I

Typically, sitting US presidents do not host a special news conference concerning naval procurement. Trump bucked this trend on December 22, 2025, by announcing the creation of a “Golden Fleet” of “Trump-class battleships,” of which two initially, then twenty to twenty-five over time, would be built.^[1] Built by whom? That is still officially unanswered.^[2]

Initially, under then-Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, the “first iteration” battleships were intended to be conventionally powered, meaning non-nuclear propulsion.^[3] However, in a March 25, 2026 special report, The Heritage Foundation critiqued non-nuclear propulsion, stating that the battleship concept should use Ford-class aircraft carrier nuclear power plants.^[4] Trump promptly fired Phelan on April 23, in part, because Phelan “was moving too slowly on shipbuilding reforms Trump personally wanted.”^[5] Phelan’s acting replacement, two-time electoral loser from Virginia Hung Cao,^[6] re-designated the formerly named BBG(X) program as BBGN, meaning the battleship concept was now going to be nuclear.^[7]

Why does the engine on a hypothetical Trump vanity project matter? Because the US has only one shipyard capable of building nuclear surface ships: Huntington Ingalls Industries’ (NYSE: HII) Newport News in Virginia, across Hampton Roads from the Norfolk Naval Yard. Paired with Trump’s statements during the December 2025 press conference that “The construction will create thousands of American jobs. We’re going to have the jobs be created,”^[8] the intent is obvious: pork barrel spending in Virginia.

One especially odd nuance concerning the BBGN concept is the use of “best practices from foreign partners with advanced shipbuilding techniques,”^[9] potentially meaning outsourcing hull structure fabrication to non-US-owned shipyards. Ignoring for the moment that hull design is classified and export-controlled, why would the US Navy want foreign shipyards touching any part of a highly important nuclear surface ship procurement? Simple, South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Ocean (042660.KS) would build hull components in Philadelphia,^[10] then float them on barges to Newport News (“using precision modular construction methods”).^[9] Building and shipping components of a ship is already the norm in submarine construction, for instance. General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) Electric Boat (“EB”) builds submarines in rings that the main yard in Groton assembles; think of cut-up pieces of sausage being welded into a whole. EB in Groton, Connecticut receives components via barge from its own Quonset Point facility, as well as from (and sends to) subcontractors like HII’s Newport News.^[11]

But why would the US Navy involve Hanwha Ocean at all? HII owns other shipyards beyond the massively backlogged Newport News,^[12] as does GD. The answer to this question is simple: South Korea pledged a mind-boggling $350 billion in investment in the US in response to Trump’s tariff trade wars.^[13] Thus, like sending the BBGN concept by default to Newport News by making it nuclear, involving the Philadelphia shipyard Hanwha owns is, again, a jobs creation program. Combined, even if the project never gets off the ground (“front loading production engineering to ensure high design maturity before construction begins,”^[14]), Pennsylvania and Virginia receive money. As anyone who watches US elections knows, those two states are key electoral battlegrounds. Likewise, because of the thousands of skilled labor jobs involved in shipbuilding, large naval prime contracts become massive catchments for labor across states, and indeed, HII is already Virginia’s and Mississippi’s largest industrial employer.^[15]

I worked at EB from 2022 to 2024 and am originally from Rhode Island, one of EB’s main recruiting grounds, especially for Quonset Point, which is in the state. Indeed, many people I know from high school work at EB. My team at EB negotiated the advertising contract with Providence’s Pride. Billboards and ads on buses for EB are very prominent in Rhode Island—I even saw some in Philadelphia, where EB has a smaller facility. One shipyard in one state will pull workers from across a region for jobs as widespread as welders, pipe fitters, carpenters, firefighters, doctors, attorneys, security, writers, and all manner of engineers.^[16]

II

With the facts of BBGN now established, I turn now to the concept of “Bonapartism.”^[17] Bonapartism is a personalist regime where the bourgeoisie and military-industrial complex hoist the executive above class struggle and legislative power, with reactionary smallholders as base.^[18] Lenin (after Marx and Engels) expanded on Marx’s smallholding “potatoes in a sack,”^[19] by theorizing the concept of the “labor aristocracy,”^[20] naming it as such in his July 6, 1920 preface to the French and German editions of Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.^[21] BBGN, when viewed through these two texts, embodies Bonapartism.

