Trump Orders Navy to Rip Out Electromagnetic Catapults, Go Back to Steam on Newest Carrier

President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum Thursday ordering the Navy to tear the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, known as EMALS, off the future USS Doris Miller and go back to steam catapults, according to a White House official who confirmed the memo to Breaking Defense. The Wall Street Journal first reported the change.

The memo, titled "Rebuilding the United States Navy and America's Shipbuilding Industrial Base," gives the Secretary of War and the Navy 60 days to deliver a plan for replacing EMALS and the ship's electromagnetic weapons elevators with steam and hydraulic systems, according to the text released by the White House and reported by The Guardian.

The Doris Miller is the fourth Ford-class carrier. It's the only one affected. The USS Gerald R. Ford, USS John F. Kennedy, and the future USS Enterprise all keep their electromagnetic systems, according to The Independent and Mathrubhumi.

Trump's long-running complaint about EMALS

Trump has been trashing EMALS since his first term. He told Time magazine in 2017 that the electromagnetic system was "not good" and "doesn't have the power" of steam. "You're going to goddamned steam," he said at the time, a line Navy Times and multiple outlets have quoted for years.

The complaint traces back to a single conversation with a Navy sailor during a ship visit, according to AP News and the South Korean outlet SBS. Trump kept bringing it up at rallies. He repeated the demand aboard the USS George Washington last October, saying he'd sign an executive order mandating steam catapults and hydraulic elevators "so we'll never have a problem," according to Breaking Defense.

The cost argument

General Atomics, the company that builds EMALS and holds the Doris Miller contract since 2023, says work on the carrier's catapults and arresting gear is already about 50% complete. In a statement reported by Breaking Defense and SBS, the company said reverting course "warrants careful reconsideration" and that "changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks."

Bryan Clark, a naval expert at the Hudson Institute, told Breaking Defense that Ford-class carriers run on electricity for functions that used to run on steam, including cooking, heating, and water purification, not just the catapults. Restoring steam lines "will require extensive redesign of the ship," he said. Clark also told SBS that electricity is more reliable and cuts down on mechanical parts and maintenance.

The numbers on EMALS aren't close. According to Mathrubhumi, the system cut catapult crew requirements on the Ford from roughly 12 sailors to two. SBS reports the Ford needs 500 fewer personnel overall than a Nimitz-class carrier and costs about $100 million less per year to operate. The Navy has also said the Ford can launch and recover aircraft at a higher rate than the older steam-powered Nimitz ships.

The staffing problem

The Navy is short roughly 20,000 sailors across the fleet, according to Mathrubhumi. Steam catapults need more hands to operate than EMALS. A system designed to cut crew requirements is being swapped for one that adds them, at the exact moment the Navy can't fill the billets it already has.

The memo itself flags "a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs" and says repeated Navy design changes "have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations," as reported by The Guardian. That's a fair criticism of how the Pentagon buys ships. It also happens to describe exactly what this memo does to the Doris Miller: forcing a major system swap after the design was finalized and construction was half done.

What the coverage shows

AP News's report keeps its framing tight and factual, sticking to the memo's mechanics without editorializing on Trump's motives. The Independent and The Guardian both lean into the "obsession" framing in their headlines, which tracks with nine years of on-the-record Trump quotes but risks reading as mockery rather than analysis. SBS and Mathrubhumi provide the clearest breakdown of the personnel and cost tradeoffs, sourcing Clark directly on the technical redesign challenge.

No outlet in this set reports that Navy leadership has publicly endorsed the switch. Multiple sources note the opposite: Navy and shipbuilding officials have resisted the idea for years over cost concerns, according to SBS.

What happens next

The Secretary of War and the Navy have until roughly mid-October to deliver a plan to Trump through the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council, per the memo's 60-day deadline. HII, the Newport News Shipbuilding contractor building the Doris Miller, said it will work with the Navy on the transition, according to SBS. The ship isn't scheduled for deployment until around 2034, according to SBS, which leaves years for the redesign fight to play out. Whether Congress funds the added cost, and whether General Atomics' warning about a multibillion-dollar bill holds up, will depend entirely on the plan that lands on Trump's desk this fall.