Trump Memo Orders Plan Within 60 Days to Replace EMALS With Steam Catapults on Carrier CVN-81

A Half-Built Ship, and a Question Nobody Has Priced Yet

CVN-81 sits at Newport News, Virginia, about half finished. Its keel is due to be laid by the end of 2026, with delivery once expected in early 2034^[1][5]. The future USS Doris Miller was designed, from the reactor room to the wiring, around one system: an electromagnetic catapult that flings jets off the deck using a linear electric motor, the same push that moves a maglev train^[1].

On August 13, 2026, President Trump signed a memorandum that tells the Navy to plan, within 60 days, how to rip that system out^[1][12]. In its place would go steam catapults — the piston-and-cylinder technology every U.S. carrier used before the current Ford class — plus hydraulic elevators to replace the electromagnetic ones now carrying weapons to the flight deck^[1][13]. Nothing changes on the three Ford-class ships already built or building around the electric gear: the USS Gerald R. Ford, the future USS John F. Kennedy, and the future USS Enterprise^[3].

That is the setup. What makes it a genuine fight, and not just a partisan headline, is that both sides are quoting real numbers, and the numbers don't settle it.

The Number Each Side Reads Differently

Start with the one fact nobody disputes: the Pentagon's own testers measured EMALS, the electromagnetic launch system, at 272 mean cycles between operational mission failures. The requirement was 4,166^[7]. In plain terms, the system was breaking down roughly 15 times more often than the Navy's own spec allowed for. A later 2022 test window showed improvement — 614 failures over 1,841 launches — but the system still fell short of where it was supposed to be^[7].

That figure is the strongest evidence for Trump's position, and it comes from the Pentagon, not from a critic. The Ford's weapons elevators, which move bombs and missiles up from below deck, were delivered years late with software and sensor problems^[8]. Trump has said the Ford "had to be called in twice" over catapult failures, and has claimed that "when a little water touches the magnets, it doesn't work anymore"^[3].

But reliability numbers alone don't answer the question that actually decides this: does fixing EMALS cost more than removing it? Nobody has that number. The 60-day plan is supposed to produce it, sometime around mid-October 2026.

Why "Old" Doesn't Mean "Available"

Here's the part of the story that cuts against the "just bring back the old system" framing: no American shipyard has built a steam catapult in about 20 years^[1]. The tooling is gone. So is most of the trained workforce that once welded and calibrated it^[8].

That matters because CVN-81's hull has no steam plumbing routed to where the catapults sit — it was built for electric launch, with the reactor and power plant sized accordingly^[1][8]. Reverting means cutting new high-pressure piping through a ship that's already half assembled, while standing up a supply chain from scratch. Outside analysts estimate the redesign could run into the billions and push delivery from around 2034 toward the late 2030s^[3].

There's also a manpower angle the Navy cares about. EMALS cut the crew needed to operate a catapult from about a dozen sailors to roughly two, because its launch force can be tuned in software rather than set by mechanical pressure^[3]. A Navy that's already short on people would need to fill those billets back in for a ship meant to serve 50 years.

The Warning That Wasn't Quite What It Looked Like

The most-quoted pushback against the order didn't come from the Navy itself. It came from General Atomics, the contractor that manufactures both EMALS and the Advanced Arresting Gear used to catch landing jets. The company told USNI News the change "warrants careful reconsideration," saying that with its own equipment production already about 50% complete, "changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks"^[1].

That statement is worth reading carefully. It describes how far along General Atomics' manufacturing is — not how far along CVN-81's overall construction is, which by other accounts is much earlier stage^[1]. General Atomics also stands to lose that production contract if the order goes through, giving the company a direct financial stake in the outcome it's warning against^[1]. None of that makes the warning wrong. It does mean the loudest institutional voice against the reversal is also the one with the most to lose.

Defense analysts outside the contractor world make a version of the same case without that conflict. Mark Montgomery of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies called the reversion "illogical, inefficient and a waste of money"^[9]. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute called the broader memo a "mixed bag," but said steam catapults and hydraulic elevators would leave carriers "less capable and more expensive"^[9].

The Argument That Isn't About the Navy at All

Watch how the story gets told outside the United States, and the frame shifts entirely. China's carrier Fujian was commissioned in November 2025 with three electromagnetic catapults of its own, and has already launched J-15T, J-35, and KJ-600 aircraft^[5]. South China Morning Post covered the U.S. memo as Washington choosing to leave a technology race it was winning, since Beijing skipped steam entirely and went straight to electric launch^[5].

That framing has a gap in it, too: China has published no reliability data for the Fujian's own catapults, so there's no way to compare its real-world performance to EMALS's documented shortfalls^[5]. Chinese carrier aviation is also far less experienced overall than the U.S. Navy's^[5]. The comparison reads as a scoreboard, but half the scoreboard is blank.

American coverage split along familiar lines, too. CNN's headline called the order "very outdated" and said it "baffles naval experts" — two judgment calls before a single fact, in a piece that didn't lead with the Pentagon's own reliability numbers^[3]. RedState's opinion piece framed it as Trump "bringing back" a proven system, without mentioning the 20-year manufacturing gap or General Atomics' financial stake^[11]. USNI News and Breaking Defense, by contrast, largely just reported the memo's language and let the sourced facts stand on their own^[1][2].

What the 60 Days Actually Buys

The memorandum itself only requires a plan — timelines and resourcing requirements, not a construction order^[1][2]. It sits inside a larger shipbuilding document that also calls for a fifth public shipyard and opens the door to building some Navy vessels overseas under what the White House calls the "Finland Model"^[1][2].

Whatever the plan says when it lands in mid-October, Congress still controls the money to build it. If the price comes back in the billions with a years-long delay, that same document becomes the strongest case against doing it. If it comes back manageable, it becomes the case for. Either way, a carrier takes about a decade to build and serves for roughly 50 years — so whatever gets decided about CVN-81 outlives the administration that ordered the study.