U.S. Navy eyes next-generation “Golden Fleet” warships to rival China’s growing maritime strength

U.S. Navy eyes next-generation “Golden Fleet” warships to rival China’s growing maritime strength

The Golden Fleet Mirage: Why Trump's Naval Vision Ignores the Age of the Anti-Ship Missile

President's call for revolutionary 20,000-ton warships collides with three inconvenient realities: the Navy can't build simple frigates, large surface combatants can't survive modern weapons, and unmanned alternatives already exist

The age of the battleship ended at Pearl Harbor. The age of the large, independent surface combatant may be ending now—just as President Donald Trump proposes building the biggest, most expensive surface warships since World War II.

Trump seems to have a golden theme going. First he had the Golden Dome, and now President Trump and senior Navy officials are discussing a fleet modernization concept dubbed the "Golden Fleet," designed to replace many of today's ships with bigger, more powerful vessels displacing 15,000 to 20,000 tons—nearly twice the size of current destroyers. The concept envisions heavily armed capital ships bristling with long-range and hypersonic missiles, supported by smaller corvettes, all designed to counter China's growing maritime power.

It sounds impressive, but before we go down what I am convinced is a loosing road, know that  it is profoundly disconnected from three critical realities facing naval power: the Navy's demonstrated inability to build even simple ships on time and budget, the fundamental vulnerability of large surface combatants in the age of hypersonic anti-ship missiles, and the emergence of unmanned alternatives that could provide distributed lethality at a fraction of the cost and risk.

The Constellation Catastrophe: Why the Navy Can't Be Trusted with Complex Designs

Before entertaining visions of revolutionary capital ships, one must confront an uncomfortable reality: the Navy cannot even deliver the Constellation-class frigate—a ship explicitly chosen and sold to congress as an off-the-shelf, low-risk design based on the proven European FREMM frigate—which may not deliver until 2029, three years later than originally planned, as well as way over budget.

I served as an EDO reserve LT in NAVSEA during the Vietnam conflict, and saw how the sausage was made from the inside. If the AEGIS project from NAVORD hadn't come along requiring invention of what was basically a new warship, with new missiles and radars, and a new data link, we'd probably still be playing with rotating antennas and dual arm launchers, and we'd never have developed JHU/APL's Cooperative Engagement Concept. I had to write several analyses defending the "traditional" NTDS compatant concept, when the new architecture was obviously superior. This was a long bitter turf battle. It would appear that the NAVSEA people are determined not to let the Constellation project succeed.

The Constellation debacle reveals systematic institutional failure. While the design was based on a long-serving warship, design agent Gibbs & Cox heavily modified the FREMM to meet Naval Sea Systems Command requirements for tougher survivability standards. At one point the design shared about 85 percent commonality with the original FREMM, but alterations have brought that commonality down to under 15 percent.

As of April 2025, the lead ship was only 10 percent complete despite years of construction, with the design still not finalized. Representative Rob Wittman noted that the program started saying it would take the FREMM concept at 85 percent complete and add 15 percent, but now "it's 15 percent the original design and 85 percent add-ons".

The Navy began frigate construction in August 2022 with an incomplete functional design, counter to leading ship design practices. The Navy has also disclosed unplanned weight growth that could lead to reduced speed, and is considering reducing the frigate's speed requirement to resolve the weight growth.

Congress zeroed out about $1 billion of procurement funding for the program in fiscal 2025, with lawmakers warning the Navy is at a "tipping point" with the over-schedule, over-budget program.

If NAVSEA cannot restrain itself from transforming a proven European design into a bespoke disaster, what hope exists for an entirely new class of revolutionary capital ships requiring integrated electric propulsion, novel hull forms, new radar architectures, and immature hypersonic weapons? The Golden Fleet would arrive late, over-budget, and in insufficient numbers—if it arrives at all.

The Vulnerability Problem: Large Ships in the Hypersonic Age

Even if the Navy could build the Golden Fleet on time and budget, a more fundamental question remains: can large surface combatants survive in contested waters against modern anti-ship weapons?

China's YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile has a cruise speed of Mach 6 and terminal speed of Mach 10, can be launched from Type 055 destroyers or H-6 bombers, and entered operational service with the Chinese Air Force in 2025. Russia's Tsirkon is a ship-launched hypersonic cruise missile capable of traveling at speeds between Mach 6 and Mach 8, while the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle launched from ICBMs reportedly reaches speeds of Mach 20.

The physics are unforgiving. A traditional cruise missile launched from several hundred miles away traveling at about Mach 1 would take up to an hour to reach a ship, but a hypersonic cruise missile closes that distance in just ten minutes. Even with advanced sensors and defensive systems, the time available for detection, tracking, decision-making, and engagement shrinks to minutes or seconds.

The Navy's own weapons development suggests it recognizes this reality. The Navy cancelled its Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (HALO) missile program in fall 2024 due to budgetary and industrial base factors, with the service taking a second look at requirements with a new focus on affordability. If the U.S. cannot afford to develop and field hypersonic anti-ship missiles, how will it afford large platforms designed to survive them?

The Golden Fleet concept assumes that bigger, more heavily armed surface combatants can survive and prevail in this environment. This assumption conflicts with the Navy's own operational concept. Large surface ships without organic air cover—and the Golden Fleet's proposed corvettes and large combatants would operate distributed, often beyond carrier air defense umbrellas—present lucrative, vulnerable targets for opponents who have invested heavily in precisely the weapons designed to sink them.

Even Venezuela's Su-30 fighters armed with Russian Kh-31 ramjet-powered anti-ship missiles pose a credible threat to U.S. warships, requiring Ticonderoga-class cruiser escorts for special operations vessels operating near the Venezuelan coast precisely because of the anti-ship missile threat.

The Alternative: Distributed Lethality Through Unmanned Systems

While the Navy pursues vulnerable, expensive manned platforms, a more cost-effective and survivable alternative already exists: large unmanned surface vessels that provide distributed magazine capacity without putting sailors at risk.

The Navy envisions Large Unmanned Surface Vessels as 200 to 300 feet in length with full load displacements of 1,000 to 2,000 tons—the size of corvettes. Each LUSV could be equipped with a vertical launch system with 16 to 32 missile-launching tubes for anti-surface warfare and strike payloads. These ships would be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable platforms capable of weeks-long deployments and trans-oceanic transits, operating with carrier strike groups, surface action groups, or individual manned combatants.

DARPA christened USX-1 Defiant in August 2025, a first-of-its-kind autonomous unmanned surface vessel designed from the ground up to never accommodate a human aboard. The 180-foot vessel can operate autonomously at sea for up to a year and is designed to survive 30-foot waves. DARPA Director Stephen Winchell described Defiant-class vessels as "cost-effective, survivable, manufacturable, maintainable, long-range, autonomous, and distributed platforms, which will create future naval lethality, sensing, and logistics".

Congress appropriated $2.1 billion for development, procurement, and integration of purpose-built medium unmanned surface vessels in the reconciliation bill passed in July 2025. The Navy established Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron 7 at Naval Base San Diego in April 2025, with a mission to deliver the most formidable unmanned platforms in the maritime domain.

The strategic logic is compelling. Multiple unmanned platforms carrying missiles distributed across an operational area present an adversary with a complex targeting problem. The Navy's pre-solicitation notice for a Modular Attack Surface Craft calls for a vessel that would carry up to two 40-foot shipping containers and cruise at 25 knots for up to 2,500 nautical miles. The Navy and Army have experimented with the MK 70 Typhon launcher capable of fielding up to four Standard Missile 6s in the space of a 40-foot container.

Losing an unmanned vessel costs money and missiles. Losing a 20,000-ton capital ship costs 300-500 sailors, years of construction time, and billions of dollars. The loss of a single Golden Fleet vessel would represent a strategic defeat. The loss of several unmanned vessels represents acceptable attrition in a distributed system.

During the Navy's Integrated Battle Problem 23.2 in the Western Pacific, four unmanned surface vessels sailed more than 46,000 nautical miles, with the service finding that USVs could operate for about two weeks at a time without human intervention. These are not distant aspirations—they are operational capabilities being refined today.

The China Challenge: Building the Wrong Fleet

China's People's Liberation Army Navy numbers over 370 ships, with projections of 395 ships by 2025 and 435 by 2030. China's shipbuilding industry has capacity over 230 times greater than the United States, with projections that China will field 475 battle force ships by 2035 while the U.S. Navy will have 305 to 317.

