn’t promise ships that are a hundred times more powerful. It delivers functional ships at a pace the U.S. Navy cannot match.

China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is equipped with electromagnetic catapults—the same technology as the U.S. Gerald R. Ford-class carrier, developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. Western naval analysts consider the Type 055 destroyers to be the most capable cruisers produced by a non-U.S. power in decades.

The Game-Changing Asymmetry

China is not seeking to replicate the U.S. Navy. It is seeking to render it ineffective. The DF-21D and DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles—nicknamed “aircraft carrier killers”—cost a fraction of the price of a destroyer and can strike ships at ranges of over 1,500 kilometers. Every $15 billion Trump-class battleship will be threatened by a missile costing just a few million.

And yet, the U.S. response is to build bigger and more expensive ships. It’s like responding to the invention of the bow and arrow by building higher walls. History has a clear verdict on this strategy.

The alternative that no one is proposing

With $65.8 billion, the United States could fund the production of tens of thousands of naval drones. Ukraine has demonstrated in the Black Sea that a $250,000 surface drone can neutralize a $1 billion cruiser. The lesson is there, written in the waters off Sevastopol, etched into the hull of the Moskva. But no one in Washington seems to be reading it.

Those $65 billion could also modernize existing shipyards, train 50,000 welders, build new dry docks, and invest in shipbuilding robotics. They could solve the problem that this budget pretends to ignore: it’s not money that’s lacking. It’s the ability to spend it effectively.

The Golden Hammer Syndrome

When your only tool is a checkbook, every problem looks like a lack of funds. The U.S. Navy does not suffer from underfunding. It suffers from structural underinvestment in its industrial base, short-term planning dictated by election cycles, and an institutional inability to choose between quantity and sophistication.

Doubling the budget without doubling industrial capacity is like pouring twice as much water into a glass that’s already overflowing.

When People Disappear Behind the Billions

Amid all this talk of hulls, billions, and ship classes, one key player is consistently missing: the sailor. The man or woman who will live on these ships for months on end. Who will sleep in bunk beds. Who will see their family only four months a year. Who will endure extended deployments because the fleet is too small for its missions.

The U.S. Navy is facing a retention crisis that money has failed to resolve. Sailors are leaving the service because living conditions on board have deteriorated, because rotations are exhausting, because maintenance is being postponed, and because sailing on a poorly maintained ship is dangerous. Building 34 new ships without resolving the crew crisis is like building highways without drivers.

The Silence of Families

The commander of the Marine Corps Reserve, Lieutenant General Leonard F. Anderson IV, recently asked his Marines: “Are you truly ready to be deployed, to fight, and to win?” He asked them to prepare their families. This message, on official letterhead, says in ten words what the 1,500 billion budget fails to say in a thousand pages: war is here. It is real. And the people who will fight it are not budget lines.

A Budget Rooted in the Past in a World That Demands the Future

The Trump administration’s 2027 naval budget is a remarkable document. Not for its ambition—ambition is easy when it’s taxpayers’ money. Not for its figures—the figures are spectacular but disconnected from industrial reality. It is remarkable because it reveals, in every line, the gap between the United States’ proclaimed power and its actual power.

A country that promises battleships in a world of drones and hypersonic missiles. A country that doubles its naval orders even as its shipyards cannot fulfill existing orders. A country that spends 1,500 billion on defense while cutting funding for the education that trains the engineers who will build that defense.

The Golden Fleet is not a naval program. It is a narrative. A narrative that speaks of past greatness in a world that demands adaptation. That promises dominance through size in an era where dominance belongs to agility. That puts a president’s name on hulls that do not yet exist to ensure that no one will dare question their necessity.

The world’s waters are indeed becoming increasingly contested. But the answer to this challenge is not to be found in a Friday press release. It lies in the silent shipyards where welders are in short supply. In the dry docks where nuclear submarines are falling behind schedule. In the naval academies where the next generation of officers wonders whether the country they serve still understands the sea.

Sixty-five point eight billion dollars. And yet, not a single additional ship will be in the water by tomorrow morning.

Signed, Jacques PJ Provost