Is Trump's Golden Fleet the Great White Fleet of the 21st century?

The Trump administration has announced that it wants to build a new class of battleships. But this is just one element of the Golden Fleet –a larger program of naval reform aimed at a major transformation of the US Navy and its strategy.

On December 22, 2025, the US Navy announced that the administration plans to build up to 25 of the first class of battleships since the Second World War. However, there is much more to the story than just the construction of a new warship. It also marks the largest change in naval strategy since the Cold War decision to base fleets solely around carrier strike groups, as well as a global trend for the world's major navies to adapt to rapidly changing technologies.

By 1945, naval strategies had undergone a major paradigm shift that is only now coming to an end. When the Second World War started, the main strength of the Allied and Axis navies revolved around battleships, which were large, heavily armored vessels equipped with batteries of heavy guns of up to 16 inches (41 cm) that could fire tonnes of steel shells in a single salvo.

The sea battles between the Royal Navy and the German battleships Bismarck and Graf Spree, and the shore bombardments of Normandy, Anzio, and Okinawa are testaments to the awesome firepower of the battleship, but the losses by aircraft at the battles of Pearl Harbor and Taranto, as well as sinkings of the British battleships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, the Japanese Musashi and Yamato, the German Tirpitz, and the Italian Roma showed that unless accompanied by a defensive group these craft were becoming far too vulnerable to air attack.

Since then, the aircraft carrier has reigned supreme (though don't say this too loudly in front of submariners, who only regard surface ships as targets), but that is changing as new anti-ship weapons are making high-asset ships like carriers too valuable to be risked and, in the event of a full-blown war, must be kept as far from the front lines as possible.

This is being exacerbated by the swift emergence of new technologies, including hypersonic missiles, drones, directed energy weapons, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence that could have as big an impact on naval design as the introduction of the first battleship, HMS Dreadnought, or the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus.

Added to this is the fundamental change in the geopolitical situation that is seeing a shift away from the end-of-history rule-based policies of soft power and international consensus back to something more akin to the Age of Empire, with world and regional powers relying more on the hard power of military might combined with economic and strategic pressure. It's in the light of this that NATO is undergoing a major jump in defense spending, with new shipbuilding programs, munitions factories, and army recruitment drives across the continent.

From the American point of view there are also the domestic problems of a significant deterioration in shipbuilding capacity and maintenance. Without laboring the point, US defense procurement and general naval operations are an utter mess after decades of neglect.

On top of all of this is the fact that the New START treaty will expire on February 5, 2026, giving the US the freedom to restore tactical nuclear deterrence capability to its surface fleet in the form of nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to fend off aggression in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region. Meanwhile, the US Navy is moving to a greater focus on the Western Hemisphere to protect sea lines of communications that account for 40% of American trade.

What all this boils down to is that the Trump-class battleships are one end of what has come to be known as the "Barbell" strategy. The idea is that the US Navy will focus its main attention on protecting the Western Hemisphere while also being able to take on Russia and China simultaneously anywhere in the world by means of a new kind of fleet.

Under the Barbell strategy, the US Navy will be restructured into two primary components. At one end of the barbell will be the new battleships that are actually advanced missile strike-platforms, nuclear strike carriers, and other group assets, as well as other larger warships operating independently or in task forces. The other end will be the Golden Swarm, which will consist of a much larger number of small, low-cost uncrewed surface and undersea vessels that will act as the eyes and ears of the fleets as well as delivering the ability to act as force multipliers by way of saturation attacks. The basic idea is for this combination to make the cost of engaging with the US too high for an enemy to contemplate.

Beyond the Barbell strategy, the Golden Fleet plan includes revamping the US industrial base by re-shoring and introducing robotic factories and 3D printing at scale to speed up production while bypassing chronic labor shortages that have plagued American shipyards.

This approach also includes shifting shipbuilding to put an emphasis on speed of production. One immediate example of this is that the Navy has announced the cancelation of its Italian-designed Constellation-class frigate program after years of delays and cost overruns in favor of an American-designed FF(X) frigate based on the US Coast Guard's Legend-class national security cutter.

This is a simpler design that will launch without the vertical missile launchers of the Constellation class, though these will be added later in the form of container modules. The FF(X) will also go without a built-in hull sonar system, but will rely on Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV) and MH-60R helicopters for anti-submarine work. It's hoped this approach will expand the US frigate numbers much faster than currently possible.

One final point concerns the name “Golden Fleet.” It may reflect more than a touch of egotism on the part of the commander-in-chief, but it is also likely a deliberate signal intended for an international audience.

In 1907. US President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched 16 modern battleships of the Atlantic Fleet on a worldwide tour known as the Great White Fleet, named for their white peacetime paint scheme. The goal was to demonstrate to the world that America was emerging as a premier blue-water naval power that could deploy an entire battle fleet to any ocean. Along with being an operational test of the fleet's capabilities, it was also a concrete example of Roosevelt's "Big Stick" diplomacy of fostering international goodwill while also projecting an image of strength and the willingness to use it. "Speak softly and carry a big stick," indeed.

The Golden Fleet may be intended to serve a similar purpose. On the one hand, it signals American naval capability and commitment to security; on the other, it sends a clear message to Russia and China that the US intends to operate not merely from a position of strength, but of superiority.

Mind you, like any strategy, it can backfire if not handled properly. Roosevelt's White Fleet was certainly impressive, but it showed off American weaknesses as well as strengths. By the time it sailed back to Hampton Roads in 1909, it was already obsolete, as HMS Dreadnought had fundamentally changed the game. In addition, the circumnavigation highlighted the US Navy's dependence on British coaling stations around the world in order to get anywhere.

A similar fate already faces the Golden Fleet, with some critics immediately declaring it obsolete in the face of Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) and that the dependence of robotic factories might not be possible given the erosion of the domestic industrial base.

Whatever the outcome, or even if Congress will finance it, one thing is clear. Naval warfare is changing and the major powers must and are changing with it. Whether it's the Golden Fleet, the Atlantic Bastion, or under some other name, the fleets of tomorrow will look as different from today's as Queen Victoria's Navy did compared to the nuclear fleet of the 21st century.