While China builds capable ships rapidly, the U.S. Navy agonizes over perfect ships that arrive late. China's March 2025 announcement of a 7.2 percent increase in PLA budget includes expectations that the Fujian carrier, two Type 055 cruisers, half a dozen destroyers and frigates, and possibly four nuclear-powered submarines will be commissioned this year.

The Golden Fleet concept proposes to counter Chinese quantity with American quality—larger, more capable individual platforms. But this strategy assumes the Golden Fleet ships will be qualitatively superior enough to offset numerical disadvantage, survivable enough to operate in contested waters, and deliverable in sufficient numbers to matter. None of these assumptions withstands scrutiny.

China's anti-ship ballistic missiles can hold U.S. surface combatants at risk from shore-based launchers. China's hypersonic cruise missiles can be launched from aircraft, ships, and land. China has conducted 20 times as many hypersonic tests as the United States, according to former USD(R&E) Michael Griffin in 2018. The Golden Fleet's large signature and high value make it an ideal target for precisely these weapons.

Industrial and Fiscal Reality

The shorebased infrastructure and personnel needed to support the Navy's needs cannot be made to appear overnight, but will probably require a decade of consistent funding and effort. The Navy's 2025 30-year shipbuilding plan calls for average annual costs of approximately $40 billion—about 46 percent more than the average amount appropriated over the past five years. Overall, the net addition of 85 ships to the fleet will cost approximately $1 trillion over thirty years. Including costs of operating and maintaining ships, buying aircraft and weapons, and funding the Marine Corps, the Navy's total budget would need to increase from $255 billion today to $340 billion in 2054.

Government Accountability Office analysis shows that none of the seven shipbuilders constructing the Navy's battle force ships are currently positioned to meet the Navy's delivery goals, in part due to infrastructure and workforce limitations. The industry is beset by shortages of skilled crafts workers, with many skills bespoke to particular warship classes. These labor shortages are particularly acute in submarine construction.

The Golden Fleet would require $4 billion to $6 billion per hull for the large surface combatants—more than the entire FY2025 shipbuilding request of $32.4 billion for six ships. Where will the money come from? Which other programs will be sacrificed? How will an industrial base that cannot build frigates suddenly produce revolutionary capital ships?

As things stand the Navy is headed in the wrong dirrection. As of January 27, 2025, the Navy included 296 battle force ships. Over the next three years, the Navy would retire 13 more ships than it would commission, causing the fleet to reach a low of 283 ships in 2027 before growing again. The fleet is shrinking, not growing.

The Path Forward: Embracing Distributed, Unmanned Lethality

The Navy faces a choice between comfortable illusions and uncomfortable truths. The Golden Fleet concept, however strategically sound in theory, collides with three immovable realities: institutional inability to deliver complex designs, fundamental platform vulnerability in the hypersonic age, and the availability of better alternatives. The destruction of the Russian Black Sea fleet by the forces of Ukraine with no Navy to speak but lots of drones and antiship missiles may have sounded the death knell for big surface combatants in the littoral region without air cover. The future Navy may have few sailors at sea except those doing maintenance.

The path forward requires abandoning fantasies of invulnerable super-ships and embracing the unglamorous work of building capacity through:

Accelerated unmanned systems procurement. The technology exists. The operational concepts are maturing. The Navy is placing less weight on optionally manned surface vehicles as it refines requirements, with officials stating their preference is to keep sailors off the next generation of unmanned vessels. When you introduce that capability to operate with people on board, it creates a lot of other requirements and cost and complications. Congress has appropriated the money. Build them. But optionally manned platforms don't really show the full benefits of going unmanned.

Proven manned platforms in limited numbers. Continue Arleigh Burke Flight III production for high-value escorts. Fix the Constellation program by accepting an 85-percent solution. But recognize that in contested waters, even these proven platforms face significant risks.

Distributed magazine capacity. LUSVs will support Distributed Maritime Operations and provide the Joint Force with adjunct missile magazine capability. As adjunct magazines, LUSVs will operate with carrier strike groups, expeditionary strike groups, surface action groups, and individual manned combatants. The vessel will be incapable of payload activation or engagement without deliberate action of a remote, off-hull human operator in the command and control loop.

