You can configure struts to use a custom ActionForward class for "global" forwards - by having a custom ModuleConfigFactory which sets the global forward class in the ModuleConfig, but this doesn't affect regular "forwards" that are part of an action mapping in struts-config.xml.
Is this an oversight when the changes for the "global" action forwards were put back in (bug 26942): http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=26942 Looking at ConfigRuleSet it seems to me like its always going to create the default ActionForward class: digester.addObjectCreate ("struts-config/action-mappings/action/forward", "org.apache.struts.action.ActionForward", "className"); Unless its changed to the same as the global forwards: digester.addFactoryCreate ("struts-config/global-forwards/forward", new GlobalForwardFactory()); Wouldn't it be better to have a setActionForwardClass(String) method in ModuleConfig, which is used by both global and regular forwards rather than a setGlobalForwardClass() method? Niall