Honestly, if you’ve followed the saga of the USS Gerald R. Ford, you know it's a bit of a mess. Or at least, it was. Donald Trump sure thought so. For years, the former president made the Navy’s newest, shiniest $13 billion toy his favorite punching bag.
He didn't just complain about the price tag. He went after the guts of the ship.
Specifically, he had a massive bone to pick with how the thing throws planes into the air. While the Navy was busy bragging about "digital" technology and "linear induction motors," Trump was out there telling everyone who would listen that we should just go back to "goddamned steam."
It sounds like a weirdly specific hill to die on, right? But when you dig into why Donald Trump criticizes USS Gerald Ford, you realize it wasn't just a random rant. It was a clash between old-school reliability and high-tech ambition that nearly derailed the future of American naval power.
The "Albert Einstein" Problem
Trump’s most famous line about the ship came during a 2017 interview with Time magazine. He recounted a conversation he allegedly had with a sailor on board.
"I said, 'You don't use steam anymore for catapult?' 'No sir.' I said, 'Ah, how is it working?' 'Sir, not good. Not good.'"
According to Trump, the new system—the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS—was just too complicated. He famously said, "You have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out."
To be fair, he wasn't entirely wrong about the "not good" part at the time. The USS Gerald R. Ford was years behind schedule. It was billions over budget. And the EMALS system? It was failing. Frequently.
In the early testing phases, the reliability was a joke. The Navy wanted the system to go 4,166 launches between failures. In reality, it was breaking down every 181 cycles. If you're in the middle of a war, having your catapult freeze up every couple of hundred launches is a literal death sentence for the mission.
🔗 Read more: The Faces Leopard Eating Meme: Why People Still Love Watching Regret in Real Time
Why Steam Was King
For sixty years, the US Navy used steam. It was simple. You build up pressure, you release a piston, and boom—the plane is flying.
Trump loved the "brutal" nature of it. He talked about seeing the "sucker going and steam's going all over the place." It was visceral. It was proven.
The new EMALS system, however, uses magnets. Think of it like a giant, high-powered version of a railgun or a Maglev train. It’s supposed to be smoother, put less stress on the aircraft frames, and allow the Navy to launch everything from heavy fighters to light drones.
But Trump’s point was basically: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Especially if the "fix" costs an extra few hundred million and requires a PhD to maintain.
Beyond the Catapults: The Elevator Nightmare
It wasn't just the catapults. Trump also went after the elevators. Specifically, the Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE).
These are the lifts that bring missiles and bombs from the gut of the ship up to the flight deck. On the Ford, these also used magnets instead of cables and hydraulics.
For a long time, they just didn't work.
Imagine having the world's most advanced warship, but you can't get the bullets to the guns. That was the reality for the Ford for years. In 2019, the Secretary of the Navy at the time, Richard V. Spencer, even told Trump that if the elevators weren't fixed by the end of the summer, Trump could fire him.
💡 You might also like: Whos Winning The Election Rn Polls: The January 2026 Reality Check
Spoiler: They weren't fixed. Spencer was eventually pushed out (though for other reasons involving a SEAL Team case), and the elevators remained a headache until 2021.
Is He Actually Right?
This is where it gets nuanced. If you ask a tech-head or a modern Naval Admiral, they’ll tell you EMALS is the future. It’s lighter. It takes up less space. It needs fewer sailors to run it.
But if you ask a taxpayer—or a guy like Trump who values "tried and true" hardware—the Ford looks like a cautionary tale of "concurrency."
Concurrency is a fancy Pentagon word for "building the thing while you're still designing it." The Navy tried to jam too many new technologies onto one hull at the same time.
- EMALS (The catapult)
- AAG (Advanced Arresting Gear to catch the planes)
- AWE (The elevators)
- Dual Band Radar
When one thing broke, it delayed everything else. It’s why the ship was commissioned in 2017 but didn't actually go on a full, "real" deployment until late 2022.
Trump’s criticism was basically a populist take on a very real engineering disaster. He saw a $13 billion ship that couldn't launch planes reliably and saw "waste, fraud, and abuse."
The 2025-2026 Reality
Fast forward to today. As of early 2026, the USS Gerald R. Ford has finally started to find its sea legs. It spent a significant amount of time in the Mediterranean recently, acting as a deterrent during various global tensions.
The EMALS has improved. The elevators finally work. The "Albert Einsteins" on board have mostly figured it out.
📖 Related: Who Has Trump Pardoned So Far: What Really Happened with the 47th President's List
But the scars of those early failures remain. Even now, there are reports about the sewage systems on the Ford being a nightmare because they used a vacuum system (like a cruise ship) that wasn't designed for 4,500 sailors. Every time it clogs, the Navy has to spend $400,000 on an "acid flush."
Trump’s obsession with "hydraulics" and "steam" might sound Luddite-ish, but it tapped into a very real frustration within the military-industrial complex.
What You Can Learn from the Ford Debacle
If you're looking at this from a business or project management perspective, the USS Ford is the ultimate "don't do this" guide.
- Don't over-innovate. If you change 10 core systems at once, you're asking for a cascading failure.
- Reliability is a feature. A "better" system that works 50% of the time is actually a worse system.
- Listen to the operators. Trump’s "sailor in the hangar bay" story might be anecdotal, but the guys turning the wrenches usually know where the bodies are buried.
So, was Trump right?
Technically, EMALS is better than steam... when it works. It allows for a higher "sortie rate" (more planes in the air faster). But in terms of cost-effectiveness and project management, the critics have a mountain of evidence on their side.
Moving forward, keep an eye on the next ships in the class—the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) and the Enterprise (CVN-80). The Navy is doubling down on the tech Trump hated. They’re betting that the "digital" growing pains were worth the leap.
Only time (and maybe the next global conflict) will tell if that bet pays off or if we’ll all be wishing for that "brutal" steam power again.
Actionable Insights:
- Monitor Naval Budget Reports: If you're interested in defense spending, watch the GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports on the John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) to see if the Navy actually learned from the Ford's mistakes.
- Study Concurrency Risks: If you manage tech projects, use the "Ford-class" as a case study for why you should never prototype and produce simultaneously.
- Fact-Check the Reliability: When you hear about the Ford being "deployed," check the sortie generation rates. That's the real metric that proves whether Trump’s "Einstein" criticisms still hold water.