Last week, an F/A-18F Super Hornet from the US Navy's Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 successfully landed and then took off from the recently commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford—the first full use of the ship's next-generation flight arresting system and electromagnetic catapult. The landing and launch off the Virginia coast are a pair of major milestones for the systems, which have seen their share of controversy (and cost overruns). But the test doesn't close the book on the catapult's problems.

The catapult, called the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), has suffered from control problems that have prevented the Navy from certifying it for use with fully loaded strike aircraft. Earlier launches at a test site at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, in April of 2014 caused a high level of vibration in the wings of F/A-18s loaded with 480-gallon wing-mounted fuel tanks—the configuration commonly used to launch aircraft on long-range strike missions. The vibrations were so strong that Navy officials were concerned about the safety of launching aircraft fully loaded.

US Navy

US Navy

But as USNI News reports, General Atomics (the company that built the catapult system and the arresting system) and the US Navy recently completed tests of a patch for the EMALS software at Lakehurst. After a series of 152 dead-weight "launches" (involving wagons carrying weight equivalent to that of a fully loaded aircraft), the Navy completed tests with real aircraft in July.

The patch has not yet been applied to the software aboard the Ford. Naval Air Systems Command spokesperson Rob Koon told USNI News that there's no rush to do so, as the Ford won't launch any F/A-18s with external fuel tanks until 2019, after the ship completes a "Post Shakedown Availability"—the next time the carrier will be available for an upgrade without upsetting its current testing schedule.

EMALS' problems ran afoul of President Donald Trump earlier this year when he told Time magazine in an interview that he was telling the Navy to not use EMALS in the future and go back to using steam catapults (or "goddamned steam," as he put it). However, acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley said that the Navy would be sticking with EMALS, telling the Washington Examiner that he had received no order from Trump regarding the system.

The catapult system may have contributed to the "first in class" issues that delayed the delivery of the Ford, as well as its cost overruns. The arresting system, also built by General Atomics, also incurred delays and cost overruns, coming in at three times its original contracted cost.