Unless Stopped, Trump will Sink the Carrier Fleet
Last updated 06:05 AM EDT • Read time: 8m
Today’s U.S. Navy, even with its various internal, industrial and foreign challenges, is the world’s most powerful and flexible maritime power. Its unmatched mix of submarines, surface ships, amphibious forces and a potent power projection capability embodied in its carrier strike groups still rules the waves. All that may change over the next ten years as the Navy meets its most powerful enemy in decades: the sitting President of the United States. President Trump, trapped in nostalgia for a bygone era of the U.S. Navy of his youth in the bright afterglow of World War II has embarked on a path that, if not altered, will hollow out the carrier force, and damage the U.S. Navy more broadly for decades.
Trump's amateur obsession with naval architecture is profoundly dangerous. Combined with the plans he has ordained for a nuclear-powered battleship he is running the risk of crippling America’s naval shipbuilding capabilities – the opposite of what he allegedly intends. Perhaps the worst consequence is that we'll feel the effects of these mistakes over at least two decades. If we implement these presidential directives, we'll have little capacity to respond to regional conflict, deter China's ambitions in Taiwan, limit incursions in the Arctic, or most any other scenario which demands power projection capability to cause a rethinking of aggressive intent against our national interests.
The experience of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln demonstrates that extended deployments and failure to affect a timely transition between U.S. carrier battle groups, required by the President’s misbegotten war in Iran, have an on effect on the entire battle group - not just one big deck carrier. This is already having major impacts on fleet material readiness, the likely prospect of declining reenlistment rates, limited deployments to the Pacific, and failure to meet continued alliance commitments, and joint exercises. The President’s proposed changes will only compound these problems by exacerbating the already stressed condition of the fleet as the Navy plans for continued extended deployments.
Let’s begin with the facts. As the plight of the USS Abraham Lincoln has demonstrated, the Navy is short on operationally available carriers. This is the result of the poor decisions made over several decades in the exuberant but short-sighted expectations of a peace dividend after the Cold War ended, restructuring the Navy’s ship-building base and shrinking the Navy’s organic maintenance and repair infrastructure. As early as 2013 the Navy’s Program Executive Office for Aircraft Carriers, Vice-Admiral Thomas Moore, told Congress that the service is “an 11-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world.” The situation has not improved.
Bringing new carriers into the force to replace the overworked Nimitz class carriers has been plagued with delays. The USS Gerald Ford, the first of a new class of carriers designed to maintain maritime superiority at least through mid-century, took an astounding seventeen years to build. Production of the second and third ships in the Ford class, while much improved over the Ford, are already running late and are behind in their projected delivery to the fleet. Government foot dragging has been a major contributor to the delays and the President’s demands will only make matters worse. To complicate affairs further, the retirement next year of the USS Nimitz before her replacement enters service will temporarily reduce the carrier force to ten ships. U.S. national security requires that the production of these key power projection platforms be accelerated, not delayed. That, however, is not what President Trump would bring about.
Trump’s first attack on the carrier fleet occurred somewhat stealthily and almost unnoticed. Without advice or a demand signal from the Navy, his own Department of Defense, or the Congress, he decreed last December that the U.S. needed fifteen new “Trump class” battleships. Seemingly ignoring the evolution of naval warfare on display in Ukraine– a major topic in its own right – this $275 billion boondoggle takes funds away from other projects that the Navy actually needs. Due to their size (35,000 tons) and nuclear propulsion the only place where the final assembly of the battleships can take place is at Huntington Ingalls Industries Newport News facility. Given the current and anticipated shortage of skilled welders, electricians and other shipyard workers, the battleship vanity project undoubtedly will take resources away from construction of new carriers. Furthermore, although the Navy claims that Newport News can accommodate building both a battleship and a carrier simultaneously, the Congressional Budget Office has cast doubt on that assertion.
Trump’s second attack came in mid-August in a National Security Directive in which he ordered the Navy to report in 60 days on how to replace the new electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) on the fourth and follow-on Ford class ships with 1950’s era steam driven catapults. Based on hearsay, prejudice and little else Trump has long harbored animus towards the EMALS system; in his first term he threatened to replace it. To be fair, the system was initially imposed on the Navy over the service’s objections and suffered teething pains for several years, but the Service now indicates that it is performing excellently and offers significant operational advantages including improved operational reliability and efficiency, increased surge capacity and capability, ability to launch a wider range of aircraft weights and speeds, smoother acceleration for airframe and pilot, reduced manning and lifecycle costs, a quieter, cooler and safer environment, simplified maintenance and digital control with faster troubleshooting. A Navy test this February aboard the Ford not only validated the promise of the EMALS system but demonstrated it could increase sortie rates by 120% to130% compared to the existing Nimitz class ships equipped with steam catapults. Replacing it with Eisenhower era steam catapults will require a major re-work of the carriers, as the ship’s design does not incorporate the massive equipment needed to generate the steam and the reworking to accommodate it will actually end up reducing the capability of the carrier. Carrying out Trump’s directive will impose additional cost in the millions if not billions of dollars and delay deployment timelines for new carriers into the 2030s.
Third, again based on tales he has purportedly heard, he has ordered a re-design of the elevators used to move ordnance around the ship, replacing cutting edge technology with 1950’s equipment -- which promises more delay and more cost. And installing 1950’s technology for this and for the catapults assumes, questionably, that the industrial base which last supplied the steam catapults and old-style elevators almost 20 years ago still exists.
Fourth, the President let it be known last week that “for aesthetic reasons” he has asked the Navy to study repositioning the Ford-class carriers’ island from its current position (which was chosen to increase flight deck flexibility and overall safety) forward so that they resembled the World War II carriers he so admired as a youth watching the classic television series “Victory at Sea”. Each of us were devoted fans of “Victory at Sea” too … but that did not qualify us as naval architects. Moving the island would require a thorough review of the weight, balance and stability implications of changing the position of such a major piece of superstructure. Undertaking to move the island will result again in more delays and more costs.
The President’s ill-considered meddling runs the risk of complicating and damaging the already fragile naval shipbuilding industrial base and could end up replicating the crippling dysfunction that bumbling 1930’s British policymakers ended up inflicting on the United Kingdom’s ability to rearm as Europe’s “gathering storm” of authoritarian aggression increasingly challenged the western democracies during the interwar years.
The Navy used to pride itself in speaking truth to power. President Truman’s decision to scrap a proposed aircraft carrier in the late 1940’s produced “the revolt of the admirals” as a result of which the CNO and other senior officers were fired. Thanks to Defense Secretary Hegseth’s heavy-handedness, silence prevails within the Executive branch today. It is up to the Congress therefore to intervene and fulfill its Constitutional responsibility “to provide and maintain a Navy” (Article 1, Section 8). Congress should prohibit the expenditure of any funding to undo EMALS, the new elevators or to otherwise tinker with carrier design. Moreover, the so-called “Trump” class of battleships needs to be carefully reviewed regarding cost and its potential impact on the Navy’s shipbuilding schedule. Finally, the Congress should immediately launch a review of the Navy’s operational readiness, morale, and ability to carry out its presence mission in areas vital to the national interest.
We call upon the Armed Services Committees and the Defense Appropriations Committees to act before unchecked Presidential meddling and foolishness turns America’s Navy into a second-rate fleet.
Each of the authors devoted decades of service to the United States. Among their many significant positions, Mr. Edelman was Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; Mr. Miller was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Defense and Arms Control on the NSC Staff; and Mr. O’Keefe was Secretary of the Navy.
image: The world’s largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), conducts flight deck operations during Operation Epic Fury, March 15, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo)