steam

President Donald Trump says he plans to sign an executive order that would compel the U.S. Navy to use steam-powered catapults and hydraulic elevators on new aircraft carriers. Trump has railed against the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) catapults and Advanced Weapons Elevators (AWE) on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s newest supercarrier, for years now. Ford‘s catapults and elevators have faced reliability and maintenance issues, but swapping out these features, even just for future ships in the class, would involve an extremely costly and time-consuming redesign that would further delay new carriers entering service.

Trump announced his intention to issue an executive order regarding carrier catapults and weapons elevators during often free-wheeling remarks to servicemembers aboard the Nimitz class carrier USS George Washington earlier today. The George Washington is currently in port in Yokosuka, Japan, where it is forward deployed. The President is in Japan as part of a larger tour of Asia.

The Navy currently has 10 Nimitz class carriers, which have steam-powered catapults and hydraulic weapons elevators. In addition to the in-service USS Gerald R. Ford, there are three more Ford class carriers now in various stages of construction. The Navy’s stated plan has been to eventually acquire at least 10 Ford class flattops to replace the Nimitz class.

“I’m putting out an order, I’m going to sign an executive order, when we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults and it’s hydraulic for the elevators,” Trump said after suggesting, without elaborating, that water could disable Ford‘s electromagnetic systems. “We’ll never have a problem.”

“I’m gonna put in an order, seriously,” the President also said. “They’re spending billions of dollars to build stupid electric. And the problem, when it breaks, you have to send up to MIT, get the most brilliant people in the world, fly them out. The steam, they said they can fix it with a hammer and blowtorch. And it works just as well, if not better.”

“They had steam, which worked so beautifully, and it has for 50 years, right? So we’re gonna go back. Seriously, fellas, I want to make that change. I’m gonna do an executive order,” he added. “I’m not going to let them continue to do this thing. They’re trying to make it work, they’re trying so hard, and they have something that’s perfect. So we’re going to go back on that and the magnets.”

As noted, this is hardly the first time Trump has criticized the Ford class design’s electromagnetic catapults and elevators, stretching back all the way to his first term. In 2017, he also indicated that he would order the Navy to abandon those features, but never followed through. If an executive order on this matter is now indeed coming, what it will actually direct the service to do remains to be seen.

TWZ has reached out to the White House, the Pentagon, and the Navy in regards to Trump’s remarks. The Pentagon redirected us to the Navy.

There is real truth behind the President’s criticisms about the catapults and weapons elevators on Ford, which is also known by its hull number CVN-78. TWZ has covered the issues with both of these systems, as well as other long-troubled aspects of the ship’s design, in detail for years now. The Navy has been working to mitigate these problems, but has continued to face challenges at least as recently as last year.

During Ford‘s first full-length deployment between May 2023 to January 2024, “the ship and its embarked air wing completed 8,725 catapult launches using the EMALS,” according to the most recent annual report from the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E), which was published earlier this year. “However, DOT&E has not received sufficient data to update the reliability statistics reported in the FY23 [Fiscal Year 2023] Annual Report. Despite engineering upgrades to hardware and software, reliability has not appreciably changed from prior years and reliance on off-ship technical support remains a challenge. NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command] is continuing development on improvements.”

“The Navy reported that, during CVN 78’s deployment, the ship’s weapons department conducted 11,369 AWE runs, moving 1,829,580 pounds of ordnance to the flight deck. However, the Navy has yet to build and transfer ordnance to the flight deck at rates reflective of the Design Reference Mission,” DOT&E’s report also said. “Of note, the crew is reliant on off-ship technical support for correction of
hardware and software failures. DOT&E expects the SGR [sortie generation rate] tests [planned for Fiscal Year 2025] to be the first operationally representative demonstration of high ordnance throughput.”

In principle, EMALS, together with the Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG), is supposed to give Ford class carriers a significant boost in capability over their predecessors when it comes to the speed at which they can launch and recover aircraft. The software-controlled EMALS and AAG, the latter of which has also faced issues over the years, have lower reset times than the steam-powered systems found on Nimitz class carriers.

The EMALS and AAG can also be more fine-tuned in terms of the forces they exert on aircraft during launch and recovery, expanding the range of types they can accommodate and adding additional margins of safety. This notably helps open the door for embarking smaller and more fragile types on Ford class carriers in the future. This flexibility could be particularly critical for supporting carrier-based drone operations down the line. Wear and tear on individual aircraft can also be reduced.

The electromagnetic AWEs are intended to further help improve the overall efficiency of flight operations on Ford by reducing the time it takes to get ordnance and other stores to where they need to go.

As DOT&E has made clear, however, the EMALS and AWEs, as well as the AAG, have yet to live up to their full potential, despite Ford now being regularly deployed, including in support of combat operations.

There is something of a precedent for significant changes to the Ford class design. The USS Gerald R. Ford is now set to be the only ship in the class with another long-troubled feature, a Dual Band Radar (DBR) system, which you can read more about here. All future ships in the class are now set to have a variant of the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) in place of the DBR.

That being said, replacing the EMALS (and likely the AAG as a result) and the AWEs on the Ford, or any of the other ships in the class currently under construction, would be an immensely more complicated, costly, and time-consuming proposition. The catapults and elevators are far more deeply integrated into the core structure of the ship than the DBR. Even just changing the design for future carriers in the class would be extremely complex. A hybrid arrangement involving a mix of steam and EMALS capabilities might be an option, but would then create two systems that need to be integrated together, as well as sustained once operational.

Delivery of additional Ford class carriers has already been significantly delayed. The prospective delivery date for the second ship in the class, the future USS John F. Kennedy, has already slipped to March 2027, nearly three years later than originally expected. The Navy told USNI News earlier this year that it is looking for ways to shift that timetable back to the left.

Any massive changes to the underlying Ford class design of the ships could easily have cascading effects in that regard, on top of cost growth and other issues. This, in turn, could upend Navy plans for replacing retiring Nimitz class carriers at a time when the service’s carrier fleet overall has been under particular strain due to high operational demands in recent years. Just last week, the Pentagon ordered Ford to cut its scheduled cruise in Europe short and set sail for the Caribbean to support expanded counter-drug operations in that part of the world.

Beyond just his vocal opposition to Ford‘s electromagnetic catapults and weapons elevators, Trump has a long history of being particularly outspoken when it comes to U.S. naval ship design and force planning, as well as the aesthetics of those vessels.

Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the White House and the Navy are in the early stages of hashing out a larger naval force restructuring plan for what has been termed a future “Golden Fleet.”

“Specifically, the White House and the Pentagon are in early talks about building a heavily armored, next-generation ship that could weigh as much as 15,000-20,000 tons and carry more powerful weapons, even potentially hypersonic missiles, in larger numbers than current destroyers and cruisers, the current and former officials said,” according to that report.

This lends some credence to off-hand comments from Trump back in September, where he claimed to be talking with Navy Secretary John Phelan about adding “battleships” with gun-centric armament and heavily armored hulls back into America’s combat fleets. In TWZ‘s deep analysis of Trump’s remarks at the time, we highlighted that battleship-like arsenal ships primarily packed with Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells have been proposed as part of the Navy’s future force structure on various occasions in the past.

The Golden Fleet plans, at least as they exist now, also reportedly put heavy emphasis on uncrewed vessels as part of a “barbell-shaped” overall force structure, “with large ships at one end and small ships at the other,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

It is also worth noting here that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has skipped steam-powered catapults entirely in its carrier force plans. The PLAN has moved straight from short take-off, but arrested recovery (STOBAR) carriers with ski jump bows, and no catapults at all, to the new EMALS-equipped Fujian. China’s new supersized Type 076 amphibious assault ship also has a single catapult, which is understood to be an EMALS type.

If you came to stay on the tiny island of Styrsö (steer-shuh) in the Gothenburg archipelago in the late 19th or early 20th century, there was a good chance it was because you had tuberculosis. The island had already begun to appeal to city folk who came here for fresh air, sea baths and peace, but the sanatoriums set up by the renowned Dr Peter Silfverskiöld gained such a positive reputation that the isle became known as a health resort. Those glory days have long since faded but Kusthotellet, a new hotel dedicated to wellbeing, aims to tap back into the restorative vibe.

The conditions that first drew health-seekers to the island still pertain. It’s tucked away and protected from winds, but the lack of high ground nearby means the sun shines on its southern coast from dawn to dusk, and there’s no pollution. “This island is such a peaceful place – you can really relax and recharge your batteries,” Malin Lilton, manager of Kusthotellet, told my companion and me. “As soon as you get on the ferry your pulse rate goes down and you start breathing in the good air.”

In the spirit of slowing down, we had come by train from the UK with Interrail passes, stopping for the night in Hamburg. Arriving in the late afternoon in Gothenburg, we wandered the old town before heading to Styrsö via tram to Saltholmen harbour and speedy catamaran ferry. City centre to island hotel in just under an hour.

Right on the coast with views across to neighbouring Donsö island, the 40-room, 10-suite hotel is a sleek creation, decorated in the cool, calming colours beloved by Scandinavians, with a light-filled restaurant, wellness area and outdoor heated pool. Our room, one of the 20 with sea views – is a spacious, uncluttered affair with a balcony.

The hotel is designed with sustainability in mind – there are ground-source heat pumps and water-based underfloor heating – and it’s aiming for Green Key sustainability status. And everything has been kept as local as possible, from the staffing and food ingredients to the seaweed and salt used in the spa.

That spa – named Havskuren (“The Sea Cure”) – is split into two areas. The Salt Source offers foot baths, facial treatments and an area for relaxing. The Heat Source contains a sauna, steam bath and plunge pool. There’s also a small gym. “We’re planning to offer massages soon as well,” Malin said.

Malin also explained that cycling, walking, sea swimming and eating are also important elements in guests’ wellbeing, and presented us with two shiny new hire bikes. The 0.6 square mile (1.5 sq km) island is virtually car-free and as we explored over three days, the only vehicles we met on the smooth narrow roads were bicycles, golf carts and three-wheeled mopeds that resembled motorised wheelbarrows.

One morning, having stocked up at the island Co-op, we pedalled off for a picnic lunch on Lilla Lyngnskär, a tiny islet accessible from Styrsö by footbridge. We still somehow had room for fika – coffees with a cinnamon bun and a mighty chokladbollar (Swedish chocolate ball) – at Café Öbergska, formerly an inn owned by pickled herring barons.

Our walks on the island’s wooded southern side included a memorable crepuscular hike on a footpath to a bronze age cairn at Stora Rös, the island’s highest point with a 360-degree vista across the southern Gothenburg archipelago. We shared the path down in the dark with scores of frogs, some no larger than our fingernails. Doubtless many would find their way into the stomachs of the herons we had seen hunting during the day.

Back at the hotel, we dined in the high-ceilinged restaurant with views over the water. The menu features Nordic-influenced seafood dishes such as scallops, cured halibut, plaice and hake, as well as wholesome vegan options using locally farmed vegetables. We tucked into beetroot, chanterelle and oyster mushroom starters followed by charred cabbage and toasted hazelnuts over a mouthwateringly creamy potato base – all delicious.

One evening, after dinner we tried out the spa. Malin handed us a nose-pleasing set of creams and lotions she had made herself, and we luxuriated in the foot-baths, sauna and steam room, suffered in a freezing plunge pool, and relaxed again in the heated outdoor pool with a view across the ocean to the sparkling lights of Donsö.

A bridge has joined Styrsö with this neighbour for just over 50 years, so the next day we cycled over it for an al fresco lunch at the harbourside Popsicle cafe, owned by Donsö-born sisters Kristin and Klara. Their mixture of ingredients grown by friends, tasty bread and cakes made by Klara’s mother-in-law and weekly live music has proved a hit. We returned to the harbour for a delicious dinner featuring jerusalem artichokes, butternut squash and a cauliflower sauce at Isbolaget, a high-ceilinged building that was once an ice store for fishing boats.

Our final slow day was dedicated to a seaweed safari (£118pp) with potter-turned-naturalist Karolina Martinson. We began with a historical cycle tour of the northern part of the island, home to most of Styrsö’s 1,600-strong population. Karolina led us leisurely up and down miniature hills sprinkled with well-kept detached wooden houses, no two alike.

Arriving at Karolina’s chosen beach, we slipped into wetsuits and clambered over rocks into the pleasingly clear and even warm-ish seawater. So followed our introduction to finger kelp, sugar kelp, fork weed, dulse, mermaid’s necklace and good old bladderwrack – all of them good for us or the planet or both. We snorkelled around, watching as Karolina showed us how she picks the plants sustainably.

Our exploration done, we helped to prepare a homemade feast on the beach – traditional bread thins cooked on a stove, tofu wrapped in crispy mermaid’s necklace, light-as-air biscuits made with foraged meadowsweet, sweet bites of sugar kelp and much more besides. When we said our goodbyes, many hours later, we felt like old friends.

All too soon we found ourselves at the dockside waiting for the ferry back to the reality of the outside world. After a few minutes, a woman joined us – bare-footed and apparently clad in nothing but a Kusthotellet spa robe. For all our newfound relaxed state, we clearly still had a lot to learn from the Swedes about how to be laidback.

The trip was supported by the West Sweden tourist board and Kusthotellet Styrsö (double rooms from about £130). Rail tickets were supplied by Interrail; a Global Pass (four days of travel in a month) costs £187 (ages 12-27), £249 (ages 28-59), £224 (60+).

The British Pullman Belmond Train journey, which departs from London Victoria, allows guests to escape the hustle and bustle of the city for a day and be transported back to the 1920s through its art deco carriages

One American traveller has given her verdict of a luxury steam train trip to Bath, however there was one thing about the experience that had her online following stunned – the price of it.

Influencer Eryn Krouse took a trip on a British steam train adventure via the Belmond British Pullman service. The luxury vintage train carries passengers all over the country, including on a special day trip to ‘Historic Bath’. However, her fans have been left slack-jawed at the cost of a trip aboard the historic train.

The British Pullman is so fancy, it requires its own dress code that passengers must adhere to while enjoying four-course meals and bottomless brunches.

The train doesn’t just carry travellers to their destination, but whisks them back through the decades. This magnificent train provides sumptuous journeys throughout the nation, including visits to grand historical properties like Highclere Castle and Burghley House.

Excursions depart from London Victoria and sweep guests through Britain’s glorious countryside, showcasing varied terrain and breathtaking panoramas.

The compartments are absolutely remarkable, with travellers relishing every element, especially the Cygnus, designed by filmmaker Wes Anderson. Food lovers are treated to a feast as every train package features mouth-watering cuisine, from a five-course meal accompanied by champagne to delicate pastries and fragrant teas.

Passengers must follow a rigorous dress code, and can participate in various special activities on the train including a Mother’s Day Afternoon Tea or a Murder Mystery Lunch. The service also ventures to the West Country on a distinctive ‘Historic Bath’ expedition, which is where one social media star travelled on the 1920s-style locomotive.

Content creator Eryn Krouse, originally from Southern California, filmed her journey on the British Pullman during a day trip to Bath. The social media personality revealed the excursion had “been on my bucket list for a while”.

Eryn and her friend were treated to a “beautifully set up” table and a brunch that kicked off with a Bellini, which she said was “kept full” by the attentive staff. The journey to Bath offered stunning views of “lots of lush, green countryside with beautiful flowers, quaint farmhouses and tons of cows and sheep”.

After savouring a “yummy” main course of smoked Scottish salmon with caviar, an English muffin and a poached egg, she took time to explore the cabin cars – including the one designed by Wes Anderson. Eryn noted that “even the bathroom is stunning” before she and her friend ventured out to explore Bath.

They had around two-and-a-half hours to wander around the city, visiting the Roman Bath Museum and Jane Austen Museum before returning to London. Once back on the train, she found her table prepared for an early dinner service featuring a lavish four-course meal.

She shared: “Our four-course meal started off with yet another champagne toast and a bottle of rose. This fried haddock ball was probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

“The bread was warm and fresh and I definitely helped myself to seconds. The main course was this lamb, beautifully presented. I’m not the biggest fan of lamb, but I enjoyed it anyway.

“Then a cheese selection followed by a rhubarb pie was served and we got back to London full and very sleepy. It was an incredible experience and worth every penny.”

However, social media users were left gobsmacked by the hefty price tag of £620 per passenger. One user gasped: “Gosh that’s super expensive!”

Not all trips come with such a steep price, with a solo table starting at £560 for a trip to Bath in April 2026.

The thrilling murder mystery lunch begins at £485, while some journeys can rocket up to a staggering £1,280 per passenger for a private compartment for two.