Trump’s Current Naval Fixation

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Over the past nine years, Donald Trump has returned again and again to the concept of steam power.

He loves the way that steam propels fighter jets off the decks of aircraft carriers, and he laments that the Navy has pivoted to electromagnetic launchers in its new ships.

“That beautiful scene,” he rhapsodized at a rally in 2023: “That steam goes off, and that plane gets thrown the hell off; the power, beautiful.

And it’s cheap!” By The Guardian ’s accounting , Trump has spoken publicly about these steam catapults every year since 2017, when he claimed to have told the crew of the USS Gerald Ford that they’d be “going to goddamned steam .” The Gerald Ford is the only one of the Navy’s 11 operational aircraft carriers that’s not currently equipped with steam catapults.

Instead, it uses the more modern Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which runs on electricity from the vessel’s two nuclear reactors.

Trump’s wish for the Gerald Ford to return to steam was never fulfilled; the ship was already in the water.

Until last week, future ships were set to use electromagnetic propulsion too.

But on Thursday, Trump ordered one of the Navy’s planned carriers, the USS Doris Miller, to be outfitted with steam catapults instead.

It’s a potential logistical nightmare.

Although the ship isn’t expected to be assembled until later this year, its parts are already under construction.

Experts have said that returning to steam power at this stage in the ship’s development could dramatically increase the cost to taxpayers and delay the building process.

The Doris Miller won’t be completed until the mid-2030s, and a future administration may backpedal.