Reform NAVSEA acquisition culture. The Navy needs to strike a balance between ability to resist and sustain damage and rapid construction to field warships in needed numbers. Requirements must be frozen early. As Admiral Gorshkov said, "Better is the enemy of good enough" and with the modern NAVSEA,"Perfect" is the enemy of "sufficient." Know that bureaucratic resistance and not invented here (NIH) syndrome will be strong and prepare to attack it.

Accept higher risk to manned platforms. In a high-intensity conflict, surface ships will be sunk. Design for acceptable losses rather than invulnerability. Build platforms that can be replaced.

Conclusion: The Golden Fleet as Symptom

The Golden Fleet represents more than a misguided acquisition strategy—it symbolizes institutional refusal to adapt to changed circumstances. Like battleship admirals after Pearl Harbor, today's surface warfare community clings to familiar platforms even as technology renders them obsolete.

The shipbuilding industrial base has not met the Navy's goals in recent history. The Navy's shipbuilding plans have consistently reflected a larger increase than the industrial base has achieved, yet the Navy continues to base goals on assumptions that the industrial base will perform better than it has historically.

The Constellation-class failure should serve as definitive proof that the Navy's acquisition system cannot execute ambitious programs. If the service cannot deliver a proven frigate design without tripling the schedule and multiplying costs, proposing revolutionary 20,000-ton capital ships borders on institutional delusion.

President Trump's instinct that America needs a more capable fleet is correct. But the Golden Fleet concept offers no credible path from aspiration to reality. Worse, it distracts from viable alternatives already in development—unmanned systems that could provide distributed lethality at acceptable cost and risk.

The future of naval warfare lies not in larger, more expensive manned platforms, but in distributed networks of manned and unmanned systems that present adversaries with overwhelming targeting complexity. DARPA Director Stephen Winchell noted that Defiant-class vessels will "multiply combat power at low cost, and unlock new American maritime industrial capacity".

Until the Navy demonstrates it can deliver modest programs on time and accepts that large surface combatants cannot survive in contested waters without unacceptable risk, any discussion of revolutionary new ship classes remains wishful thinking. The golden question is not whether America needs better naval capability—it does—but whether we have the institutional courage to pursue solutions that actually work rather than solutions that look impressive in concept art.

China is building a navy for the wars it expects to fight. America is designing a navy for the wars it wishes to fight. That gap between expectation and reality, not the gap in hull numbers, represents the true crisis in American sea power.

Sidebar: The Black Sea Lesson—When Surface Ships Meet Modern Missiles

The destruction of Russia's Black Sea Fleet offers a brutal real-world laboratory for understanding surface ship vulnerability in the age of precision-strike weapons. What happened in the Black Sea isn't a preview of future naval warfare—it's a demonstration of present reality that naval planners ignore at their peril.

A Fleet Driven from the Sea

Between February 2022 and October 2025, Ukraine—a nation without a functioning navy—has effectively neutralized Russia's Black Sea Fleet through a combination of anti-ship cruise missiles, sea drones, and aerial strikes. The losses are staggering:

Major Vessels Lost or Severely Damaged:

• Moskva (flagship Slava-class cruiser) - sunk by Neptune anti-ship missiles, April 2022
• Admiral Makarov (Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate) - damaged by Neptune missiles, May 2022
• Saratov (Alligator-class landing ship) - destroyed in Berdyansk, March 2022
• Minsk (landing ship) - sunk by naval drones, September 2023
• Novocherkassk (landing ship) - destroyed by Storm Shadow cruise missiles, December 2023
• Multiple Raptor-class patrol boats destroyed by sea drones
• Numerous support vessels and auxiliaries damaged or destroyed

By mid-2024, Russia had relocated the remnants of its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk—a humiliating retreat driven not by enemy naval action but by land-based missiles and $250,000 sea drones attacking multi-million and billion-dollar warships.

What the Black Sea Reveals

1. Large Surface Ships Are Lucrative Targets

The Moskva, displacing 12,490 tons and bristling with air defense systems, was struck by two Neptune missiles—subsonic weapons far less sophisticated than Chinese or Russian hypersonic missiles. Despite its Raduga radar system and S-300F air defense missiles, the cruiser sank with significant loss of life. If Russia's premier air defense platform couldn't defend itself against 1980s-era missile technology, what hope do surface combatants have against Mach 6-10 hypersonic weapons?

