The Battleships that Won’t
By 
Increasingly unlikely that any “Trump” battleship will ever hit the water:
The Golden Fleet isn’t even a year old, and we’re already suffering from sticker shock. A report from the Congressional Budget Office this week indicated that the cost of the USS Defiant (BBGN-1), the expected first vessel of the Trump-class battleships, has soared to $23.4 billion, about 50% above expectations. Follow-on vessels are now expected to cost around $18 billion.
For a project this early in its design phase, the projected cost growth is alarming.
With Congress already skeptical about the future of the ships, news of the projected cost overruns will undoubtedly turn the project into a toxic political battlefield over the next few years.
$23.4 billion is a lot to pay for a single warship, no matter how capable. By comparison, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), the first ship of the Ford-class aircraft carriers, cost about $17 billion.
I’ve heard word that Phelan was fired because he was too enthusiastic about these monstrosities and he got the Old Man excited too, while Hegseth wanted to go a different, somehow more sensible direction. Stopped clocks and all that.