WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is ordering the U.S. Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults that he has long said he prefers, according to a directive issued Thursday.
The new mandate would likely cost billions of dollars and revert the Navy’s most advanced ships to a system that takes more sailors to operate and is more difficult to maintain.
The memo directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, within two months. It also says the Ford-class carrier's electromagnetic weapons elevators should be replaced.
The move comes after years of Trump railing against the new, magnetically powered catapult system that shoots fighter jets off the deck of the carriers. It also comes at a time when the U.S. military is trying to find funding from Congress for all its desired equipment and as the Navy is struggling to fill its ships with enough sailors.
Trump's ire with the new technology goes back to at least 2017 in his first term, when he claimed the new system is “not good” and “doesn't have the power” of the older, steam systems in an interview with Time magazine.
“You're going to goddamned steam,” Trump said at the time. The topic has frequently come up since then at rallies and other events.
While Trump is looking to roll back the latest technology, the newest Chinese aircraft carriers employ electromagnetic catapults and France said it plans to use the system on its new carrier.
Trump's memo directs the fourth Ford-class carrier, the USS Doris Miller, to be the first ship to include the new changes. That will leave the USS Gerald R. Ford, as well as the forthcoming USS John F. Kennedy and USS Enterprise, untouched.
However, redesigning an already finalized ship for such a major system change will not be an easy task.
General Atomics, the company that makes EMALS, told The Associated Press in an email that the decision not to proceed with the system on the USS Doris Miller “warrants careful reconsideration.”
Trump's memo that mandates the removal of the system also noted that one of the issues facing shipbuilding is the Navy's constant design changes, “which have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations.”
General Atomics said the work on the Doris Miller's catapults and arresting gear was already halfway complete and said “changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks."
The move comes as Congress will weigh the necessary budget and funding bills that the Trump administration has said they need to fund the Pentagon and the Iran war.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth estimated last month that the war's cost grew to $37.5 billion as Republicans prepared a $95 billion package to fund the military, along with other White House priorities.
Hegseth said the supplemental war funding is an “urgent, necessary” injection of money, and with Trump's proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget a generational investment in the military.
The House narrowly adopted both but the Senate still must act when it returns in September.
Some of the key advantages to the electromagnetic system are its ability to launch aircraft at faster speeds while being easier to maintain, requiring fewer sailors to operate and using less space aboard the ship.
EMALS aboard the USS Ford cut the number of sailors need to operate the catapults from about a dozen to two.
Reverting to a system that requires more people to operate it comes as the Navy has struggled to translate its recruiting successes in the past year to actually filling jobs on warships. At the start of the year, the Navy had about 20,000 unfilled posts across the fleet.
In February, the Navy touted the system in a press release that said it allowed the USS Ford to launch and recover aircraft at a higher rate than its predecessor, the Nimitz-class ships.
FILE - The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is docked at Souda Naval Base near Chania on the island of Crete, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Giannis Angelakis).
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, from right, speaks as President Donald Trump and Jennifer Hegseth listen during a meeting about military families, in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Aug. 3, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
DYERSVILLE, Iowa (AP) — Major League Baseball came back to the Field of Dreams carrying a big piece of Cooperstown.
The pregame pomp before the Minnesota Twins played the Philadelphia Phillies — adjacent to the farmland where the 1989 fantasy was filmed — featured 26 members of the Hall of Fame emerging from the outfield corn just as the ghost players did in the movie.
With some of the loudest cheers saved for former Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt and former Twins catcher Joe Mauer, the capacity crowd of about 8,000 at the newly constructed ballpark in northeast Iowa soaked up the surreal atmosphere as the aged stars strolled into the infield for proper introductions.
Fireworks were launched from the cornfield during the national anthem, and Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber followed with his own big bang — a stalk shot to right on Twins starter Taj Bradley's third pitch of the game that set the tone for a 7-1 win on Thursday night.
After stealing the show at the inaugural 2021 event, which was played on the same footprint at a temporary setup that also hosted the 2022 game, Kevin Costner did not appear.
But the star of the film — as the restless farmer Ray Kinsella who reconnects with his late father by playing catch on his front-yard ballfield — narrated the pregame video that helped pump some old-guard nostalgia through the new-school broadcast on global streaming giant Netflix.
