Trump Orders Removal of Ford-Class's Electromagnetic Systems
Nine years after announcing his preference for steam catapults, President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. Navy to remove the electromagnetic aircraft launch system at the heart of the Ford-class carrier design and replace it with what he has referred to previously as "god-mn steam." The decision would affect all hulls from fourth-in-class USS Doris Miller onwards.
The president's choice will require deep design revisions, affecting the full ship from the engineering compartments to the berthing areas to the flight deck; if implemented, it will add billions of dollars in capex and tens of millions in annual operating costs, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Trump's objections to the electromagnetic advanced launch system (EMALS) trace back to 2017, in the technology's troubled early years. At that time, the first-in-class USS Ford was behind schedule, over budget and having difficulty reaching operational readiness. Ford was commissioned in partially-functioning form in 2017, but persistent reliability problems with her electromagnetic systems (including EMALS) set back her first full-scale deployment until 2023.
The Navy has given EMALS generally positive marks in public in recent years, but the independent reviewers at the Pentagon Department of Operational Testing & Evaluation (DOT&E) said as recently as FY2023 that its failure rate was far higher than planned, showing a tendency to break down after about 450-600 launches. The office's FY2025 review found that little had changed in two years, and added that the EMALS system is reliant on "off-ship technical support" to keep it running - a challenge for long deployments.
Though it may require regular service, EMALS offers the Navy some distinct advantages. Lacking any steam components, it is more compact, mechanically simpler, and less manpower-intensive to operate. It is also capable of varying the force that it applies to an aircraft during launch to minimize stress on the airframe - unlike steam launches, which exert sudden and constant pressure.
The electromagnetic technology aboard Ford was designed for lighter manning than the previous Nimitz-class carriers, saving millions in crewing costs each year. Putting steam catapults back on Ford would materially increase the crew size; more sailors would also increase the requirements for berthing areas, galleys, laundry rooms, sewage treatment plants and other compartments that must be scaled to accommodate the crew. Interior volume would also have to be allocated for new steam pipe runs. All of these changes would require tradeoffs and thousands of hours of engineering.
General Atomics, which designed EMALS, told the Wall Street Journal that the president's decision is worth "careful reconsideration." The company said that it is 50 percent through the work on the EMALS equipment for USS Doris Miller, and canceling now would send an unwanted signal about defense industrial base stability - and "[create] opportunities for adversaries to close the capability gap."
Ford is in rare company with its EMALS system, but other countries are catching up. China is the only other nation with a working EMALS-type carrier - the newly built Fujian, which commissioned in November 2025. China's navy has also installed a variant of this system aboard a "drone carrier" amphib, the Sichuan (Type 076), still in testing as of early August.
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Trump's order would also require the Navy to remove the future Ford-class ships' electromagnetic weapons elevators - another iconic design element of the class, and the element that has given the Navy the most trouble. Faulty weapons elevators delayed USS Gerald R. Ford for years, and problems with the same system are contributing to delays in commissioning second-in-class USS John F. Kennedy. The White House memo insists that the service must return to hydraulically-actuated elevator technology for hulls from USS Doris Miller onwards.
The changes would almost certainly have an effect on delivery timeline for USS Doris Miller, already years behind schedule. Module construction is under way, the keel-laying is scheduled for later this year, and later design revisions could turn into rework of physically-completed modules. Because of yard constraints and delays on Kennedy, Miller will deliver in 2034, plus additional time required for changes mandated by the White House's new memo.
