New White House Memo Calls for Foreign-Built Warships, Return to Steam Catapults on Ford Carriers

Republic of Korea Navy warships, including Sejong the Great-class and Jeongjo the Great-class Aegis destroyers, as well as Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyers on Nov. 9, 2025. Republic of Korea Navy photo President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to consider foreign-built warships and auxiliary vessels for the U.S. Navy, in addition to other proposed changes to shipbuilding, in a sweeping presidential memo released on Thursday.

Citing a lack of capacity in the U.S. naval shipbuilding base and cost growth, Trump is instead calling for more foreign investment in U.S. shipbuilding and the use of foreign ship designs that would initially get constructed abroad.

“An atrophied shipbuilding industrial base, coupled with diminished adjacent supplier bases, has expanded delays and increased costs. The Department of War shall restore both capacity and competition to the maritime industrial base as it expands our naval force structure,” reads the memo. “It will use proven, reliable, and affordable technologies and ship designs, as well as award contracts that enable purchases from foreign suppliers in the near term while simultaneously incentivizing investment in America’s shipbuilding industrial base, consistent with other major equipment purchases such as icebreakers.”

In the memo, Trump called for an expanded use of the “Finland Model” that the U.S. Coast Guard is using to build two separate classes of medium icebreakers simultaneously in the U.S. and in Finland. One of the competitors, Canadian shipbuilder Davie, bought the Gulf-Copper yard in Texas and pledged to revamp the yard to build the ice breakers following the construction of the first two in Helsinki Shipyard.The new memo directs the Pentagon to apply a similar model for three classes of ships built by foreign shipbuilders, provided the yards “simultaneously builds a new shipyard in the United States or assumes ownership or a majority equity position in an existing shipyard in the United States, and builds all ships after the first two such ships in United States shipyards.”

The memo goes on to describe the classes including “surface combatants with sufficient inherent capabilities to perform anti‑submarine warfare, surface warfare, and convoy escort duties,” roll-on, roll-off cargo vessels and consolidated cargo replenishment at sea (CONSOL) tankers.

While the memo doesn’t specify the type of warships, it meets the general roles and responsibilities of an anti-submarine warfare frigate. The ASW mission was supposed to be filled by the now-cancelled Constellation-class frigate program. After cancelling the Constellation-class, the Navy proposed a version of the National Security Cutter as a patrol frigate late last year.

By law, American warships and cutters have to be built in the U.S., but the president has broad authority to waive that requirement for general “national security interests.”

The Pentagon included $1.85 billion in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget submission for a foreign warship study. That funding request was part of the proposed reconciliation portion of the budget. USNI News reported in April that the focus of the study was to buy warships in Japan and South Korea.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is directed to deliver a plan for the foreign frigate to Trump via White House Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, according to the memo.

Congress is trying to halt the executive push for foreign shipbuilding, with the Senate Armed Services Committee in its draft of the FY 2027 defense policy bill removing the presidential waiver authority from Title 10 that allows the commander-in-chief to use an undefined “national security interest” exception to buy foreign warships for the U.S. armed forces. The draft legislation would allow the Pentagon to purchase auxiliary ships from allies.

The House Armed Services Committee’s draft of the FY 2027 defense policy bill also sought to curb the Trump administration’s desire to purchase foreign-built warships. The legislation passed out of committee with an amendment from Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) that would prevent any authorized funding from going toward contracts buying an American warship built in a foreign yard.

EMALS Change

An artist’s concept of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS). General Atomics Image Trump ordered a redesign of the Navy’s future Ford-class aircraft carriers, doing away with the electromagnetic aircraft launch and advanced weapons elevator systems, USNI News has learned.

The change will require the Navy to replace the electromagnetic system in future Ford-class carriers with steam catapults and the advanced weapons elevators with hydraulic systems, according to the memorandum signed Thursday, first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Within two months, the Defense Secretary and Secretary of the Navy must submit a plan on how to replace the systems beginning with CVN-81, the future USS Doris Miller.

“Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall provide to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of CVN-81, including timelines and resourcing requirements,” reads the presidential memo.

Trump has long lamented the new technology – specifically the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch Systems, or EMALS – on the Ford-class carriers, including as recently as last month while speaking at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Penn.

“We’re not letting any more ships be built with the ridiculous billions of dollars more they spent on electric catapults, and they’re not good. They’re not nearly as good – too complex,” Trump said during his speech. “The same thing with the magnetic elevators. We want them to be made hydraulic.”

During the USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN-78) latest deployment, the Navy did a four-day carrier sortie generation test in February to prove the efficacy of the EMALS system that beat Nimitz-class rates, USNI News understands. The service has not released the data on the test.

In a statement, EMALS builder General Atomics said the statement warranted “careful consideration.”

Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Equipment) 3rd Class Darius Jarmon lubricates an electromagnetic aircraft launching system (EMALS) catapult aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) in 2017. US Navy Photo “The decision not to proceed with EMALS on CVN-81 warrants careful reconsideration. With nearly 50% of production complete, changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks,” reads the statement provided to USNI News. “The decision will have broader implications for carrier readiness, national security, and U.S. technological superiority, potentially creating opportunities for adversaries to close the capability gap. It also comes at a time when strengthening the U.S. supplier industrial base is a national priority, making workforce stability, production capacity, and the ability to sustain critical technologies more important than ever.”

Both new classes of catapult launched aircraft carriers under construction, the French PANG program and the Chinese Fujian, use electromagnetic catapults.

In April, then-Secretary of the Navy John Phelan told reporters the Navy was assessing the design of future Ford-class aircraft carriers to evaluate the platform’s cost and capabilities.

The first three ships in the class – Gerald R. Ford, future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) and the under-construction future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) – will keep the electromagnet aircraft launch systems.

Gerald R. Ford delivered to the Navy in 2017 after years of delays. The lead ship was also billions over budget.

The second Ford-class aircraft carrier – JFK – left Wednesday afternoon for acceptance trials after years of delays and congressionally mandated equipment changes to the ship, USNI News reported. According to budget documents, two systems held up the delivery of JFK in 2025 — testing on the Advanced Arresting Gear that catch aircraft as they land on the carrier and the Advanced Weapons Elevators that shuttle munitions from ammo storage deep in the ship to the aircraft on the flight deck.

USNI News understands the Navy recently notified Congress that seven of the 11 advanced weapons elevators aboard JFK have completed construction. The number of elevators delivered will allow the crew to access all of the weapons magazines and continue training and certification, according to the notification.

The presidential memo signed Thursday also called for a 120-day study “to increase nuclear-powered submarine and aircraft carrier readiness that will include the use of private sector capabilities and the establishment of a fifth public Navy Yard” and a comprehensive review of Naval Systems Command.

“The objective of these reforms should be to: introduce results‑based accountability for NAVSEA leadership, determined by speed of delivery of vessels and systems; reduce bureaucracy and red tape; eliminate competing priorities among different NAVSEA components, which often result in delayed, cost-prohibitive, or overly complex vessels and systems; and prevent NAVSEA from imposing redesigns or iterative design changes upon original mature parent designs,” reads the memo.