Both teams emerged from the corn together to take their places along the lines like on opening day, and Twins All-Star Byron Buxton — who came off the injured list in the afternoon to play — took the microphone to evoke a line from James Earl Jones, who played the author Terence Mann in the movie.
“The one constant through all the years has been baseball," Buxton said before Schwarber followed with a brief script on an idyllic late-summer night after heavy rain moved through the area earlier in the day.
Then came the legends, and living ones at that, unlike those wool-clad lads in the movie.
Schmidt and Steve Carlton wore Phillies uniforms along with Jim Kaat, who played for both teams. Mauer and Bert Blyleven donned Twins jerseys. The others — Andruw Jones, Harold Baines, Fred McGriff, Adrián Beltré, Andre Dawson, Larry Walker, Cal Ripken Jr., Iván Rodríguez, Jim Thome, Scott Rolen, Tony Pérez, Tony La Russa, Jeff Kent, Fergie Jenkins, Joe Torre, CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Rollie Fingers, Lee Smith and Trevor Hoffman — helped form a half-ring around the diamond to represent about one-third of the Cooperstown contingent that's still alive.
This was the largest such gathering at a ballpark, not including the annual ceremonies at the Hall of Fame in upstate New York, since the All-Star Game in 2008 that feted the final season at old Yankee Stadium.
Phillies manager Don Mattingly relished the brief pregame mingle before the grand entrance, with many in the group contemporaries of his as a player in the 1980s and 1990s and a few others in Jones and Kent he was able to coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“It was definitely good to see the boys,” Mattingly said.
Before the game, Buxton played catch with his 12-year-old son on the nearby movie site that remains open to the public for no cost on non-event days. Twins manager Derek Shelton did the same with his 78-year-old father, a former educator who coached him on his high school baseball team. Shelton later complained that his arm was in weaker shape.
“You don’t get old enough that an experience like that is not emotional to be able to do something with your father,” Shelton said.
Mattingly, whose son just happens to be the club's general manager, found himself harkening back to Indiana childhood ballgames with his brothers upon arrival on the team bus.
“This place reminds me of when I was a kid,” Mattingly said. "You’d go down a dirt road, and all of sudden you’d see a cornfield and then there’d be a field there."
Both teams wore throwback uniforms — the Twins in home threads from their first season in 1961 and the Phillies in road jerseys circa 1940 — in step with the hand-operated scoreboard in right field.
The permanent ballpark built for all kinds of events — including the opportunity to host MLB games on a recurring basis — also has plenty of amenities with the video board in left field, a state-of-the-art sound system and, of course, indoor plumbing.
The feel of the farm was just as strong as the buzz of the ballpark, with natural sponsor John Deere pledging $100,000 per home run hit to hunger-relief organization Feeding America.
The special environment didn't erase the circumstance of the stretch run of the regular season, though, with both the Twins and Phillies in the thick of their respective wild-card races.
“We’re not in Minnesota for three days," Phillies star Bryce Harper said, "but we’re still playing the Twins three times and we've still got to win some games."
Even in defeat, the Twins enjoyed taking part in something bigger than simply the 123rd game on their schedule.
“As you grow in this game and get older and play more games, the shine of being in the big leagues and walking out on a big league field starts to wear off,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “Moments like this kind of bring that excitement and that energy and the goosebumps similar to your debut day.”
See AP’s full MLB coverage here
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Jonathan Bowlan talks with Paul Scherrman, right, of Farley, Iowa, before a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins at the Field of Dreams movie site, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Dyersville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Minnesota Twins manager Derek Shelton walks off the field after a team photo before a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies at the Field of Dreams movie site, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Dyersville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Minnesota Twins pitcher Dean Kremer poses for a photo in a cornfield before a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies at the Field of Dreams movie site, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Dyersville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Scoreboard workers look on before a baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the Philadelphia Phillies at the Field of Dreams movie site, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Dyersville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Players walk onto the field before a baseball game between the Minnesota Twins and the Philadelphia Phillies at the Field of Dreams movie site, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in Dyersville, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
