U.S. Navy orders EMALS spares while Trump moves fleet toward steam

General Atomics has won a $42.9 million U.S. Navy order for spare parts supporting the electromagnetic catapults and arresting gear on the service’s in-service Ford-class carriers.

The order, designated N0001926F1037, was issued against an existing basic ordering agreement, N0001926G1008. It covers insurance spares and rotable pool spares for the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, known as EMALS, and the Advanced Arresting Gear, known as AAG. Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. The contract was not competed.

Work will be split across four locations. Tupelo, Mississippi, will handle 61 percent of the order, San Diego, California, will handle 38 percent, and Boston, Massachusetts, and Lakehurst, New Jersey, will each handle 0.5 percent. The Navy expects the work to be finished by April 2034. Fiscal 2026 Navy procurement funds covering the full $42.9 million will be obligated when the order takes effect.

Insurance spares are parts kept on hand to cover unexpected failures, and rotable pool spares are components designed to be removed, repaired, and reinstalled rather than discarded when they fail. Both categories support day-to-day sustainment of EMALS and AAG on carriers already at sea, as distinct from new construction.

EMALS uses a linear induction motor to launch aircraft off a carrier deck, replacing the steam-driven pistons used on the Navy’s older Nimitz-class ships. AAG uses a similar approach to slow aircraft during landing. General Atomics, based in San Diego, designed and built both systems and operates a manufacturing site in Tupelo, Mississippi, that has produced EMALS and AAG hardware since 2005.

USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the lead ship of the class, entered service with EMALS in 2017 after a development process marked by cost growth and reliability problems in its early years. The system has since logged tens of thousands of launches. Reuters reported in March 2026 that Ford had completed more than 36,000 EMALS launches. The carrier deployed for 11 months before returning in May, a deployment during which the Navy credited it with more than 12,200 aircraft launches.

President Trump signed a national security memorandum on Aug. 13 directing the Navy to remove EMALS and AAG from the fourth Ford-class carrier, the future USS Doris Miller, and to submit a plan within 60 days for equipping it and subsequent ships with steam catapults and hydraulic elevators instead. The memo does not affect Ford, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79), or the future USS Enterprise (CVN 80), all of which will retain EMALS and AAG as built.

General Atomics has said the decision not to proceed with EMALS on Doris Miller “warrants careful reconsideration.” Naval analysts have said retrofitting an already-designed Ford-class hull with steam catapults would require extensive structural changes, since the ships were built around an all-electric power architecture rather than the high-pressure steam piping steam catapults require.

The new spares order announced this week applies to EMALS and AAG systems already installed on carriers in the fleet. It is separate from the policy dispute over which launch technology future Ford-class ships will carry, and does not indicate a change in the Navy’s plans for sustaining the systems currently in service.

The Navy has not disclosed how many EMALS or AAG shipsets the new spares order is intended to support, or which specific carriers will receive the parts produced under the contract.