Trump called the Navy's brand new electromagnetic catapult system no good back in 2017.
That same system just added another 900 million dollars in cost overruns.
Trump just gave War Secretary Pete Hegseth days to fix it.
Trump Was Right Nine Years Before the Pentagon Admitted It
Trump told Time Magazine in 2017 that the electromagnetic catapult system was "no good."
He said he wanted the Navy to go back to "goddamned steam."
Everyone treated it like a punchline at the time.
Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum on August 13 ordering Hegseth to draw up a replacement plan within sixty days.
The plan targets the USS Doris Miller, the fourth Ford-class carrier and the first one not yet in the fleet.
Trump says the electromagnetic system on these carriers has run up a 900 million dollar cost overrun.
Steam catapults, he says, have "worked for about 65 years perfectly."
Trump was not guessing in 2017.
He was describing a problem the Navy would spend the next nine years failing to fix.
Executive Order Tears Out the Untested System for Steam
The order does not touch electromagnetic catapults already installed on carriers currently in service.
It targets new construction only, starting with the Doris Miller.
Hegseth's plan also has to replace the carrier's advanced weapons elevators with hydraulic systems.
Steam catapults launched every Navy jet from the 1950s through the George W. Bush era without the sea trial failures EMALS produced.
Navy planners designed EMALS to be smarter, lighter, and more advanced than steam.
Sailors on deployment do not care how advanced a system looks in a Pentagon brochure.
They care whether the jet gets launched off the deck.
The Pentagon Bet Everything on Untested Technology
EMALS was supposed to launch jets faster and put less stress on airframes than steam ever could.
The theory looked good in a Pentagon slideshow.
It fell apart the moment sailors tried to run real flight operations off the Ford's deck.
Carrier sortie generation rate is the single number that decides whether a carrier strike group matters in a real fight.
A launch system that faults during testing drags that number down every time it happens.
Reverting hands sailors a launch system with a real track record instead of one still racking up cost overruns nine years after commissioning.
Trump Was Fixing This Before Most of Washington Understood the Problem
This is not a minor procurement tweak – it is Trump reversing one of the most expensive engineering mistakes in modern Navy history.
Every sortie EMALS fails to launch is a fighter jet that does not get into the sky when America needs it.
Carrier readiness is not an abstract talking point – it is the difference between deterring China in the Pacific and getting caught flat-footed.
Fixing it took an order Congress should have demanded years ago.
Sources:
- "President Trump Wants Ford Carriers to Use 'Goddamned Steam' Catapults Instead of 'No Good' Electromagnetic Launchers," USNI News, May 11, 2017.
- "USS Gerald Ford EMALS Launching System Suffers Fault During Testing Period," USNI News, June 8, 2020.
- Teri Christoph, "Trump Is Bringing Steam Catapults Back to Ford-Class Carriers," RedState, August 14, 2026.
- "New White House Memo Calls for Foreign-Built Warships, Return to Steam Catapults on Ford Carriers," USNI News, August 13, 2026.
- "Full steam in reverse: Trump orders US Navy back to old-style aircraft catapults," Navy Lookout, August 2026.
- "Trump orders return of steam catapults on carriers, fifth public shipyard," Breaking Defense, August 2026.
