WTFing the Carrier Fleet
By 
Big news is that Trump hates electromagnetic catapults bigly and that he’s ordered the Navy to redesign the Dorie Miller (CVN-81) for steam.
But since Trump said in an interview with Time in 2017 that he told the Navy to go back to “goddamn steam,” top Navy and industry leaders have resisted the move because of the enormous expense to tear out such a complex system that was integral to the design of the Ford class.
The move directs the Navy to redesign the fourth ship in the class—to be named the Doris Miller—and all remaining ships. The first three ships—the Ford, John F. Kennedy and Enterprise—will retain the electromagnetic system.
“They’re not nearly as good, too complex,” Trump said last month at a conference in Pennsylvania, referring to the electromagnetic system.
The order marks Trump’s latest foray into the design and development of major military programs. He inserted himself into negotiations for the Air Force One and the F-35 jet fighter programs, directed design changes to the Constellation-class frigate and championed the creation of Trump-class battleships.
“This decision will result in carriers that are enabled by battle-tested steam and hydraulic systems that are more resilient and robust than the present, more exquisite, follow-on systems,” the White House said in a statement. “It will also reactivate portions of the maritime industrial base that are easier to scale.”
You will not be surprised to learn that this is incomparably stupid:
This is a nightmare for the US Navy. Although navalists have generally been happy with this administration, few, if any, serious naval architecture analysts have spoken up in defense of this shift.
Indeed, the Navy has been trying to avoid the steam catapult issue since early in Trump’s first term. With a bit more than two years left in his term, the Navy will likely continue to stonewall and obstruct, slow-walking the redesign of CVN-81 until Trump leaves office.
The most likely impact will be a delay in the construction of Dorie Miller to evaluate these design changes, along with all the corresponding cost increases.
Let there be no mistake; this is an unprecedented intervention by a President in a matter of deep technical concern.
No previous President has mandated changes in naval architecture at such a granular level, and none has done so with less grasp of the technical issues involved.
Fortunately, President Trump’s intervention will likely result in no more than a delay in the construction of the fourth Ford-class carrier, as any successor of either party is likely to reverse the order in January 2029.
In other news, while reports of a “mutiny” on the USS Abraham Lincoln look to me to have been a bit overblown, it sure is interesting that they’ve decided to pivot the USS George Washington to the Middle East to relieve Lincoln:
The USS George Washington, based in Japan, has been operating in the South China Sea in recent weeks and recently made a port call in Vietnam. The carrier’s deployment in the region was an example of how the U.S. military works to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific. The carrier recently transited the Strait of Malacca moving westward alongside guided-missile destroyers, according to ship-tracking data and a U.S. official.
The Washington’s movement to the Middle East will leave a temporary void in the Pacific, where China has deployed its own aircraft carrier and is seeking to exert influence over its neighbors, analysts say.
“Normally, the George Washington would do its patrol and go and show the flag and demonstrate our resolve and our support to countries like the Philippines and Japan,” said Bryan Clark, a former naval officer who is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank that studies national security issues. “We’re going to forgo all these strategic opportunities to influence the relationships with the neighbors there.”
It’s hard to understate the significance of the carrier deployed to Yokosuka. It’s one of the most politically sensitive carrier deployments, both because of the nuclear issue with Japan but also because several Pacific Rim allies consider the presence of a US carrier in the region to be foundational to their national security planning. It’s not accidental that the carrier in question is the USS George Washington; only a carrier with a sufficiently prestigious name would be regarded as appropriate by the Japanese hosts (you cannot send the USS Harry Truman to Japan, for obvious reasons, and neither can you send a ship named after such obscurities as John Stennis or Carl Vinson). It indicates to me that the problems with Lincoln are real and that the Pentagon expects the war/notwar to continue for a while.