The US Navy has confirmed that its planned Trump-class guided-missile battleship, whose lead ship would be USS Defiant, will be nuclear-powered. The propulsion decision could place additional pressure on US aircraft-carrier construction and the naval nuclear industrial base, with potential second-order implications for AUKUS and the submarine programmes of Australia and Britain, Navy Lookout reports.
When BBG(X) was unveiled at the end of 2025, the Navy’s initial concept depicted conventional integrated electric propulsion using gas turbines and diesel generators. The FY2027 thirty-year shipbuilding plan subsequently confirmed that the battleship would be nuclear-powered, while Navy officials told Congress that it was expected to use the A1B reactor type fitted to the Ford-class carriers.
There is an operational logic to the decision. A large combatant intended to carry extensive missile batteries, high-output lasers, powerful sensors, electronic-warfare equipment and future energy-intensive weapons will require considerable generating capacity. Nuclear power also removes the fuel constraint that would otherwise limit a ship expected to operate across the distances of the Indo-Pacific, and it would make the Defiant-class the first American nuclear-powered surface combatant since the last of the Virginia-class cruisers paid off in the 1990s.
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