Economic Cost Realities Mean Idea Of New Battleships Doesn’t Float​

By John D. McCown | John D. McCown

The President is keen on committing billions to building new battleships.  Some background on battleship efficacy and the related construction and operating costs of battleships today argue against the idea.

In 1964 I was in grade school at St. Ignatius in Mobile.  I remember reaching into my pocket a couple of times for coins when Sister Mary Catherine asked for donations to tow the USS Alabama (BB-60) home.  One of four South Dakota class battleships built between 1939 and 1942; the ship was decommissioned in 1947 and laid up in the Navy’s Pacific Reserve Fleet for 15 years until 1962 when she was scheduled to be scrapped.  In 1964, a statewide campaign was launched to raise funds to bring the “Mighty A” to Mobile and make it the centerpiece of a memorial park.  Those nickels, dimes and quarters added up as school children throughout the state raised $100,000.  My wonderful teacher turned the actual tow into a learning exercise.  We charted its progress on a map during geography class.  I can remember asking my dad, a Navy LTJG during WWII, why it wasn’t still being used by the Navy.  He said battleships were from a different era, and they just made no sense today.

The peak number of battleships in our Navy was in 1945 when wartime construction of fast battleships brought the active number to 23.  That included 13 older dreadnaughts and the 10 newer fast battleships of the North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa classes.  The term dreadnaught comes from the 1906 launch of the British ship HMS Dreadnaught that ushered in the ‘all big gun, heavily armored battleship’ class.  The 33-knot and nine 16” gun Iowa class battleships were an improvement in terms of speed and firepower from the other modern battleships.  The Iowa class battleships were championed by President Franklin Roosevelt who previously served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920.  In that position, he managed the business of contracting and operations and that experience proved particularly useful during his presidency.

President Roosevelt would actually go across the Atlantic in “The Big Stick,” the nickname of the lead vessel of the Iowa class, for his secret meeting in 1943 with Churchill and Stalin at the Tehran Conference.  Originally, six Iowa class battleships were planned but only four were built.  The hulls for the fifth and sixth vessel were laid down in 1945 but cancelled with the end of the war and finally scrapped in 1959.  The five Montana class battleships were authorized but never built.  One third larger than the Iowa class with even heavier armoring, these ships were designed to carry twelve 16” guns rather than the nine guns of the preceding battleship classes.

Battleships would be the mightiest ships on the seas for almost four decades, but their demise was directly caused by the rise of aircraft carriers.  Those carriers brought long range air power and a reach of hundreds of miles.  That was well beyond the reach of a battleship where projectiles from its 16” gun had a maximum range of 24 miles.  Battleships were largely ineffective in attacking planes from carriers, yet those same planes proved to be very effective in sinking battleships.  The end of the battleship era truly began at Pearl Harbor when Japanese  torpedo bombers sunk four battleships and heavily damaged four others.  It would be dramatically reinforced six months later at the Battle of Midway.  Carrier-launched aircraft dominated and hardly a shot was fired between ships.  Battleships were relegated mostly to providing coastal bombardment.  The sinking of the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built with 18” guns and the flagship of the Japanese Navy, by carrier aircraft in April 1945 led to more than 3,000 dying in the largest ever casualty event involving a single warship.  That would cement the end of the battleship era, and no navies have built a single battleship since then.  General Billy Mitchell, an early leader of Army Air Service who argued in 1925 about the ability of planes to sink battleships, organized exercises demonstrating that and called the Navy’s building of battleships an “almost treasonable administration of national defense,” was vindicated.

Outside of actual wars, battleships offered little utility while being expensive to operate.  By 1947, all had been decommissioned and except for the Iowa class were placed in deeply preserved mothball fleets.  The Iowa class battleships were put in reserve fleets where they were kept closer to active service standards and could be reactivated quicker.  They were reactivated and put in service during the Koran War where they provided heavy naval gunfire support.  Only one of the Iowa class battleships, the USS New Jersey (BB-62), was briefly reactivated during the Vietnam War in 1968 before returning to the bench in 1969.  As part of President Reagan’s plan to build up to a 600 ship Navy, the Iowa class battleships were reactivated and retrofitted to include 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles, 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 4 Phalanx weapon systems.  Two would participate in Operation Desert Storm in 1991.  Despite being modernized with what were then the most advanced weapons systems, the battleships were not cost-effective.  That determination was made based on rigorous analysis done by the Navy which constantly accesses effectiveness versus budget realities.  They were expensive to maintain, manpower intensive and out gunned by the guided missile ships that then dominated naval forces.  With missiles, there was no armor they could not penetrate.  That and the greater accuracy of guided missiles were key factors making even those modernized battleships less relevant and as such they were all permanently deactivated by 1992.

