Overview
- President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Aug. 13 directing the Pentagon to produce, within 60 days, a plan to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators from USS Doris Miller and replace them with steam and hydraulic systems.
- General Atomics says work on Doris Miller’s EMALS and arresting gear is nearly 50 percent complete and warned that reversing course now would create substantial cost, schedule, and integration risks.
- Naval and industry engineers say the Ford-class was designed around large electrical-power distribution, so installing steam catapults would require reworking engineering spaces, high-pressure steam piping, flight-deck arrangements, and weapons-elevator systems and would demand reviving a steam-catapult industrial base.
- France’s defense ministry said the U.S. move does not threaten its planned EMALS procurement and noted existing U.S. contracts and recent Navy awards to General Atomics to support the French carrier configuration.
- Analysts and former officials warn the change could create a nonstandard sub-class of Ford carriers, add years and likely billions of dollars to delivery and sustainment costs, and complicate training, spare parts, and shipyard workloads as the Navy conducts internal design reviews including possible island relocation.