2. Ports and Bases Are No Sanctuary

Ukraine repeatedly struck ships in Sevastopol harbor using Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles and naval drones. Ships in port—where the Golden Fleet concept envisions forward basing—proved even more vulnerable than ships at sea. The destruction of the landing ship Novocherkassk while docked demonstrated that even supposedly secure naval facilities offer little protection against modern precision weapons.

3. Asymmetric Weapons Dominate

Ukraine's most cost-effective weapon proved to be unmanned surface vessels—essentially modified speedboats packed with explosives and guided by satellite navigation. These $250,000 platforms successfully attacked and damaged vessels worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The economic exchange ratio is devastating: defenders must succeed every time; attackers need succeed only occasionally.

4. Air Defense Systems Have Fundamental Limits

Russian ships equipped with layered air defenses—from long-range S-300 systems to close-in weapon systems—repeatedly failed to intercept incoming threats. The problem isn't just Russian incompetence; it's physics. Multiple simultaneous threats, saturation attacks, and weapons arriving from different vectors overwhelm even sophisticated defensive systems. Adding more VLS cells to larger ships doesn't solve this problem—it just makes the target more valuable when defenses inevitably fail.

5. Distribution Matters

Russia's concentration of fleet assets in Sevastopol created a target-rich environment. Ships moored together, repair facilities, ammunition depots, and command centers all within range of Ukrainian weapons. The Golden Fleet concept's proposed forward-deployed posture would replicate this vulnerability in the Western Pacific, where Chinese land-based missiles could hold U.S. naval facilities at risk from Guam to Okinawa.

Implications for the Golden Fleet

The Black Sea offers several uncomfortable lessons for U.S. naval planning:

Bigger Is Not Better in Contested Waters: The Moskva was roughly 12,000 tons. The proposed Golden Fleet capital ships would be 15,000-20,000 tons—larger, more expensive, and equally vulnerable. Size doesn't equal survivability when facing precision weapons.

Traditional Naval Power Projection Fails Under Missile Threats: Russia couldn't conduct amphibious operations, couldn't maintain sea control, and ultimately couldn't keep its fleet in theater despite having a navy and Ukraine having none. This occurred in the Black Sea—a relatively confined body of water. Imagine similar dynamics in the vast Pacific, where Chinese missiles can range thousands of miles from the mainland.

Unmanned Systems Change the Calculus: Ukraine's naval drones cost a fraction of traditional weapons yet achieved strategic effects. They're expendable, scalable, and impose enormous costs on defenders. The U.S. should be building the naval equivalent of Ukraine's drone fleet, not replicating Russia's vulnerable surface combatants.

Forward Presence Becomes Forward Target Practice: Russia's Crimean bases, supposedly secure on home territory, became killing zones. U.S. bases in the Western Pacific would face similar challenges, but from a far more sophisticated adversary with vastly greater missile inventories.

The Lesson Naval Planners Don't Want to Hear

The Black Sea demonstrates that in contested waters dominated by land-based missiles, air-launched weapons, and swarms of inexpensive unmanned systems, traditional surface combatants—regardless of size, armor, or defensive systems—cannot survive in sufficient numbers to maintain sea control.

Russia entered the war with a capable, modern fleet featuring recently upgraded vessels. Two and a half years later, that fleet has been driven from its primary base, suffered catastrophic losses, and abandoned its primary mission of supporting ground operations. This occurred against an opponent without a navy, operating with exported missiles and improvised drones.

Now imagine the same scenario, but substitute China for Russia and the U.S. Navy for the Black Sea Fleet. China has the world's largest shipbuilding industry, produces hypersonic anti-ship missiles in quantity, fields a fleet of 370+ modern warships, and can mass-produce unmanned systems. The Western Pacific isn't the Black Sea—it's larger, farther from U.S. support, and closer to Chinese bases.

The Golden Fleet proposes sending large, expensive, manned surface combatants into precisely this environment. The Black Sea suggests how that story ends.