The Iowa class battleships cost approximately $100 million each to build.  That was one-third more than the $75 million to build the largest Essex class aircraft carriers and many times more than the $19 million to build a smaller escort carrier.  In comparison, the Fletcher class destroyers that dominated that category were built for $6 million each.  The battleships had a crew size of 1,800-2,700 compared to 2,600-3,400 for the larger aircraft carriers and slightly over 300 for the destroyers.  However, 35%-40% of the aircraft carrier crew related to the embarked air group, so the vessel related manning requirement and related crew cost of the battleship was typically 25% more.  There was a more pronounced difference in fuel costs owing to the deeper draft of the heavy battleships, driven by the 12” armor plating.  An Iowa class battleship had a draft of 38’ versus the 27’ draft of the Essex class carriers and being 41% deeper in the water meant higher fuel costs.  On the other hand, the Fletcher class destroyers had a average draft of just 13’ and that along with their finer hull shape translated into geometrically less fuel consumption.  The relative difference in construction and operating cost resulted in 175 Fletcher class destroyers being built during the war compared to the 10 fast battleships built, meaning there was a slightly larger total investment in those large destroyers.

The combination of reduced utility and higher construction and operating costs is why battleships only exist today as eight floating museums.  It is worth underscoring that those commercial or cost related decisions were made at a time when the U.S. was more cost-efficient in the building of all types of ships relative to other countries.  Numerous measures including the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Shipbuilding Composite Index show widening gaps compared to both foreign costs and general inflation.

In addition to these operational and commercial considerations, large surface ships do not fit well with current naval thinking.

In 2022, Navy leadership formally adopted Distributed Maritime Operations, or DMO as its foundational operating concept.  This was just codifying the direction in which the Navy has been moving for some time resulting from actual experience.  At its heart, DMO is about dispersal and spreading naval assets out to make targeting more difficult for enemies.  Those assets include ships, aircraft and unmanned systems.  In addition to geographic dispersal, other core tenets of DMO are integrated lethality and resilient communications.  The former includes distributing sensors and weapon systems across a network of manned and unmanned platforms while the latter knits everything together in one coordinated force that survives enemy electronic attacks.  DMO invariably involves digital technology and embraces the deployment of a greater number of smaller units instead of a lesser number of larger units.  Larger platforms such as battleships and even aircraft carriers run against the doctrine of DMO and thus not fully consistent with current naval strategy.  The Ukraine war has strongly validated the basic principles of DMO.

From my experience in building commercial vessels, time spent up front in planning and analysis typically results in actual deliveries occurring sooner and also occurring closer to budget.  The expression “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” widely attributed to the Navy Seals applies to many situations and building ships is very high on that list.  My view is that shipbuilding should not involve a top-down approach and is best done as a bottom-up exercise, getting the input of many experts and in particular the individuals who will operate those ships.  With the proposed new class of battleships being discussed, it is not clear that there has been any bottom-up call by the Navy to resurrect a ship category it abandoned decades ago.  That institutional memory is driven by relative effectiveness.  When construction and operating cost realities are taken into account, the apparent lack of any bottom-up support is understandable.  It is imperative that sufficient time be spent for planning and analysis and related input by the Navy as well as other subject matter experts.  I think this is best done in an open environment before significant sums are spent and any final decisions are made.  What should not be emulated for any Navy newbuilding project, particularly something as major as a new class of large warships, is following how the recent Coast Guard icebreaker contracts came about.

An August 1 article in the New York Times provided additional information on contracts totaling almost $7 billion to build 11 new icebreakers.  The first contract to build two icebreakers in Finland and four in the U.S. was announced by the Coast Guard in a December 29, 2025 press release.  A second contract to build another two icebreakers in Finland and three in the U.S. was disclosed in a February 11 press release by the Coast Guard.  The first four ships are expected to be built in Finland and President Trump waived the statute requiring Coast Guard vessels to be built in the U.S. The contracts were awarded through a rarely used public interest exception that allowed the administration to directly select shipbuilders without opening the project to competitive bids.  The Coast Guard presently operates just two heavy icebreakers similar in capability to the new ones contracted for and they are more than four decades old.

In a 2023 assessment, the Coast Guard concluded that 4 to 5 heavy icebreakers were required to meet its needs.  The catalyst for the contracts for military ships that came together in record time was actually a golf game the President of Finland had with President Trump in March 2025.  The lack of detailed involvement by the operator was telegraphed by the Coast Guard Commandant being quoted by the New York Times as saying “The number 11 came directly from the president, this was the president’s number and the president’s decision.”  While the procurement money to build the icebreakers was redirected from a previously passed bill, no long-term funding has yet been provided to operate the ships.  What was clearly a top-down approach that has benefited Finland has so far only actually resulted in icebreakers being built in Finland.  I have written about and embrace the involvement of allies in building naval and commercial ships, but I believe that all of that building activity should actually occur here in the U.S.