American nuclear shipbuilding is linked to one man: four-star Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Rickover centralized naval nuclear reactor development and shipbuilding beginning in 1949, when, then as a captain, he received control of the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission.^[22] Rickover ran Naval Reactors like a petty, corrupt, vain “gnome” until his forced retirement in 1982.^[23] Rickover went so far as to reach across the Portsmouth Naval Yard’s rear admiral’s desk to call EB and ask if they could build nuclear submarines when the rear admiral refused to give Rickover control over Portsmouth workers.^[24] Rickover began working with Newport News in 1956, and continued doing so until the relationship between him and the yard poisoned around 1978.^[25] By 1974, nuclear naval shipbuilding centralized into a duopoly: Newport News building surface ships, EB building ballistic missile submarines, and the two yards splitting attack submarines fifty/fifty, usually. Thus, Rickover privatized nuclear naval shipbuilding by taking it away from government shipyards like Portsmouth and Mare Island and highly influencing contract awards to the Newport News and EB duopoly.

In Imperialism, Lenin examined the role of monopolies in the development of imperialism.^[26] Viewed together with his discussion of the labor aristocracy,^[27] the logic is straightforward: the bourgeoisie incentivizes the “upper strata” of skilled labor who work in monopolistic industries via profits gained through imperial extraction and markets. Nuclear warships are a hilarious perfection of this model: the ship, by itself, does nothing besides lower shipping insurance rates.^[28] The ship merely consumes everything, including, but obviously not limited to, toilet paper, candy bars, torpedoes, Trident ballistic missiles, and propeller units. The steel (itself an alloy), uranium, and supplies for the crew all have neocolonial supply chains. BBGN will also be designed with “AI-enabled design tools,” in line with Trump’s AI-philia.^[29]

But how does shipbuilding by itself exemplify Bonapartism? Earlier, I mentioned how the support base of Bonapartism is the reactionary smallholder. The voters who today work in the military-industrial complex—and the diversity therein is growing with the industry, combined with layoffs in other industries—are some of the inheritors of Marx’s potatoes in a sack.

Many shipyard workers are unionized by sector. For instance, in 2025, when DHHS was experiencing chaos related to RFK Jr.—I had by then moved on to GDIT from EB—I received and declined a job offer to go back to EB as a technical writer. The job was union. Many people in the department were EB lifers. These tech writers, from a Marxist perspective, internalized bourgeois values.^[30] They were not interested in political activism, but rather, only job security. Indeed, that specific union, UAW Local 571, authorized a strike in April 2025, with a slogan of “TICK TOCK: It’s time for a record contract.”^[31] One worker went on record by saying that they wanted “A little bit of profit sharing for a company that makes a metric ton of money.”^[32] Likewise, Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney stated, “We need to improve wages and the benefit structure of people who work in shipyards.”^[33] No strike occurred, and UAW Local 571 members received 30% wage increases and “a cumulative $115,000 per-member increase in total compensation during the agreement.”^[34] Thus, the bourgeoisie creates perverse incentives for workers not to “do a good job,” but keep the stock price up to get paid more.

So, when Trump announced the BBGN program and that it would create jobs, he wasn’t lying. The Navy’s May 2026 Shipbuilding Plan stated an additional allocation of $7.6 billion for Fiscal Year 2027 (in part to kickstart BBGN) and $77.8 billion through FY2031.^[35] Between May 11, when the Navy released its Shipbuilding Plan, and May 14, HII’s stock rose about 6.04% from $317.75 to $336.95, when defense as a sector was in decline.^[36] In contrast, the S&P500 broad market ETF SPY only rose about a mere 1.20% those days.

Thus, Bonapartist regimes secure the loyalty of all three of their main supporters through shipbuilding, especially under the duopolistic US nuclear model. The bourgeoisie receives a sugar rush of equities surging, which can be leveraged through further loans, and then developed into whole conglomerates like GD, which grew out of EB after the Second World War.^[37] The Navy (well, in theory, as I’ll discuss below) gets new ships. The workers get paid, insured, and matched in their 401(k)s. No one in that trifecta has the impetus to rock the boat.