A Different Path

Ukraine didn't defeat the Black Sea Fleet by building a better navy—it did so by making naval operations prohibitively costly and risky. The U.S. should learn the right lesson: In contested waters, distributed, expendable, unmanned platforms carrying precision weapons offer better survivability and cost-effectiveness than expensive manned warships.

The choice is clear: Build a fleet designed for the last war's paradigm, or build a fleet informed by this war's reality. The wrecks at the bottom of the Black Sea suggest which approach works better.

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Note: The Black Sea Fleet's losses continue to mount through late 2025, with Russian naval operations in theater reduced to minimal levels. The strategic humiliation is complete: a major regional power with a capable navy has effectively lost command of the sea to a country without one.

Source List for "The Golden Fleet Mirage"

Primary Government Documents

1. U.S. Navy. Report to Congress on the Annual Long-Range Plan for Construction of Naval Vessels for Fiscal Year 2025. March 2024. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL32665

2. Congressional Budget Office. An Analysis of the Navy's 2025 Shipbuilding Plan. January 6, 2025. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60732

3. Congressional Budget Office. Testimony on the Navy's 2025 Shipbuilding Plan and Its Implications for the Shipbuilding Industrial Base. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61240

4. Congressional Research Service. "Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress." January 31, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RL32665

5. Congressional Research Service. "China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities—Background and Issues for Congress." April 24, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/05/01/report-to-congress-on-chinese-naval-modernization-21

6. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Shipbuilding and Repair: Navy Needs a Strategic Approach for Private Sector Industrial Base Investments. GAO-25-106286. February 27, 2025. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-106286

7. The White House. "Restoring America's Maritime Dominance Executive Order." April 10, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/restoring-americas-maritime-dominance/

8. Congressional Research Service. "Navy Constellation (FFG-62) Class Frigate Program: Background and Issues for Congress." https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R44972

9. Congressional Research Service. "Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles: Background and Issues for Congress." https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45757

10. Congressional Budget Office. "U.S. Hypersonic Weapons and Alternatives." https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58924

11. Congressional Research Service. "Hypersonic Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress." https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45811

News and Analysis - Golden Fleet Initiative

12. Army Recognition. "U.S. Navy eyes next-generation 'Golden Fleet' warships to rival China's growing maritime strength." October 24, 2025. https://www.armyrecognition.com

13. The Wall Street Journal. "Trump Pushes for 'Golden Fleet' of Navy Warships." October 24, 2025. [Referenced in Political Wire and multiple sources]

14. Political Wire. "Trump Pushes for 'Golden Fleet' of Navy Warships." October 24, 2025. https://politicalwire.com/2025/10/24/trump-pushes-for-golden-fleet-of-navy-warships/

15. Newsmax. "Trump, Navy Plan Golden Fleet to Counter China." October 24, 2025. https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-navy-golden-fleet/2025/10/24/id/1231769/

News and Analysis - Navy Shipbuilding

16. Eckstein, Megan. "Navy 30-year shipbuilding plan relies on more money, industry capacity." Defense News, March 20, 2024. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2024/03/20/navy-30-year-shipbuilding-plan-relies-on-more-money-industry-capacity/

17. Eckstein, Megan. "Navy shipbuilding plan would cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years." Defense News, January 8, 2025. https://www.defensenews.com/news/your-navy/2025/01/08/navy-shipbuilding-plan-would-cost-1-trillion-over-the-next-30-years/

18. U.S. Naval Institute News. "Navy Plan to Buy 85 New Ships Will Cost $1 Trillion, CBO Says." January 8, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/01/07/navy-plan-to-add-85-news-ships-will-cost-1-trillion-cbo-says

19. U.S. Naval Institute News. "CBO Analysis of U.S. Navy's Fiscal Year 2025 Shipbuilding Plan." January 7, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/01/07/cbo-analysis-of-u-s-navys-fiscal-year-2025-shipbuilding-plan

20. U.S. Naval Institute News. "Report to Congress on Navy Force Structure, Shipbuilding Plan." February 7, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/02/07/report-to-congress-on-navy-force-structure-shipbuilding-plan

21. U.S. Naval Institute News. "Report to Congress on Navy Force Structure, Shipbuilding Plans." November 1, 2024. https://news.usni.org/2024/11/01/report-to-congree-on-navy-force-structure-shipbuilding-plans

