Shares of warship builder Huntington Ingalls Industries rose in premarket trading and are on track for the largest annual gain in 12 years, driven by news of President Trump’s continued push to rebuild the U.S. Navy.
HII gained 5% on Monday and another 5% in premarket trading early Tuesday after President Trump announced a plan on Monday evening to build two new “Trump-class” battleships, to acquire 20-25 of these ships in the coming years.
Here are critical details about Trump’s major announcement Monday evening (courtesy of Goldman analyst Noah Poponak):
Trump-class battleships. On December 22, 2025 President Trump announced that he had approved a plan for the U.S. Navy to build two new “Trump-class” battleships, with the goal of acquiring 20-25 of these ships in the coming years.
In his address, the President noted these 30,000-40,000 ton ships will carry a large quantity of missiles, including hypersonic missiles, and will also be outfitted with electromagnetic rail guns and directed energy lasers.
Trump-class battleships will also carry nuclear-armed sea launched cruise missiles (currently under development) adding an additional element of nuclear deterrence to the Navy. Trump-class destroyers appear to be designed as the center of enhanced command and control networks at sea, as the Navy looks to field more autonomous assets and traditional vessels in the coming years.
The WSJ has reported that the U.S. Navy will launch a vendor competition, with plans to procure the first hull in 2030.
The first “Trump-class” battleship will be named USS Defiant, and it will be even longer than the Iowa-class battleships of the World War II era. However, at 35,000 tons, it will only weigh about half as much and have a smaller crew of between 650 and 850 sailors; the Iowa had some 2,700 sailors. The new ships — which are being called “guided missile battleships” — are part of a larger vision for a “Golden Fleet.” The Navy has rolled out a website to promote that concept. Sources tell AP that construction of the Defiant is expected to start in the early 2030’s, with another 19 to 24 Trump-class ships to follow.
While they’re being billed as “battleships,” they’ll differ from what that term has previously described — heavily armored ships with massive guns. The Defiant will have hypersonic missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers. All of those systems are currently under development, raising the odds that, like so many weapons programs, the Trump-class ships will blow past their budgets and due dates. Rail guns — electromagnetic launchers whose projectiles unleash their damage via pure kinetic energy rather than explosives — have a particularly notorious development history. The Navy invested more than 15 years and more than half a billion dollars trying to equip warships with rail guns before giving up in 2021.
“Engineered to outmatch any foreign adversary, the new battleship class will be the centerpiece of naval power,” said the Navy in a press release. “At triple the size of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, its massive frame provides superior firepower, larger missile magazines, and the capability to launch Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles and the Surface Launch Cruise Missile-Nuclear.”
Key technical specifications:
- Length: 840-880′
- Beam: 105-115′
- Draft: 24-30′
- Speed: 30+ knots
- Main Battery: Nuclear Surface Launch Cruise Missile (SLCM-N), hypersonic missiles, vertical launch missiles
- Secondary Battery: 1 x 32-megagoule railgun with hypervelocity projectile (HVP), 2 x 5″ gun with HVP, 2 x 300 kW or 2 x 600kW lasers
- Defensive Battery: 2 x rolling airframe missile launchers, 4 x 30mm guns, 4 x ODIN lasers, 2 x counter-UxS (drone) systems
Promising to treat weapons systems like an Oval Office update or a new ballroom, Trump said he’ll be very much a part of the design process. “The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” he said Monday. Trump has previously said he altered the design of the since-nixed Constellation-class frigates after seeing one under construction in a shipyard and finding it lacked curb appeal. “The ships that they were building, they looked terrible,” Trump said in a 2020 speech. “I changed designs. I looked at it, I said, ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship, let’s make it beautiful’.”
Poponak told clients that his 12-month price target for HII was upgraded to $384 from $356.
This year, HII shares are up a whopping 87%, the largest annual increase since the 107% increase in 2013.
Shares are at record high levels.
The S&P 500 Aerospace & Defense Index nears record highs.
Secretary of the Navy John Phelan recently said that the U.S. military will be acquiring a “new frigate class based on HII’s Legend-Class National Security Cutter design.”
Earlier this year, HII stock had one of the largest intraday gains on record as Trump touted his move to revitalize domestic shipbuilders.
All of this plays into the total reposturing of the U.S. military to focus on Western hemispheric defense and securing the hemisphere ahead of the 2030s. We’ve outlined how to profit from this (read here).
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