III

Generally, navies stopped procuring battleships by the end of the Second World War because battleships have the radar, sonar, sight, and sound signature of a small hill or ridgeline moving by means of industrial engines strapped via driveshaft to giant steel propellers. In simple terms, battleships are massive targets. The battleship has three main enemies: airplanes, submarines, and land-based anti-ship fortifications and missiles.

The canonical and most famous example of “why do battleships no longer rule the waves” is the 1941 sinkings of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by the Japanese.^[38] The two battleships sailed to launch a surprise attack on Japanese landings on the Malay Peninsula without aircraft carrier support.^[39] Contrary to British plans, after locating the battleships, the Japanese hit Prince of Wales and Repulse each with multiple bombs and torpedoes; in comparison, the Japanese lost four planes.^[40]

In both World Wars, submarines sank battleships, such as HMS Formidable (1898), HMS Royal Oak (08), and IJN Kongō. Indeed, the first-ever definitive submarine attack, by the American Revolutionary War submersible Turtle, occurred against the HMS Eagle (1774), the British flagship in New York harbor. Likewise, the opposite bookends of history are informative. The most recent, confirmed submarine attacks are HMS Conqueror (S48)’s sinking of the ARA General Belgrano during the Falklands War,^[41] and the USS Charlotte (SSN-766)’s sinking of the IRIS Dena during the 2026 US-Iran war.^[42]

Land-based defenses and thus missiles, however, are the main deterrent against large capital ships approaching coastlines in contemporary warfare. The Second World War analogue to this was the 1940 sinking of the KMS Blücher battlecruiser by the Oscarsborg Fortress during Operation Weserübung Nord, the German invasion of Norway.^[43] Today, however, those following the Ukraine War are likely well aware of how anti-ship missiles have kept the Russian Black Sea Fleet stuck in port, especially the sinking of the flagship Moskva.^[44]

If the battleship is vulnerable to attacks from the land, sea, and air, what is the purpose of BBGN, then? Per the May 2026 Shipbuilding Plan, BBGN would provide a command-and-control function, deploy nuclear weapons, and keep “open choke points on critical sea lines of communication that would otherwise require a wider commitment of assets from the fleet.”^[45] Translated from Pentagon-speak, BBGN would be a contemporary “gunboat,” albeit with nukes.

Looking at Trump’s three 2026 major naval deployments—wars—concerning Venezuela, Iran, and potentially Cuba, BBGN would be internally consistent. Deploy a BBGN-led flotilla in a neocolonial area of intended imperial extraction, launch missiles, and never face the three main threats posed to the battleship. The main issue, however, is that this premise fails when considering any opponent with significant anti-ship missiles, which is to say, China.

Broadly speaking, China possesses (they likely would never want OSINT writers like me to know how many) an array of anti-ship missiles and ASBMs that could hit an incoming naval flotilla at a distance of a few hundred to potentially a few thousand kilometers away.^[46] One may logically assume a “hedgehog” defense: the closer to the shoreline, the denser the missile barrier. China,^[47] as well as Taiwan,^[48] also possess drones with anti-ship capabilities.

Whether or not BBGN could survive an anti-ship missile or drone attack is largely a moot question now because the ships are not even at the point where the Navy can ask a shipyard—presumably Newport News—to put together a quote or proposal concerning construction. Indeed, history shows that when screened properly with lighter ships such as frigates, destroyers, and light cruisers, as well as air and submarine support, generally, capital ships survive contact with the enemy. For all the battleships sunk in history, many more survived to be scrapped.

However, returning to “who will build it?”, if Newport News receives the contract, then, curiously, BBGN could be Newport News’s analogue to EB’s monopoly on ballistic missile submarines. Objectively, a nuclear surface vessel carrying nuclear weapons is a horrible thing to throw at a “choke point” like GIUK, the Caribbean and Panama Canal, the Straits of Hormuz, the Bab al-Mandab, or the Taiwan Straits. But again, if the intent is less about constructing the ships, and more about securing a Bonapartist grip on power, then BBGN would deliver in spades.

