Donald Trump is ordering the Navy to stop using an electromagnetic catapult system to launch fighter jets from its aircraft carriers and return to the age of steam.
The White House announced Thursday that the president had signed a national security memorandum to install steam catapults on the Gerald R. Ford class of carriers, with the first change occurring on the Doris Miller, the fourth ship in the planned Ford fleet.
Experts have warned that the move will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The Navy and industry leaders have long opposed returning to steam catapults because of the eye-watering cost involved.
Installing electromagnetic catapults and elevators to move weaponry to the flight deck was also an integral aspect of the Ford-class design and a major reason for the slow delivery and commissioning of the $13 billion class.
The octogenarian president has had a decade-long obsession with bringing back steam catapults on Navy aircraft carriers despite the huge costs involved.
A steam catapult uses high-pressure steam to drive a piston that propels a jet along a track beneath the flight deck, helping the aircraft take off. An electromagnetic catapult is digitally controlled and uses energy from electric and linear motors to generate an electromagnetic field that propels the jet off the carrier.
In an interview with Time magazine in May 2017, during his first term as president, Trump described an apparent conversation he had with a sailor who was as unhappy with the digital catapult system as he was.
“They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” Trump said. “‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.’”
Years later, in October 2025, Trump announced during a rambling speech to the U.S. Navy just off the coast of Japan that he would be signing an executive order to bring back steam catapults.
“When we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults, and it’s hydraulic for the elevators. We’ll never have a problem,” Trump said. “Everybody agrees. But, ahh, these people in Washington.”
The last aircraft carrier to be built with steam catapults was the USS George H.W. Bush, which entered the Navy’s fleet in 2009.
Bryan Clark, a naval expert with the Hudson Institute think tank, told The Wall Street Journal that replacing the electromagnetic catapults with steam could cost billions.
The mammoth task has been further complicated because the infrastructure on aircraft carriers that allows for steam catapults has either changed or no longer exists.
Clark added that returning to steam would also require more hands on deck for maintenance. He noted that there are 500 fewer sailors on the Ford, in part because fewer sailors are needed to maintain its electric equipment.
“Electric is more reliable,” Clark told the Journal. “If I can turn these components to be electric instead of steam, it eliminates all the steam-related mechanical parts.”
Democratic Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former naval officer and astronaut, condemned Trump’s move. “I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot, and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships,” Kelly said.
In a statement, the White House said: “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.
“It will also reactivate portions of the maritime industrial base that are easier to scale.”
