President Donald Trump has directed the US Navy to scrap the modern electromagnetic launch system on an upcoming aircraft carrier and instead revert to an older, steam-powered catapult method — potentially adding billions to its price tag and delaying its deployment into the late 2030s.
The directive, outlined in a White House memo and fact sheet released Thursday, orders Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a plan within 60 days to install the catapult systems on on a carrier being built that is slated to take on the name the USS Doris Miller.
While the White House argues the move will “fix critical long-term issues,” naval experts tell CNN the sudden shift is highly unusual.
The newest US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was built with an electromagnetic launching system known as EMALS. However, the US Navy’s 10 older carriers, the Nimitz class, still rely on steam-powered catapults.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, added that the move would require the USS Doris Miller, which is already under construction, to be redesigned. The cost of that, he told CNN, “will probably be into the billions” and it could delay the carrier — which was expected to be in service around 2034 — “until the end of the next decade.”