American naval procurement since the Dissolution of the Soviet Union has been notoriously bad at delivering ships. Programs like Seawolf, Zumwalt, CG(X), DDG(X), and FFG(X) have all either been cancelled outright or severely curtailed. Looking especially at Seawolf, Zumwalt, and FFG(X), once a program becomes truncated by finishing the first few ships in a class but cancelling the remainder, the economies of scale explode. Consider how much US taxpayers paid to build these ships, then cancel the programs^{[49][50][51][52]}:

“Front loading production engineering,”^[53] indeed. What has been said thus far about BBGN is entirely consistent with a program that will probably share a fate like those cancelled or truncated ones above: a tiny initial build with a massive, proposed backlog that gets cut.^[54] Considering that a Heritage Foundation paper may have led to the change from non-nuclear to nuclear propulsion (without any indication as to what analysis The Heritage Foundation did to test whether a Ford nuclear reactor would work in a battleship), the project will likely die. Not after, of course, billions of dollars go to Trump’s donor class, the Navy, and shipyard workers—who will be laid off in droves once a prime contract ends, unless the contract is replaced.

IV

Whether or not BBGN comes to be as a legitimate naval procurement depends on factors wholly beyond its potential capability as a “battleship,” let alone a nuclear one. A project so personally attached to one politician—a sitting president, no less—would be ideal to cut during an administration handover. However, as readers of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire know, history appears twice: first as tragedy, then as farce. Bonapartist regimes do not leave quietly.

1. Matthew Olay, "Trump Announces New Class of Battleship," U.S. Department of War, December 22, 2025, https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4366952/trump-announces-new-class-of-battleship/.

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2. U.S. Department of the Navy, U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Navy, May 2026), 20–22.

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3. Brent D. Sadler, To Build the Golden Fleet, Special Report No. 328 (Washington, DC: The Heritage Foundation, March 25, 2026), 6, https://report.heritage.org/sr328.

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4. Ibid.

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5. Joseph Gedeon and Hugo Lowell, "Trump’s navy secretary ousted over dispute about shipbuilding," The Guardian, April 23, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/23/john-phelan-trump-navy-secretary-firing.

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6. "Hung Cao, the former refugee who is Trump’s new acting navy secretary," The Guardian, April 23, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/23/hung-cao-new-navy-secretary.

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7. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 14, 16, 20–22, 37.

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8. Olay, "Trump Announces New Class of Battleship."

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9. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 22, 37.

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10. Hui Jie Lim, "Hanwha Ocean shares jump 10% after Trump says South Korean firm to build warships for U.S. Navy," CNBC, December 23, 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/23/hanwha-ocean-shares-jump-10percent-after-trump-says-firm-to-build-warships-for-us-navy.html.

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11. "Electric Boat, Quonset Point Facility," General Dynamics Electric Boat, accessed June 14, 2026, https://www.gdeb.com/about/locations/quonset/.

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12. Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc., Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2025 (filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, February 5, 2026), 45–46.

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13. Lim, "Hanwha Ocean shares jump 10%."

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14. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 22.

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15. "HII Launching New 'Build It: In America, For America' Ads Celebrating U.S.-Based Manufacturing Work and Workforce," HII, April 30, 2025, https://www.hii.com/news/hii-launching-new-build-it-in-america-for-america-ads-celebrating-u-s-based-manufacturing-work-and-workforce.

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16. "Mission," Build Submarines, accessed June 14, 2026, https://www.buildsubmarines.com/mission.

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17. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963).

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18. Ibid, 118–25.

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19. Ibid, 124.

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20. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973), 127–30.

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21. Lenin, Imperialism, 9–10.

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22. Naval Reactors, "History of Naval Reactors," accessed June 14, 2026, https://www.nr-ha.org/history.

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23. Roger Franklin, The Defender: The Story of General Dynamics (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 276–77, 295–97, 321, 333–34.

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24. Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 146–47.

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25. Ibid, 255, 397–98, 501–10.

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26. Lenin, Imperialism, 12–30.

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27. Ibid, 9–10, 127–30.

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28. Sam Meredith, "Iran: Oil Supertanker Rates Soar as Insurers Drop War Risk Protection," CNBC, March 3, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/03/middle-east-crisis-iran-us-shipping-oil-tankers-strait-of-hormuz.html.

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29. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 22.

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30. Lenin, Imperialism, 129.

