President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare a plan for replacing the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, better known as EMALS, with traditional steam catapults aboard the future USS Doris Miller. The same directive calls for replacing the carrier’s electromagnetic weapons elevators with hydraulic systems.

Despite some of the broader headlines, Trump hasn’t ordered sailors to begin ripping EMALS out of the USS Gerald R. Ford with whatever tools happen to be lying around the hangar deck. The presidential memorandum specifically directs the defense secretary, in consultation with the Navy secretary, to submit a plan within 60 days for making the changes beginning with CVN-81, the fourth Ford-class carrier. The first three ships—the Gerald R. Ford, John F. Kennedy, and Enterprise—will retain their electromagnetic systems.

Still, redesigning the Doris Miller would represent a major reversal of the Navy’s modernization strategy. The debate isn’t simply about whether electricity is more fashionable than steam. It concerns reliability in combat, maintenance at sea, aircraft compatibility, personnel requirements, construction delays, billions of taxpayer dollars, and the proper boundary between presidential leadership and detailed military engineering.

The Case for Returning to Steam

The strongest argument for Trump’s order is also the simplest: an aircraft carrier’s launch system must work reliably under the worst possible conditions. If fighter aircraft can’t get off the deck, the Navy has acquired an extraordinarily expensive floating airport with a rather serious runway problem.

Steam catapults have launched American naval aircraft for more than seven decades. They’re not elegant by modern standards, but they’re proven, well understood, and supported by generations of operational experience. Sailors know how they behave, maintainers know how they fail, and the Navy continues to operate them aboard its Nimitz-class carriers.

That familiarity matters in combat. A highly advanced system may perform wonderfully under ideal conditions, but equipment aboard a warship must also be repairable by the crew, far from a shipyard, potentially after battle damage. Trump has repeatedly cited a conversation with an experienced sailor who reportedly told him that steam systems could be repaired with ordinary tools, while EMALS failures might require highly specialized technical assistance. The story is anecdotal, but the broader concern is legitimate: military technology shouldn’t become so complicated that the people operating it can’t restore it without calling on experts.

Government testing has provided substance for some of those concerns. During earlier developmental testing, EMALS performed far below its reliability requirement. A 2021 report from the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation found that the system averaged 272 launches between operational mission failures, compared with a requirement of 4,166. It also warned that electrically isolating certain components for maintenance could be time-consuming and interfere with flight operations.

The system has improved since then, but the concerns haven’t entirely disappeared. The FY2024 operational-testing report said EMALS reliability hadn’t “appreciably changed” despite hardware and software upgrades, and it noted that the crew remained dependent upon technical support from off the ship. The FY2025 report recorded gradual improvement in reliability and availability but said reliance on off-ship support remained a challenge.

Supporters of Trump’s order therefore argue that his criticism isn’t merely the technological anxiety of a man suspicious of anything that can’t be repaired with a wrench. Independent Pentagon evaluators have been warning about EMALS reliability, maintainability, and technical-support requirements for years.

They can also point to the troubled development of the Ford class as an example of the Pentagon attempting too much innovation at once. The lead carrier incorporated numerous new systems, including EMALS, advanced arresting gear, electromagnetic weapons elevators, new radar equipment, extensive automation, and a new reactor design. Several of those technologies were still maturing while the ship was being built. The result was substantial cost growth, delayed testing, and years of frustration before the Ford entered meaningful operational service.

From this perspective, Trump’s challenging a familiar procurement habit: defense contractors and military bureaucracies promising that the next dazzling system will eventually become cheaper, easier, and more dependable after taxpayers finance a prolonged technological adolescence. At some point, “it will work better in the future” stops being a plan and begins sounding like the Pentagon’s version of “the check is in the mail.”

Supporters also caution against treating the Ford’s total number of successful launches as proof that the reliability question has been settled. As of March 2026, the carrier had completed 36,863 EMALS launches, according to Pentagon figures reported by Reuters. That’s certainly meaningful evidence that the system works, but a cumulative launch total doesn’t reveal how frequently components failed, how long repairs required, how much contractor assistance was needed, or whether the system met its wartime performance requirements.

Finally, the Doris Miller hasn’t yet reached the stage of an operational vessel awaiting deployment. Its keel is scheduled to be laid by the end of 2026, with delivery anticipated in 2034. Advocates of the change can argue that if the Navy believes EMALS remains fundamentally too fragile or complicated, it’s better to act now than install the same system on several additional carriers and spend the next half-century maintaining a questionable decision.

