President Donald Trump signed a national security memorandum directing the U.S. Navy to strip electromagnetic catapults out of future Ford-class aircraft carriers and return to traditional steam power. If you have followed military procurement over the last decade, you know this battle has been brewing for a long time.
The directive targets the fourth ship in the class, the future USS Doris Miller (CVN-81). Pentagon leadership now has sixty days to formulate an engineering plan to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, with classic steam systems. Subsequent hulls will follow suit. Meanwhile, the first three carriers—the USS Gerald R. Ford, the USS John F. Kennedy, and the future USS Enterprise—keep their electric architecture.
Naval officers aren't cheering. Defense contractors like General Atomics are sounding alarms. The pivot introduces major engineering headaches, potential multi-year delays, and a massive bill. Yet the Commander-in-Chief wants what he wants. He has spent years railing against high-tech electric launchers, preferring the low-tech reliability of steam.
The Hammer and Blowtorch Argument
Why the sudden, forceful shift? Trump's aversion to modern tech aboard supercarriers dates back to 2017. Back then, during his first term, the USS Gerald R. Ford suffered through notorious delays, budget overruns, and reliability hiccups with its new electrical systems.
Trump loves to tell a specific story about visiting a carrier and talking to a veteran crew member who managed the launch gear. As the story goes, the sailor looked the president in the eye and stated that steam was better because it could be fixed with a hammer and a blowtorch. When the electric system breaks down, you need to call engineers from MIT.
"When the electric goes bad, I have to send to MIT to get geniuses over here."
— President Donald Trump, recalling conversations with Navy personnel.
It sounds like campaign folklore, but it highlights a very real operational anxiety. Modern military hardware is often so complex that sailors at sea cannot fix it independently. They depend entirely on contractor field service reps or shore-based support. When you are months away from port in the middle of a conflict, waiting for a specialized electrical technician to fly out is not an ideal strategy.
What EMALS Actually Does
For a quarter of a century, the Navy bet big on EMALS to replace old-school steam pistons. Instead of using high-pressure steam to drive a mechanical shuttle down the flight deck, EMALS uses a massive linear induction motor buried beneath the deck. It draws enormous bursts of electrical energy straight from the ship's nuclear reactors, generating a magnetic field that smoothly flings a thirty-ton fighter jet off the bow.
In theory, it's brilliant. It offers smoother acceleration, puts less stress on the airframes, and can handle a wider variety of aircraft weights, from heavy cargo planes down to light drones.
In practice, the reliability numbers told a different story. Independent assessments by the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Testing and Evaluation noted that EMALS historically experienced failure rates well above initial projections. It needed hundreds of launches between critical failures, but early on, it fell far short. Even as the Navy ironed out many of those kinks by the time the Ford deployed in 2023, the system remained a magnet for criticism due to its sheer cost and complexity.
The Billion-Dollar Engineering Nightmare
Reversing course on a warship halfway through its design phase is brutally difficult. You cannot simply unbolt an electric motor and slide a steam boiler into its place.
The USS Doris Miller is scheduled to have its keel laid soon, with delivery expected in the early 2030s. The ship's internal layout, electrical grid, weight distribution, and piping were engineered specifically around electromagnetic systems and advanced weapons elevators. Ripping those out means redrawing blueprints, rewriting contracts, and re-allocating massive amounts of funding.
General Atomics, the primary contractor behind EMALS, warned that changing course now introduces severe cost, schedule, and integration risks. Work on the ship's components is already nearly fifty percent complete. Scrambling to refit the vessel for steam will cost hundreds of millions—if not billions—of dollars.
Critics also point out the sheer irony of the timing. While the U.S. Navy looks backward toward steam, naval competitors are moving aggressively in the opposite direction. China's newest aircraft carriers rely on advanced electromagnetic launch systems. France has already committed to using EMALS technology for its next-generation aircraft carrier program.
A Divided Fleet
The Navy is now facing a unique operational split within a single class of ships.
- USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78): Operating with EMALS.
- USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79): Built with EMALS.
- USS Enterprise (CVN-80): Committed to EMALS.
- USS Doris Miller (CVN-81): Targeted for conversion to steam catapults.
Having two entirely different launch and weapons-handling ecosystems inside the same carrier class creates a nightmare for maintenance crews, spare parts inventories, and training pipelines. Sailors trained on the electronic systems won't have identical skill sets to those running steam-powered hulls.
Whether this presidential directive survives the inevitable congressional pushback and naval brass resistance remains to be seen. But the order is signed, the clock is ticking on that sixty-day Pentagon review, and the debate over high-tech versus high-reliability is officially back at the forefront of American defense policy.
