NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — General Atomics is looking to equip the U.S. Navy’s planned Trump-class battleships / BBG(X), according to company leadership at Sea Air Space 2026.
During the initial concept debut of USS Defiant (BBG-1) in December, the Navy plans to arm the battleships with several advanced systems that the American defense contractor has already developed or worked on.
Naval News discussed the company’s pitch in support of the new class of battleships with Nick Bucci, Vice President, Defense Systems & Technologies at General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems. A graphic displayed at Sea Air Space showed the Defiant with four distinct General Atomics’ lines of work, including hypersonic missile, direct energy weapon, laser communication and railgun systems.
General Atomics previously worked on American railgun programs until their discontinuation in 2021. The company told Naval News at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in Jan. that they were examining how their work could be integrated into the battleship’s conceptual specifications, which included a 32-megajoule railgun. While there have been discussions regarding the role of the system on the over 35,000-ton surface combatant, Bucci noted that ongoing discussions have yet to reveal what the U.S. Navy is looking to do with the battleship’s railgun armament.
“It’s still very early in that there hasn’t been a full explanation of exactly what the requirements are going to be for that railgun, but we have had discussions with various parts of the Department for exactly what they’re looking for, where they want to go, and that kind of thing,”
Nick Bucci, Vice President, Defense Systems & Technologies at General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
However, Bucci did state that the company’s envisioned product can conduct both surface-to-surface and air defense missions.
“Our goal all along has been for a multi-mission rail gun system. So not just to provide, I’ll say, a strike capability – but also to provide an air defense capability. And so we’ve always looked at this as kind of an integrated air and this defense weapon, as well as having the ability to do counter surface targets like smaller ships and and even larger ships.”
Bucci also acknowledged that while railgun fire may have difficulty in sinking ships, the potential to inflict significant damage on targeted weaponry, sensors and other shipboard systems from the hypersonic projectiles would likely be enough to inflict a mission kill. The inclusion of specific payloads from railgun rounds was also hinted at.
“I’m not going to take out a warship, but I am going to make it stay miserable,” Bucci said. “As someone once asked, ‘will you be able to take out a ship?’ I said no. But I would not want to be on that ship when a railgun round is coming at it and releases its payload, because it’s going to make your day miserable. And if there’s no people on board, it’s still going to take out and disable a lot of the systems on top and things like that.”
Aside from the railgun, General Atomics is pitching its laser systems for counter-unmanned aerial system and missile defense roles, although Bucci highlighted the need for more information on the aerial threats that the battleship’s laser should be able to defeat. Another laser system, derived from the firm’s work on optical communications, aims to provide the Trump-class with a high-end communications capability to network with space
“Basically, it allows for communication based on laser or optical comms from space or airborne to ship sensors for essentially, let’s say, robust communications. High bandwidth communications that are much more difficult to detect and to kind of interrupt than, say, normal just RF communications. So that our goal is to essentially be able to provide that from a transportable perspective for, you know, whether it’s Defiant and the rest of the ships in that class or other surface combatant ships as well, or even unmanned platforms also,” Bucci said.
The U.S. Navy has envisioned the new class of battleships to be command and control nodes for the Golden Fleet, which some service leaders have also described to be a part of a high-low force composition.
Regarding the intensive power requirements of these high-end systems, Bucci further noted that further clarification on the class’ capabilities were required but that General Atomics was ready to provide its solutions for power generation and storage.
“We have what we call an energy magazine so that you don’t necessarily need a continuous feed of power to the weapon, but you essentially fill up an energy magazine battery. Then you slowly take that charge out of that energy magazine as you’re employing the laser rid of the railgun and you then continuously charge for the batteries after you’ve depleted some of that charge.”
“So you don’t necessarily need, you know, hundreds of megawatts or as Doc Brown said that 1.21 gigawatts right now. You just need something that can support, I’ll say the median load and then the surge load can be taken care of with energy storage on the ship,” said Bucci.
Going forward, the firm is looking to specify what the service wants in further conversations. Some questions raised by Bucci include if new launchers are going to be required for Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missiles and if any additional missions need to be supported by the railgun.
