Construction

WASHINGTON — The White House said it was not feasible to save the East Wing because of structural and other concerns as officials shared details of President Trump’s planned ballroom at Thursday’s meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission.

Josh Fisher, director of the White House Office of Administration, ticked off issues including an unstable colonnade, water leakage and mold contamination in explaining why it was more economical to tear down the East Wing to make room for the $400-million ballroom than to renovate it.

“Because of this and other factors, the cost analysis proved that demolition and reconstruction provided the lowest total cost ownership and most effective long-term strategy,” Fisher said.

Will Scharf, a top White House aide whom Trump tapped to head the commission, opened the meeting by noting “passionate comments on both sides” of the ballroom project but adding that public comment wouldn’t be part of Thursday’s session.

“I view today’s presentation really as the start of a process as the ballroom moves through the overall NCPC process,” Scharf said, adding that his objective is for the commission to play a “productive role” as ballroom construction moves ahead.

In December, the White House submitted its ballroom plans to the commission, which is one of two federal panels that review construction on federal land — usually before ground is broken. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued to halt construction, accusing the Trump administration of violating federal laws by proceeding before submitting the project for the independent reviews, congressional approval and public comment.

The first step in the review process for the East Wing Modernization Project was Thursday’s information presentation, during which commissioners could ask questions and offer general feedback. A more formal review is expected in the spring — including public testimony and votes.

A summary on the commission’s website said the purpose of the project is to “establish a permanent, secure event space within the White House grounds” that provides increased capacity for official state functions, eliminates reliance on temporary tents and support facilities, and “protects the historic integrity and cultural landscape of the White House and its grounds.”

A comprehensive design plan for the White House prepared in 2000 identified the “need for expanded event space to address growing visitor demand and provide a venue suitable for significant events,” the summary said. It added that successive administrations had “recognized this need as an ongoing priority.”

The 12-member National Capital Planning Commission is led by Scharf. He said at the commission’s December meeting that the review process would be treated seriously and be conducted at a “normal and deliberative pace.”

Carol Quillen, president of the trust, told the Associated Press in a recent interview that she takes Scharf “at his word” that the commission will do its job.

Trump, a Republican serving his second term, has been talking about building a White House ballroom for years. In July, the White House announced a 90,000-square-foot space would be built on the east side of the complex to accommodate 650 seated guests at a then-estimated cost of $200 million. Trump has said it will be paid for with private donations, including from him.

He later upped the ballroom’s capacity to 999 people and, by October, had demolished the two-story East Wing. In December, he updated the price tag to $400 million.

The White House has announced few other details about the project but has said it would be completed before Trump’s term ends in January 2029. Trump has said the ballroom will be big enough for future presidential inaugurations to be held there. He also said it will have bulletproof glass and a drone-free roof.

While in Florida last week, the president bought marble and onyx for the ballroom “at his own expense,” the White House said. The cost was not disclosed.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

Fourteen countries, including France, Britain, Canada, Germany and Japan, condemned on Wednesday Israel’s recent decision to approve new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. They called on the Israeli government to reverse the decision and to stop expanding settlements. 

In a joint statement published by the French Foreign Ministry, the countries said: “We, States of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom condemn the approval by the Israeli security cabinet of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank.”      

The statement added: “We recall our clear opposition to any form of annexation and to the expansion of settlement policies.”   

Earlier, the Israeli government’s security cabinet approved the establishment of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. This brings the total number of settlements approved over the past three years to 69.

READ: Shtayyeh: Settler population in West Bank and Jerusalem hits 881,000

The U.S. Navy has confirmed to TWZ that construction of the first two Trump class “battleships” is not expected to start until the early 2030s. While cost estimates are still being firmed up, the service is moving now to award sole-source contracts to Bath Iron Works, Huntington Ingalls Industries, and Gibbs & Cox for initial design and other work related to these large surface combatants. Readers can first get up to speed on what is already known about the plans for these ships and the glaring questions surrounding them in our initial reporting here.

President Donald Trump officially rolled out the Trump class warship plan at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, last night. With displacements of at least around 35,000 tons, the vessels are set to be armed with an array of nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as electromagnetic railguns, traditional 5-inch naval guns, laser directed energy weapons, and more. Production is supposed to start with two ships, the first of which will be named USS Defiant, out of a planned initial batch of 10 hulls. Trump has said that the total fleet size might eventually grow to 20 to 25 examples.

“Design efforts are underway with start of construction planned for the early 2030s,” a U.S. Navy official told TWZ. “Design studies are ongoing to refine Navy cost estimates. These details will be available in the PB FY27 [President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2027] budget request.”