On August 5 the Congressional Budget Office issued a 12-page report on the cost implications of a new battleship program which is now envisioned to include nuclear propulsion.  The first ship would cost $23.4 billion to build and the entire 15 ship program would cost $275 billion, or $18.3 billion per ship.  The program was first announced by President Trump at a December 22, 2025 press conference and a subsequent budget submission had a Navy estimate that the first ship in a conventionally powered program would cost $15.1 billion.  In its report, the CBO now estimates that if conventionally powered, the first ship will cost $21.3 billion while the average cost will be $16.1 billion, or 12% less than if nuclear powered.

When the $23.4 billion is compared to the $100 million cost 81 years ago, you arrive at a 6.97% effective annual inflation rate.  That is almost twice the 3.67% annual CPI growth over the same period.  To underscore what that difference equates to over 81 years, at just the CPI rate a battleship would be $1.853 billion today.  The more than 12 times higher price tag is for a more advanced ship, but much of the difference is related to the reduction in U.S. cost-efficiency in the building of all types of ships relative to other countries.  The severe contraction and consolidation of the shipbuilding base, with 80% less large vessel yards since mid-20^th century, has played a key role.

The CBO construction cost estimate is already more than 50% higher compared to the cost estimate when it was unveiled eight months ago.  Those construction costs are more per vessel than the latest missile submarines and aircraft carriers, each of which have more utility.  It is unclear what even one battleship would do for us that cannot be done more cost efficiently with other vessels, let alone what a fleet of 15 battleships would do.  This initiative seems to be moving way too fast without sufficient planning and analysis.  When that occurs, that will always be paid for later in the form of additional time and cost.  If “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” when it comes to shipbuilding, then a corollary is “fast is rough, rough is slow.”  One factor about the initiative needing more focus is that if the nuclear propulsion plan is maintained, that requires final assembly at Newport News Shipbuilding, the only yard qualified to install nuclear propulsion in surface ships.  That shipyard is already significantly behind schedule on existing aircraft carrier and submarine contracts.  Another major project could delay all projects, most particularly work on new missile submarine construction, irrefutably the most important strategic naval asset.

Today’s navies can be largely characterized by their ability to deploy missiles.  Even with its high cost, the proposed battleship will have just 128 vertical launching system (VLS) cells.  VLS is an advanced system for holding and firing missiles on mobile naval platforms.  In comparison, the Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers has 122 VLS cells.  While the Ticonderoga class are older and being phased out, that is not the case with the latest version of the Arleigh Burke DDG-51 which has 96 VLS cells.  With a current construction cost of $2.7 billion, you could build nine of those modern guided missile destroyers for the price of one battleship and have seven times the missile firepower distributed in a more lethal and survivable manner.  Even the crew members per VLS cell on the proposed battleship will be twice that measure on the destroyers, an operating cost concern as well as an availability factor given recent Navy recruiting difficulties.

When it comes to deploying missiles on naval platforms, we must be just as judicious as our potential adversaries.  In a modern conflict, victory typically favors the side with the most missiles and that is generally a function of cost-efficiency.  A January 2026 article I wrote described a concerning exercise where China with modular components could quickly converted a small feeder container ship into a platform with 60 VLS cells and related radar and weapons systems.  Such an effort underscores both a more cost-efficient way of deploying missiles and how far behind the U.S. is on such a dual use initiative as China has 70 times as many adaptable cargo ships.

There have been recent news reports that the U.S. is exploring building warships overseas.  At the recent G7 conference in France, President Trump, in a conversation on the sidelines with South Korea’s president, reportedly asked, “Can you quickly build 10 U.S. warships?”  At the battleship plan unveiling in December 2025, when asked about timing President Trump said his timetable for the first ship is 2 ½ years, which would be mid-2028.  The only way that would even be conceivably possible is to build in South Korea.  It would be unfortunate if we were to suddenly find that some contract had been struck along the lines of the no-bid, top-down icebreaker contract involving Finland that would have anything actually being built in South Korea.  That is particularly the case for battleships, a category of surface vessels the Navy has not asked for in more than eight decades.  Based on my experience in and knowledge of shipbuilding, my concern is that any contract coming out of a short-circuited process would end up delivering something that was wanting both in terms of expected capability and cost.

There is no question a large battleship is an impressive warship and it would make a statement, although its bang is not as loud as what came from the 16” guns.  But in terms of bang for the buck, the commercial metric by which all investments in naval assets should be measured, the proposed battleships score poorly.  Channeling the classic 1950’s TV show “Father Knows Best,” it turns out my dad was right that battleships belonged to a different era and that in 1964 they had made no sense for two decades.  They make even less sense, especially in terms of dollars and cents, in 2026.  Funds can and should be spent much more wisely on an array of naval assets, most particularly the Autonomous Surface Vessels (ASV) and Autonomous Underwater Vessels (AUV).  They are the essence of DMO and smart hard assets are the smart way to move forward in the future.

The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.