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31. Matt Grahn, "Marine Draftsmen's Association at Electric Boat approves strike authorization: What it means," Norwich Bulletin, April 15, 2025, https://eu.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/local/2025/04/15/uaw-local-571-marine-draftsmens-association-authorizes-strike-against-electric-boat/83091679007/.

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32. Luke Hajdasz, "Strike possible as contract negotiations between UAW and General Dynamics rage on," WFSB, April 15, 2025, https://www.wfsb.com/2025/04/15/strike-possible-contract-negotiations-between-uaw-general-dynamics-rage/.

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33. Ibid.

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34. Matt Grahn, "'We finally stood up': Marine Draftsmen's Association accepts Electric Boat contract," Norwich Bulletin, May 28, 2025, https://eu.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/local/2025/05/28/electric-boat-marine-draftsmen-association-accepts-contract-connecticut-union/83899467007/.

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35. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 16.

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36. Martin Gamble, "Why are shares in defence companies under pressure?," AJ Bell, April 29, 2026, https://www.ajbell.co.uk/news/why-are-shares-defence-companies-under-pressure.

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37. Franklin, The Defender, 126–27.

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38. "Fact File: HMS 'Prince of Wales' and HMS 'Repulse' Sunk," WW2 People's War, BBC, accessed June 15, 2026, https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a1152299.shtml.

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39. Ibid.

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40. Ibid.

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41. "On This Day: Belgrano Sunk off the Falklands," The Scotsman, May 2, 2014, https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/on-this-day-belgrano-sunk-off-the-falklands-1538206.

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42. Simon Tisdall, "‘Bit of treachery’: US attack on IRIS Dena undermines Indian security ties," The Guardian, March 15, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/15/us-attack-iris-dena-undermines-indian-security-ties-iran.

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43. Geirr H. Haarr and Tor Jørgen Melien, The Sinking of the Blücher: The Battle of Drøbak Narrows, April 1940 (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Greenhill Books, 2023).

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44. Luke Harding, Pjotr Sauer, Julian Borger, and Jessica Elgot, "Russia’s Moskva Cruiser Sinks Following Ukrainian Claim of Missile Strike," The Guardian, April 14, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/14/russia-moskva-cruiser-sunk-stormy-seas-defense-ministry.

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45. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 21.

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46. Aaron-Matthew Lariosa, "Chinese Forces Fielding Intercontinental Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles Capable of Reaching U.S. West Coast, Pentagon Says," USNI News, December 26, 2025, https://news.usni.org/2025/12/26/chinese-forces-fielding-intercontinental-anti-ship-ballistic-missiles-capable-of-reaching-u-s-west-coast-pentagon-says.

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47. Alex Luck, "Chinese Military Parade Details New Naval Missiles, Drones," Naval News, September 4, 2025, https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/09/chinese-military-parade-highlights-naval-drones-and-missiles/.

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48. Aaron-Matthew Lariosa, "Taiwanese Forces Deploy American-made Attack Drones against Maritime Targets," USNI News, June 10, 2026, https://news.usni.org/2026/06/10/taiwanese-forces-deploy-american-made-attack-drones-against-maritime-targets.

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49. United States General Accounting Office, Navy Ships: Problems Continue to Plague the Seawolf Submarine Program, GAO/NSIAD-93-171 (Washington, DC: United States General Accounting Office, 1993), 3.

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50. Don Vaughan, "Seawolf-class submarine," Encyclopedia Britannica, January 10, 2025, https://www.britannica.com/technology/Seawolf-class-submarine.

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51. Ryan Caldwell, "The Zumwalt Destroyer: The Most Advanced Warship That Couldn't Find a Mission," Military Machine, April 5, 2026, https://militarymachine.com/zumwalt-destroyer-failed-mission-analysis.

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52. Geoff Ziezulewicz, "Cost of Navy's Newest Flight III Arleigh Burke Destroyers Is Ballooning," The War Zone, January 8, 2025, https://www.twz.com/news-features/cost-of-navys-newest-flight-iii-arleigh-burke-destroyers-is-ballooning.

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53. U.S. Navy Shipbuilding Plan, May 2026, 21.

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54. Olay, "Trump Announces New Class of Battleship."

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