The consensus read on the Trump steam catapult order is that a president with no engineering credentials has overridden naval expertise on a whim. The reliability data on the system he wants to replace is rather more awkward for that narrative than most coverage admits.
What the Trump Steam Catapult Order Actually Overturns
President Trump has signed a national security memorandum directing the Navy to remove the electromagnetic catapult system from future Gerald R. Ford-class carriers and return to steam-powered launch technology. The order directs a redesign of the fourth ship in the class, to be named the Doris Miller, and all subsequent vessels. The first three ships, the Ford, John F. Kennedy and Enterprise, will retain the electromagnetic system already built into them.
The White House framed the decision in operational terms. ‘This decision will result in carriers that are enabled by battle-tested steam and hydraulic systems that are more resilient and robust than the present, more exquisite, follow-on systems,’ the White House said in a statement. ‘It will also reactivate portions of the maritime industrial base that are easier to scale.’
The USS George H.W. Bush, which entered the Navy’s fleet in 2009, was the last carrier built with steam catapults. Trump has been publicly committed to reversing the switch for years: he said in a 2017 interview with Time that he had told the Navy to go back to ‘goddamn steam’ after hearing a sailor praise the older system during a ship visit in his first term.
The Performance Gap the Narrative Is Glossing Over
The prevailing framing presents this as nostalgia defeating engineering. The reliability record of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) complicates that picture considerably. According to Maritime Executive, the Ford’s catapults achieved roughly 600 cycles between failures, a fraction of the 4,000-plus cycle design goal. The Advanced Arresting Gear, which catches returning aircraft, performed even further below specification: designed to cycle 16,500 times between failures, it broke down after roughly 450 cycles in recent testing.
Those are not numbers that belong in a system integral to the design of the most expensive warships ever built. The consensus narrative, which positions the steam order purely as presidential interference, may be underweighting the extent to which EMALS delivered a performance gap that senior Navy and industry leaders had every incentive to minimise rather than publicise.
Bryan Clark, a naval expert with the Hudson Institute, described the practical cost of reversing course: replacing the electromagnetic catapults with steam will likely cost billions of dollars, he said. Clark also noted that electric systems carry their own maintenance advantages (cheaper upkeep and greater reliability when functioning as designed) and that the Ford class carries 500 fewer sailors in part because fewer technicians are needed for its existing steam equipment. His assessment was not a simple endorsement of the status quo: ‘Electric is more reliable,’ he said. ‘If I can turn these components to be electric instead of steam, it eliminates all the steam related mechanical parts.’
The internal architecture of the Ford class makes the retrofit genuinely difficult. The Nimitz-class ships used steam not only for catapults but for heating, freshwater evaporators, and galley equipment, with piping running throughout. Those sections were reworked or removed entirely in the Ford design. Fitting steam back into a hull not built to carry it is an engineering problem distinct from simply preferring one technology over another.
The geopolitical dimension runs counter to the steam advocates’ instincts as well. China is using electromagnetic catapults in its newest aircraft carriers, and France plans to use the system on its new carrier. Falling back to steam while near-peer competitors move in the opposite direction is a choice that carries its own strategic costs, whatever the maintenance arithmetic says.
The White House has not published the full text of the national security memorandum. Whether its scope is confined to the Doris Miller and subsequent new builds, or extends further, will determine the true cost envelope. Until that text is public, the billions figure remains an estimate rather than a programme budget, and the full operational logic behind the order remains partially obscured.