In that view, Trump’s exercising legitimate civilian control over a military establishment that hasn’t always policed its own spending or procurement failures particularly well. Presidents shouldn’t design every valve and circuit, but they’re entitled to demand that admirals and contractors explain why a supposedly superior system continues to struggle with requirements long after taxpayers paid for it.

The Case for Staying with EMALS

The strongest argument against Trump’s order is that the government wouldn’t be returning a partially designed carrier to some familiar factory setting labeled “steam.” The Ford class was engineered from the beginning around electrical power, and replacing EMALS would require a fundamental redesign of a ship already under construction.

A steam catapult isn’t simply an electromagnetic catapult with a pipe attached. It requires high-pressure steam distribution, large accumulators, extensive plumbing, water-management equipment, condensate systems, different maintenance spaces, and structural accommodations throughout the vessel. According to a technical analysis by Navy Lookout, EMALS equipment crosses 48 separate construction zones aboard the Ford-class design. Altering it would create consequences far beyond the machinery immediately beneath the flight deck.

The Navy also hasn’t purchased a new steam catapult in more than 20 years. Although it still maintains those systems aboard existing carriers, restarting production would require rebuilding portions of a dormant supplier base. Defense analyst Bryan Clark told Breaking Defense that restoring steam lines would require extensive redesign and that suppliers would need significant time and investment to resume manufacturing the older equipment.

General Atomics, which manufactures EMALS, says production of the Doris Miller’s system is already nearly 50 percent complete. The company has warned that changing direction now would create substantial cost, scheduling, and integration risks. The manufacturer plainly has a financial interest in preserving its contract, but that doesn’t make the warning imaginary. Even a contractor speaking from self-interest can still be describing a very real engineering migraine.

There’s also evidence that EMALS is maturing after its painful beginnings. The Gerald R. Ford has now conducted tens of thousands of launches and completed extended operational deployments. During its FY2024 deployment, the carrier and its air wing generated enough sorties to satisfy combatant-command requirements, even though Pentagon testers said the ship hadn’t yet demonstrated its full design-rate objective under representative conditions. The Navy also conducted a four-day sortie-generation test in February 2026 that reportedly exceeded Nimitz-class rates, although it hasn’t publicly released the underlying data, according to USNI News.

That record doesn’t prove EMALS has met every reliability requirement, but it suggests that the United States has already endured much of the system’s expensive development phase. Abandoning it now could mean paying for the difficult part and walking away just as the technology becomes operationally useful, the defense-procurement equivalent of renovating the entire kitchen and changing your mind when the appliances arrive.

EMALS also offers important capabilities that steam can’t match as easily. Electromagnetic propulsion permits more precise control over the force applied during a launch, reducing strain on aircraft structures. It can accommodate a wider range of aircraft weights, from heavy strike fighters to lighter unmanned platforms. That flexibility will become increasingly important as carrier air wings incorporate the MQ-25 Stingray tanker and future autonomous aircraft. Steam catapults were designed primarily for the aircraft of an earlier era; tomorrow’s carrier wing may include machines that don’t fit as comfortably within their operating envelope.

The electrical system was also intended to require fewer sailors, reduce maintenance, occupy less space, and lower lifetime operating costs. Those projected savings haven’t yet been conclusively demonstrated, but returning to steam would increase personnel demands at a time when the Navy already faces recruiting, retention, and staffing pressures.

Fleet standardization presents another concern. Retaining EMALS on the first three Ford-class ships while installing steam on the fourth would create a separate subclass requiring different training, spare parts, maintenance procedures, and technical expertise. The Navy would be operating Nimitz-class steam systems, Ford-class electromagnetic systems, and a new Ford-derived steam configuration simultaneously. A policy advertised as a return to simplicity could therefore produce another custom configuration for the Navy to support for approximately 50 years. Bureaucracy has a remarkable talent for simplifying one problem into three.

There are strategic implications as well. France has selected EMALS for its next-generation carrier, while China has installed an electromagnetic system on the Fujian. Foreign adoption doesn’t automatically prove that the technology is superior—other countries are quite capable of making expensive mistakes without American assistance—but it does demonstrate that major naval powers regard electromagnetic launch as an important part of future carrier aviation. The United States should hesitate before surrendering a technological field in which it has already invested heavily and accumulated more operational experience than anyone else.