Another individual familiar with the program also told TWZ that work to build the first Trump class ships is not expected to begin until the early 2030s. They also told us that the new “battleship” plan is supplanting the Navy’s DDG(X) next-generation destroyer effort, and will leverage work already done on that design concept.

“We’re going to start almost immediately, and we’re probably talking about two and a half years,” Trump had said at yesterday’s rollout when asked to give a timeline for work on the first two Trump class ships. However, it is unclear what part of the process he might have been referring to. TWZ has reached out to the White House for more information.

As already noted, the Navy did put out two contracting notices regarding what is also referred to as the BBG(X) guided missile battleship program following the rollout last night.

“Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) intends to contract on a sole source basis with General Dynamics Bath Irons [sic] Works Corporation (BIW) and Huntington Ingalls Industries-Ingalls Shipbuilding (HII Ingalls) for BBG(X) guided missile battleship design, engineering, and design analysis requirements. This includes shipbuilder engineering and design analysis necessary to produce BBG(X) design products in support of Navy-led design for BBG(X), including Preliminary Design (PD) and Contract Design (CD),” one of the notices says. “BIW and HII Ingalls will assist the Government design team in maturing a total ship design through a rigorous systems engineering process, including, but not limited to, pre­planned reviews such as System Functional Review (SFR) and Preliminary Design Review (PDR). The estimated period of performance for these efforts is 72 months.”

In addition, NAVSEA “intends to contract on a sole source basis with Leidos Gibbs & Cox for surface combatant ship design engineering (SC SDE) efforts to support future Navy surface combatants. As part of these efforts, Leidos Gibbs & Cox will primarily execute design activity in support of Preliminary Design (PD), Contract Design (CD), and other design efforts needed to support the BBG(X) guided missile battleship program,” per the other notice. “As the SC SDE contractor, Leidos Gibbs & Cox will serve as an extension of the Government’s ship design team, delivering specialized expertise in early-stage design analysis and requirements definition. This early design phase support is crucial for ensuring the feasibility, affordability, and performance of the ship design prior to detail design and construction. The estimated period of performance for this contract is 72 months.”

For reference, 72 months is six years. If that timeline were to start next month, the period of performance would run into 2032. This aligns directly with the expected start of actual construction in the early 2030s.

“We are committed to continue our work with the Navy and our industry partners to expand the Navy’s Fleet,” an HII spokesperson told TWZ when asked for more information. “We maintain a full range of engineering and design capabilities and are looking forward to providing the benefit of their experience and expertise to this effort, building on the work done to date in support of the DDG(X). We respectfully defer to Navy on the selection criteria and any details on requirements.”

“We are proud to have built the Navy’s most technologically advanced surface combatants and our shipbuilders are committed to continuing that work in lock step with the Navy to expand their Fleet,” Chris Kastner, President and CEO of HII, had also told TWZ in a statement yesterday. “We understand the urgency and have taken a number of actions to increase the speed at which we can deliver. We have seen improvements in our labor and throughput and expect these to continue in 2026. These efforts combined with our distributed shipbuilding network are working, and more capacity is being created to meet these critical requirements.”

Bath Iron Works also deferred to the Navy when asked for more details.

“General Dynamics Bath Iron Works stands ready to fully support the Navy in the design and construction of this important new shipbuilding program,” Charles Krugh, President of Bath Iron Works, had separately said in a statement to USNI News yesterday.

TWZ has also reached out to Gibbs & Cox for more details.

It’s also interesting to note here that 2032 was when the Navy originally hoped to see construction of new DDG(X) destroyers begin. As of January of this year, that timeline had been pushed back to 2034 at the earliest.

With BBG(X) still in the very early design phase, the U.S. Navy official also told TWZ that there is currently no timeline for when the future USS Defiant will actually be launched. It would then take some amount of time after that to complete the vessel’s construction, conduct initial sea trials, and then commission it into service.

In the meantime, NAVSEA has shared some additional details about the expected capabilities of the Trump class warships. As it stands now, the vessels are set to be between 840 and 880 feet long, have a beam (the widest point in the hull) between 105 and 115 feet, displace at least 35,000 tons, and be able to reach a top speed greater than 30 knots.

For comparison, the Navy’s newest Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyers and its Ticonderoga class cruisers have stated displacements of 10,864 tons and 10,752 tons, respectively, with full combat loads. Both of those ships are also hundreds of feet shorter and dozens of feet narrower than the planned BBG(X).

The Navy’s last true battleships, the four members of the Iowa class that were built during World War II and served for decades afterwards, had full combat displacements of around 57,540 tons and were nearly 888 feet long. Those ships were also extremely heavily armored and at times had as many as 2,700 personnel on board.

