Trump orders Pentagon to redesign US aircraft carrier to use steam catapults to launch jets
Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and the acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, to make the change he has had his heart set on since at least 2017, when he first described his idea to Time magazine.
The memorandum gives the Pentagon leaders 60 days to come up with “a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of” the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier, which is already two years behind schedule.
“So I said, ‘What is this?’ ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system, It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said – and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers – I said, ‘What system are you going to be’– ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You’re going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good’.”
President has suggested steam catapults every year since 2017, saying digital systems are too ‘complicated’
www.theguardian.com