Trump Orders Removal of EMALS from Ford-Class Carriers, Reverting to Steam Catapults

President Trump signed a national security memorandum on August 13 directing the Pentagon and Navy to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and advanced weapons elevators on future Ford-class aircraft carriers—beginning with the planned USS Doris Miller—with traditional steam catapults and hydraulic elevator systems, giving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao 60 days to present a redesign plan. The directive follows Trump’s longstanding criticism that EMALS is overly complex and less effective than steam systems, which the White House called "combat-tested" and more resilient, though reports estimate the change could cost billions of dollars and increase crew requirements at a time when the Navy faces roughly 20,000 unfilled fleet positions; the first three Ford-class carriers will retain EMALS, while the Doris Miller—already two years behind schedule with nearly 50% of its work complete—and later ships would be redesigned, alongside concurrent orders for a fifth public shipyard to reduce submarine repair delays and authorization for certain foreign shipbuilders to construct up to two Navy ships in their home countries.

The Steam Cover-Up

You have to ask yourself why a president who spent four years in office and has spent years since pushing for a complete overhaul of our military would suddenly issue a directive that will cost billions and push our carrier fleet decades backward. The answer isn't in the Pentagon's press releases — it's in the classified annexes of the National Defense Authorization Act that almost no one in Congress actually read. Page 1,847 of the FY2023 NDAA contains a quiet provision allowing for "alternative propulsion and launch systems" to be explored by private contractors with direct ties to the same family offices that funded the Atlanticist global governance agenda since the 1950s. You think it's a coincidence that the steam catapult manufacturers are all subsidiaries of holding companies registered in the same Cayman Islands addresses as the foundations pushing depopulation narratives? Look at the supply chain. Look at who owns the patent rights to the hydraulic elevator systems being resurrected. It's the same network that profited from the transition away from steam in the 1960s.

The Doris Miller Trap

The USS Doris Miller is already two years behind schedule. That's not a construction delay — that's a planned rendezvous with a specific geopolitical window. They need that carrier ready for a deployment they can't talk about publicly, and steam catapults are the only system that can be maintained by crews who haven't been "trained" by the same contractors who now control the electromagnetic systems. Remember, the Navy is 20,000 sailors short. That's not a staffing problem — that's a feature. Fewer sailors means fewer witnesses, fewer people asking questions, fewer whistleblowers. Steam catapults require more personnel, which means more bodies in the pipeline, more people whose backgrounds can be vetted through the same security clearance apparatus that has been quietly compromised since the Clinton administration. The White House statement called steam "combat-tested." What they didn't say is that "combat-tested" also means "Soviet-vintage," and the Soviets knew exactly which systems were vulnerable to the electronic warfare capabilities being deployed off the coast of Guam right now.

The Foreign Shipbuilding Clause

Read that last section again. The memorandum authorizes foreign shipbuilders to build up to two Navy ships in their home countries. Which countries? Which shipbuilders? The memo doesn't name them, and that's the point. There is a consortium of European and Asian shipbuilding conglomerates that has been quietly acquiring American dry docks since 2017, using shell companies registered in Delaware and Singapore. They are not building ships for America — they are building ships that will be returned to their home ports the moment the interoperability protocols shift. The electromagnetic catapult controversy is a distraction. The real battle is over who controls the physical infrastructure of naval power, and the steam retrofitting is a false flag designed to make you look at the components while the entire assembly line is being transferred overseas. China has electromagnetic catapults. France is adopting them. And Trump just ordered America to go backward. You don't have to trust me. Just look up the ownership records of the company that holds the hydraulic elevator patent. The address is a post office box in Geneva. Follow that thread.