The Trump class ships will have a flight deck and hangar at the stern large enough to accommodate a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, as well as any aircraft developed in response to the Navy’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) requirements. Renderings already released have also depicted a Seahawk helicopter embarked on the ship.

The BBG(X) design will feature 128 Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells spread across two separate arrays, one at the bow and another at the stern. Nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, or SLCM-Ns, will be among the munitions loaded into those cells. The total number of Mk 41 cells is notably low for a ship of this size. As additional points of comparison, the Navy’s Flight IIA and Flight III Arleigh Burke class destroyers both have 96 Mk 41 VLS cells, while there are 122 on its Ticonderoga class cruisers.

There will also be a separate 12-cell VLS at the bow for Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike (IRCPS) hypersonic missiles. This is the same number of IRCPS missiles the Navy’s Zumwalt class stealth destroyers are set to carry in the future.

The ship’s main gun armament will consist of a 32-megajoule electromagnetic railgun along with two 5-inch naval guns. How the Navy will source the railgun is unclear. The service halted its most recent work on naval railguns, at least publicly, in the early 2020s.

The vessels will have four Mk 38 weapon systems armed with 30mm automatic cannons and two launchers for RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles (RAM) for close-in defense. Two unspecified dedicated counter-drone systems will be part of the armament package on the ships, as well.

The BBG(X) plans call for two laser directed energy weapons in the 300 to 600 kilowatt power range, as well as four lower-powered AN/SEQ-4 Optical Dazzling Interdictors (ODIN). As its name indicates, ODIN is a laser ‘dazzler’ designed primarily to blind adversarial optics, including optical seekers on incoming missiles or drones, rather than cause any kind of physical damage.

In terms of other systems, NAVSEA says the BBG(X)s will feature an AN/SPY-6(V)1 Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), an AN/SLQ-32(V)7 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program (SEWIP) Block III electronic warfare suite, and an extensive array of command and control capabilities. Between 650 and 850 personnel are expected to be necessary to crew the BBG(X)s, far more than the standard complement found on any existing Navy destroyers or cruisers.

“Like the initial DDG(X) concept, Defiant would use gas turbines and diesels to drive an electrical grid that would supply power to the ship’s weapon systems and sensors, according to the Navy data,” USNI News has reported. As TWZ has previously reported, work already done on the planned Integrated Power System (IPS) for DDG(X) has leveraged technology developed to meet the extensive power generation demands of the Navy’s Zumwalt class.

As TWZ highlighted yesterday, there are major questions about the Trump class warship plan, including how much the ships might cost to produce, as well as operate and maintain. Though the Navy has yet to share an official figure, there have been reports already offering a very wide range of estimates for basic unit costs from $5 to $15 billion. The future DDG(X) destroyers had been expected to cost the service between $3.3 and $4.4 billion. As another point of reference, the price tag of each of the Navy’s Zumwalt class destroyers has ballooned to more than $10 billion, which factors in research and development costs, per the Government Accountability Office (GAO). It is also worth noting that the Zumwalt program’s cost growth is in large part due to the decision to slash purchases of those ships from 32 down to three.

The operational relevance of a ship like the BBG(X), especially if the total fleet size ends up being relatively small, is quickly becoming a topic of heated debate. As TWZ wrote previously:

“At the same time, what capabilities the Trump class might truly be able to bring to bear will be dependent on a host of factors, especially if they are only ever fielded in relatively smaller numbers. And regardless of how capable any warship is, it can only ever be in one place at one time, which is more often than not in port.”

“This all comes at a time when the Navy is stressing its glaring need for more surface warships, overall, not super capable ones built in small quantities.”

“On the other hand, there are concerning VLS cell gaps that are fast approaching on the horizon. The service is set to retire the last of its Ticonderoga class cruisers, each one of which has 122 VLS cells, at the end of the decade. The Navy will also need to make up for the impending loss of the huge missile launch capacity offered by its four Ohio class nuclear guided missile submarines, which are also set to be decommissioned before 2030. The Trump class will clearly feature a massive set of VLS arrays that could help offset some of this deficit.”

The capacity of America’s shipbuilding industrial base to support the Trump class plans in addition to its current demands, something that has become increasingly concerning from a national security perspective in recent years, is another open question. The expected sole-source contracts to Bath Iron Works and HII underscore that those are the only two companies in the United States with any real experience producing large-displacement surface warships of any kind.

Given the timeline laid out now, the Trump class will have to survive multiple presidential administrations and congresses, too. The program could well see significant changes, or even be canceled, even before a single piece of steel is laid down, but still after billions are spent in development costs.

By its own admission, the Navy is still very much in the early stages of work on the Trump class. With the construction of the future USS Defiant not expected to even begin until the early 2030s, the planned fleet of these warships looks to be very far out on the horizon.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com