President Trump issued a memorandum, dated Aug. 13, which among other things orders the replacement of the electromagnetic catapult systems and electrically powered weapons elevators used on future Gerald R. Ford class aircraft carriers, with steam catapults and hydraulically powered elevators of the types used on the much older Nimitz class carriers. The first two Ford-class carriers have already been built and the third one, the future USS Enterprise, is about 50 percent complete – meaning that the changes that Trump is directing can’t be made until the fourth ship of the class, the future USS Doris Miller.
“We’re not letting any more ships be built with the ridiculous billions of dollars more they spent on electric catapults, and they’re not good. They’re not nearly as good—too complex,” Trump said during a speech at the US Army War College in July. “The same thing with the magnetic elevators. We want them to be made hydraulic.”
Navy leadership has been resisting Trump on the catapult issue since he first visited the Ford in 2017 at about the time it was launched. Installing steam catapults on the Ford class carriers would entail substantial redesign of the ship, resulting in major cost increases and schedule delays. While the Ford experienced teething troubles with the catapults after the ship was launched, Navy officials reported 37,000 aircraft launches with the electromagnetic catapult without a failure as of March 2025. They also reported higher sortie rates than would have been possible with steam catapults.