News and Analysis - Constellation-Class Frigate

22. Shelbourne, Mallory and Sam LaGrone. "Constellation Frigate Delivery Delayed 3 Years, Says Navy." USNI News, April 3, 2024. https://news.usni.org/2024/04/02/constellation-frigate-delivery-delayed-3-years-says-navy

23. Shelbourne, Mallory and Sam LaGrone. "First Constellation Frigate Delayed At Least a Year, Schedule Assessment 'Ongoing'." USNI News, January 11, 2024. https://news.usni.org/2024/01/11/first-constellation-frigate-delayed-at-least-a-year-schedule-assessment-ongoing

24. Altman, Howard. "First Constellation Frigate Only 10% Complete, Design Still Being Finalized." The War Zone, April 10, 2025. https://www.twz.com/sea/first-constellation-frigate-only-10-complete-design-still-being-finalized

25. "Time to Fix the Navy's Frigate Problem." Defense Opinion, May 9, 2025. https://defenseopinion.com/time-to-fix-the-navys-frigate-problem/884/

26. "Design Fiddling Stalls Constellation-class Frigate Program." Canadian Naval Review, May 2024. https://www.navalreview.ca/2024/05/design-fiddling-stalls-constellation-class-frigate-program/

27. "Time to Fix the Navy's Frigate Problem." Defense Daily, May 17, 2025. https://www.defensedaily.com/commentary/time-to-fix-the-navys-frigate-problem/

28. Gould, Joe. "Navy's New Constellation Class Frigate Is A Mess." The War Zone, May 31, 2024. https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-new-constellation-class-frigate-is-a-mess

29. Smith, Brendon. "Navy at 'tipping point' with Constellation-class frigate: Lawmakers." Breaking Defense, April 9, 2025. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/04/navy-at-tipping-point-with-constellation-class-frigate-lawmakers/

30. Wikipedia. "Constellation-class frigate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation-class_frigate

News and Analysis - China's Naval Modernization

31. 19FortyFive. "China's Massive Navy Simply Summed Up in 4 Words." May 9, 2025. https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/05/chinas-massive-navy-simply-summed-up-in-4-words/

32. U.S. Naval Institute News. "Pentagon: Chinese Navy to Expand to 400 Ships by 2025, Growth Focused on Surface Combatants." November 30, 2022. https://news.usni.org/2022/11/29/pentagon-chinese-navy-to-expand-to-400-ships-by-2025-growth-focused-on-surface-combatants

33. Naval News. "Pentagon assesses the PLA Navy's modernization and growing aggression." October 27, 2023. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/10/pentagon-assesses-the-pla-navys-modernization-and-growing-aggression/

34. Geopolitical Monitor. "China's PLA Navy: A Peer Competitor Emerges." October 2025. https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/backgrounder-chinas-pla-navy-comes-of-age/

35. American Enterprise Institute. "The U.S. Navy is Falling Behind China, and The Pentagon Knows It." October 31, 2023. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-u-s-navy-is-falling-behind-china-and-the-pentagon-knows-it/

36. Wikipedia. "People's Liberation Army Navy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Liberation_Army_Navy

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Articles

37. "The PLA Navy Comes of Age: Big Decks and More." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 151/5/1,467, May 2025. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/may/pla-navy-comes-age-big-decks-and-more

38. Dur, Edward J. "The High Costs of Doing (Shipbuilding) Business." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 151/2/1,464, February 2025. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/february/high-costs-doing-shipbuilding-business

39. "How Technological Innovation Is Key to Shipbuilding Capacity." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 151/6/1,468, June 2025. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2025/june/how-technological-innovation-key-shipbuilding-capacity

Additional Analysis and Commentary

40. RAND Corporation. "Reinvigorating Naval Shipbuilding: Meeting the President's Challenge." April 22, 2025. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/04/reinvigorating-naval-shipbuilding-meeting-the-presidents.html

41. Freling, Scott A., et al. "Renewed Effort to Support Commercial Shipbuilding Capacity and the Domestic Maritime Industry." Inside Government Contracts, April 14, 2025. https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2025/04/renewed-effort-to-support-commercial-shipbuilding-capacity-and-the-domestic-maritime-industry/

