The U.S. Navy is evaluating a costly structural overhaul of its Ford-class aircraft carriers, including relocating the ship's command tower, after President Trump flagged concerns about the warships' design, a move officials warn could add billions to an already strained shipbuilding program.
Seven current and former U.S. officials told the Washington Post that the Navy is studying whether to shift the island, the multistory command center that rises above the flight deck, from its current position near the stern to a spot farther forward, closer to the middle of the ship. The change would give future Ford-class carriers a silhouette more like the older carriers that served during World War II.
Trump's objection is straightforward: he does not like how the current ships look. The Ford class places its island near the rear of the vessel, a layout driven by engineering decisions made decades ago. Trump wants it moved forward. And the Navy, by all accounts, is taking the request seriously, even though officials inside the Pentagon caution the price tag could run into the billions and push construction timelines further into the future.
A first-term review already rejected this idea
This is not the first time the proposal has come up. During Trump's first term, the Navy conducted a similar study on relocating the island. The conclusion was blunt. A former senior U.S. official familiar with that earlier review described the findings plainly:
"It came back that the cost and time to do so would just be extraordinary."
Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies naval affairs at the Hudson Institute, echoed that assessment. Clark said relocating the island would amount to a major redesign because the change could affect the carrier's weight and buoyancy, two variables that ripple through every other system on a warship displacing more than 100,000 tons.
"You could change it, but it's very disruptive."
Despite those warnings, at least one U.S. official familiar with the possible changes said the Navy is treating the proposals with genuine seriousness. The service is not brushing this off as a casual suggestion from the Oval Office.
Ford-class carriers already cost $22 billion apiece
The financial stakes are enormous. Future Ford-class carriers are projected to cost about $22 billion each, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the Navy's latest shipbuilding plan. The Navy intends to build as many as 10 of these ships over the next four decades. Any redesign that adds billions per hull would compound across the entire program.
The lead ship, USS Gerald R. Ford, took 17 years to build. Much of that delay stemmed from new technology, including the electromagnetic aircraft launch system, a catapult replacement that has been a persistent source of cost overruns and mechanical headaches. The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Ford, the most expensive carrier in U.S. history at $13 billion, suffered more than $2.3 billion in cost overruns and struggled with launching and recovering aircraft, moving munitions, and ship self-defense systems, pushing its combat readiness years beyond the original 2014 target date.
Three more Ford-class carriers sit in various stages of completion. The USS John F. Kennedy is undergoing sea trials. The USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller are both under construction. Whether a redesigned island would apply only to future hulls or require changes to ships already on the ways remains unclear.
The Ford's record-length deployment underscored both the ship's importance and the strain on the fleet. The carrier returned home after nearly 10 months at sea, the longest post-Vietnam War deployment in Navy history, tied to operations during the Iran conflict and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Trump's memorandum targets catapults, not the island
Separate from the island question, Trump issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to return to steam-powered catapults on future carriers. The electromagnetic launch system used aboard the Ford class has been dogged by reliability problems since its inception, and the memorandum calls for the Navy to emphasize "proven, reliable, and affordable technologies and ship designs."
That memorandum does not address moving the island. The island relocation appears to be a parallel track, one driven by Trump's aesthetic preferences rather than a formal policy directive. When reporters asked the Pentagon and the Navy about the possible island change, both referred questions to the White House. The White House, in turn, pointed back to Trump's memorandum on catapults, a document that says nothing about the island's position.
The runaround is worth noting. Nobody in the chain of command is willing to own the island proposal on the record, yet seven officials confirmed the evaluation is underway. That gap between public posture and private action suggests the Navy finds itself caught between institutional caution and a commander-in-chief who wants visible changes to the fleet.
Trump has also announced plans for a new class of battleships as part of what he has called a "Golden Fleet." The Congressional Budget Office estimated those proposed warships could cost about $275 billion over 30 years, with later ships running about $18 billion each. The recent House passage of a $1.15 trillion defense bill signals that Congress is prepared to invest heavily in the military, but even that level of spending has limits when individual ship programs carry price tags in the tens of billions.
Seventeen years to build one carrier, and the fleet cannot afford gaps
The practical concern is time. When a single aircraft carrier takes nearly two decades from keel-laying to commissioning, any redesign that resets the engineering clock has consequences that stretch across presidential administrations. The Navy is already planning to retire the USS Eisenhower a full year before her replacement arrives, a gap that leaves the fleet short a carrier at a moment when demand for naval power is rising, not falling.
The Ford was designed as the first new carrier class in 40 years. When the Navy christened the ship, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert called her "truly a technological marvel," noting the carrier would carry unmanned aircraft, joint strike fighters, and deploy lasers. Fox News reported the Ford featured an enhanced five-acre flight deck and electromagnetic catapults, the very system Trump's memorandum now seeks to replace with steam.
The tension between modernization and reliability is real. The electromagnetic launch system was supposed to be a generational leap. Instead it became a case study in what happens when the Pentagon pushes unproven technology into production before it is ready. Sen. John McCain, during his time overseeing defense procurement, called the Ford-class program "a case study in why our acquisition system must be reformed, unrealistic business cases, poor cost estimates, new systems rushed to production, concurrent design and construction, and problems testing systems to demonstrate promised capability."
Trump's instinct to demand proven technology over experimental systems has a solid track record of support among defense reformers. Steam catapults worked for decades. The electromagnetic system has not yet proven it can match that reliability. On the catapult question, the president is pushing the Navy toward accountability for a procurement failure that predates his administration.
The island question is different. Moving a command tower to satisfy an aesthetic preference, when the Navy's own prior review concluded the cost and delay would be "extraordinary", is harder to square with the memorandum's own call for affordable ship designs. The two directives pull in opposite directions: one demands proven, cost-effective engineering; the other asks for a structural overhaul that engineers have already flagged as enormously expensive and disruptive.
Carriers remain the backbone of American naval power
None of this unfolds in a vacuum. Two carrier strike groups recently entered the Gulf of Oman as tensions with Iran escalated, and U.S. forces sank Iran's drone carrier just 13 months after it entered service. These are not theoretical assets. Carriers project American power in real conflicts, and every month a hull sits in a shipyard for redesign work is a month it cannot deploy.
The Navy has not formally initiated a redesign process, and the evaluation may ultimately reach the same conclusion as the first-term review: that the cost and delay are not worth it. But the fact that seven officials confirmed the study is underway, and that no one in the Pentagon will discuss it publicly, suggests the proposal has more institutional momentum this time around.
Taxpayers who fund these ships at $22 billion a pop deserve to know whether their money is being spent on warfighting capability or cosmetic preferences. The Navy owes them a clear answer, and so does the White House.