Finally, critics question whether the president should dictate a particular engineering solution before receiving the cost, readiness, and performance analysis. Sen. Mark Kelly has especially relevant experience: he’s a retired Navy combat pilot, test pilot, astronaut, and aeronautical engineer who’s been launched from aircraft carriers hundreds of times. As The Hill reported, Kelly argued that even with his background, he wouldn’t presume to tell the Navy exactly how to engineer its ships.

The president unquestionably has the authority to establish defense priorities and demand accountability. The concern is that Trump appears to have selected the answer first and ordered the technical analysis afterward. A genuine review asks whether steam or EMALS best meets the Navy’s needs. This memorandum instead asks officials to determine how to implement the option the president already prefers.

When the Steam Clears

From my perspective, Trump has identified a real problem but prescribed the wrong remedy, or, at the very least, prescribed it before the examination was finished.

EMALS shouldn’t be protected simply because it’s newer, electromagnetic, or accompanied by enough technical terminology to make a congressional hearing sound like a science-fiction convention. Its reliability problems have been serious, prolonged, and independently documented. Depending upon off-ship specialists to repair a carrier’s primary aircraft-launch system is particularly troubling. In combat, the nearest contractor help desk may be several thousand miles away and keeping business hours.

Trump’s right to demand answers from the Navy, General Atomics, and everyone else responsible for the Ford class’s cost overruns and delays. Conservatives shouldn’t suddenly discover an unquestioning faith in government expertise merely because the experts are wearing uniforms or carrying defense contracts. Military bureaucracies can waste money with every bit as much enthusiasm as civilian ones, only with more impressive acronyms.

However, there’s a considerable difference between demanding performance and personally selecting the plumbing.

The administration hasn’t publicly produced evidence showing that a steam-equipped Doris Miller would be more reliable, less expensive over its lifetime, delivered sooner, or better able to operate future aircraft. What the public record currently shows is that EMALS had severe developmental problems, has gradually improved, has completed more than 36,000 launches, and has now supported demanding operational deployments. It also shows that replacing it would require a major redesign, disrupt equipment already in production, revive an inactive manufacturing line, and create a one-of-a-kind subclass within the Ford fleet.

That’s not conservative stewardship. It’s an expensive gamble dressed as a return to common sense.

There’s an almost comic contradiction in a memorandum that condemns “iterative design changes” and then orders a sweeping iterative design change to a carrier already under construction. Apparently, redesigns are wasteful unless the redesign involves installing the president’s preferred catapult.

The wiser approach would be to order an independent review comparing EMALS and steam across clearly defined measures: wartime reliability, repairability at sea, lifecycle cost, construction delay, manpower, aircraft compatibility, battle-damage resilience, supply-chain risk, and sortie generation. Engineers, experienced carrier crews, operational testers, naval aviators, and independent cost analysts should all participate. The results—including assumptions and dissenting findings—should be presented to Congress before billions more are committed.

If that review demonstrates that EMALS can’t meet essential combat requirements at a reasonable cost, then the Navy should consider steam or another alternative for a future clean-sheet carrier design. No technology deserves permanent protection after failing its mission. But unless compelling classified evidence establishes otherwise, the Navy shouldn’t redesign the Doris Miller around steam after EMALS production is already nearly halfway complete.

Kelly’s technical warning deserves serious consideration because his experience is unusually relevant. His crude closing insult toward Trump didn’t strengthen his argument, however. Expertise doesn’t require profanity to become persuasive, and public officials should be capable of criticizing one another without dragging the conversation beneath the flight deck. “I know this field, and the president is exceeding his expertise” was a strong case. The partisan flourish merely gave everyone something else to argue about.

Christian principles of stewardship, humility, truthfulness, and wise counsel apply even when the subject is a multibillion-dollar warship. Taxpayer money should be spent carefully. Sailors should receive equipment that can be trusted in battle. Leaders should recognize the limits of their expertise, seek knowledgeable counsel, and make decisions based upon evidence rather than ego, institutional pride, or political theater.

Trump deserves credit for challenging a procurement system with an appalling record of overpromising and overspending. But accountability isn’t the same as micromanagement, and skepticism toward complicated technology doesn’t by itself establish that older technology is better.

America needs carrier catapults that launch aircraft reliably, protect sailors, accommodate future missions, and give taxpayers reasonable value. It doesn’t need the Navy’s engineering decisions reduced to another contest between presidential certainty and congressional profanity. On the present evidence, the administration should convert its predetermined steam-conversion plan into a genuine comparative review and keep EMALS aboard the Doris Miller unless that review proves a change is worth the enormous cost and risk.