42. Independent Institute. "Is the U.S. Shipbuilding Capacity in Crisis?" June 18, 2025. https://www.independent.org/article/2025/06/18/shipbuilding-capacity-crisis/

Hypersonic Weapons and Anti-Ship Missiles

43. The War Zone. "Navy's HALO Hypersonic Anti-Ship Missile Planned For Ships, Submarines, As Well As Jets." June 5, 2024. https://www.twz.com/air/navys-halo-hypersonic-anti-ship-missile-planned-for-ships-submarines-as-well-as-jets

44. Gould, Joe. "Navy Axes Its Hypersonic Anti-Ship Cruise Missile Plans." The War Zone, April 11, 2025. https://www.twz.com/air/navy-axes-its-hypersonic-anti-ship-cruise-missile-plans

45. Atlantic Council. "A vision for US hypersonic weapons." August 19, 2025. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/a-vision-for-us-hypersonic-weapons/

46. Army Recognition. "Flash News: U.S. Navy Successfully Tests Hypersonic Missile for Future Deployment on Zumwalt-Class Vessel." 2025. https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/navy-news/2025/flash-news-u-s-navy-successfully-tests-hypersonic-missile-for-future-deployment-on-zumwalt-class-vessel

47. The War Zone. "Venezuela's Supersonic Anti-Ship Missiles Are A Real Threat To American Warships." October 2025. https://www.twz.com/sea/venezuelas-supersonic-anti-ship-missiles-are-a-real-threat-to-american-warships

48. Military Aerospace. "Navy to approach industry by end of the year for carrier-based hypersonic anti-ship missiles for combat jets." September 2023. https://www.militaryaerospace.com/sensors/article/14300395/hypersonic-carrier-based-anti-ship

49. Wikipedia. "Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive Anti-Surface." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_Air_Launched_Offensive_Anti-Surface

50. Wikipedia. "YJ-21." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YJ-21

Unmanned Surface Vessels

51. DARPA. "DARPA christens unmanned ship aimed at revolutionizing naval capability." August 11, 2025. https://www.darpa.mil/news/2025/nomars-christening

52. USNI News. "Report to Congress on Navy Large Unmanned Surface and Undersea Vehicles." March 27, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/03/27/report-to-congresson-navy-large-unmanned-surface-and-undersea-vehicles

53. Department of Defense. "Unmanned Surface Vessel Squadron 7 Established!" April 25, 2025. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/496228/unmanned-surface-vessel-squadron-7-established

54. Pomerleau, Mark. "DARPA christens USX-1 Defiant autonomous ship ahead of at-sea demonstrations." DefenseScoop, August 14, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/08/12/darpa-defiant-usv-navy-unmanned-surface-vessel-nomars-plans/

55. DefenseScoop. "Navy issues new RFI for large unmanned surface vessel." November 6, 2023. https://defensescoop.com/2023/11/06/navy-issues-new-rfi-for-large-unmanned-surface-vessel/

56. LaGrone, Sam. "CNO: Navy to Finalize Large Unmanned Surface Vessel Requirements Later This Year." USNI News, April 5, 2023. https://news.usni.org/2023/04/05/cno-navy-to-finalize-large-unmanned-surface-vessel-requirements-later-this-year

57. Pomerleau, Mark. "Navy to brief industry on plans for new robotic ship program." DefenseScoop, May 19, 2025. https://defensescoop.com/2025/05/19/navy-future-usv-program-industry-day/

58. LaGrone, Sam. "Navy Moving Away from 'Optionally Manned' Vessels as Service Mulls Unmanned Future." USNI News, August 15, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/08/15/navy-moving-away-from-optionally-manned-vessels-as-service-mulls-unmanned-future

59. Shelbourne, Mallory and Sam LaGrone. "Navy Wraps First Unmanned Surface Deployment to WESTPAC." USNI News, January 17, 2024. https://news.usni.org/2024/01/16/navy-wraps-first-unmanned-surface-deployment-to-westpac

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Total Sources: 59

Note: Some sources referenced in multiple news outlets (particularly The Wall Street Journal's original Golden Fleet reporting) are cited through secondary sources as the primary WSJ article may be behind a paywall.