Trump Says U.S. Aircraft Carrier Design Is 'Wrong,' Plans Overhaul

[babylonsister]

Who's getting this contract?


Trump Says U.S. Aircraft Carrier Design Is ‘Wrong,’ Plans Overhaul
By Jennifer Epstein
May 28, 2019, 1:06 AM EDT


President Donald Trump told U.S. troops stationed in Japan he plans to order traditional steam powered catapults aboard American warships instead of newer electromagnetic systems that he said may not work as well during wartime.

Trump polled the sailors and Marines on the USS Wasp on steam versus electric catapults Tuesday during a visit to the the Yokosuka naval base south of Tokyo, the biggest overseas U.S. naval installation.

The tour came at the end of the president’s four-day state visit to Japan, a key military ally. The troops’ cheers were audibly larger for steam catapults -- used to launch aircraft off navy ships -- and Trump took note.

“We’re spending all that money on electric and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions," he said. "So I think I’m going to put an order -- when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam."

The U.S. Navy intends to buy two Ford-class aircraft carriers Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said earlier this year. The Ford has long been a source of frustration for Trump, who has bashed the carrier’s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, which is replacing the steam catapults.

Trump told the Japan base personnel that steam catapults work better than the newer, higher-tech systems.

more...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-28/trump-says-u-s-aircraft-carrier-design-wrong-plans-overhaul?srnd=premium&fbclid=IwAR1tu3v_N0P5L8dul_rAXauxLIuW4Gtqa-Pc2uIMQ3TyaBBFcGFrvRKN0AI

[lagomorph777]

1. Seriously. Turd wants to take us back to the age of steam power.

Now he knows better than the engineers.

[RKP5637]

3. Hey, also leave room in the ship for tons of coal to fire the new steam engines just mandated

by president Jerk, the stable genius.

[FBaggins]

4. Back? All of our carriers are steam powered - either directly or indirectly.

That's unlikely to change any time soon.

[lagomorph777]

5. I know, nuclear steam power, blah blah....

But if catapults can run more efficiently/reliably on electric power shouldn't we do that?

[FBaggins]

12. That's the open question of course

I can't agree with Trump's latest version of Bush's "I'm the decider" nonsense... but we definitely haven't gotten to the point where we know that the new system CAN be "more reliable".

Trump isn't wrong that the new carrier systems have been a mess. He could even be right that we should stick with what has worked for decades until a better alternative can be proven. Where he's wrong is in not delegating such decisions to the experts. His micromanagement of military systems (plus AF1) is an embarrassment.

[RKP5637]

23. Exactly!!! "Where he's wrong is in not delegating such decisions to the experts.

His micromanagement of military systems (plus AF1) is an embarrassment." The damn fool thinks he knows everything, which is often the mark of a very stupid person. But well, then again, he is a stable genius as he's told us. What a damn idiot and such an embarrassment to the US.

[MyOwnPeace]

44. Not "quite" true..................

"His micromanagement of military systems (plus AF1) is an embarrassment."

EVERYTHING HE DOES is an embarrassment!

[karynnj]

29. As he said .. he has an uncle who was at MIT ...

Seriously, this is insane! Also, doesn't Congress have something to say about this -- and they rely on the military's experts.

[FBaggins]

2. Easy enough for him to say

The JFK is well past the point where reverting to steam is plausible... and the keel hasn't been laid down for CVN-80 (the new Enterprise). He should be out of office before the Navy needs to commit to a catapult design for the next carrier.

[Mopar151]

40. A failure of "concurrent engineering"

The failure is actually related to the ridiculous cost of military airplanes.

The elecric catapults work well, but their error rate ("bad shots&quot is considerably higher than the super-refined steam catapult. The whole ship is built around these catapults, there is no change-out without scrapping years of shipyard work.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. Someone put whisper words in his ear.

[BSdetect]

7. Add more horses for extra horse power.

[underpants]

36. Okay. That was funny

[Initech]

8. Can we use a catapult on him instead?

[RKP5637]

26. Excellent idea!!! n/t

[procon]

9. And what would power all those old fashioned

steam machines? Funny you should ask... COAL!

Yep, beautiful coal, Trump's favorite fossil fuel. Since he can't find too many orders for new coal fired power plants, the military might not be able to avoid Trump's concession with coal.

[dumbcat]

24. Kinda cute, but .... No

The steam would come from the same source that provides the steam for the ship's propulsion and other power, i.e., the on-board nuclear reactors.

Funny, though.

[RKP5637]

27. tRump to offer a conversion kit from nuclear to coal. Sign up here and convert your

aircraft carrier to coal with the tRump "Make it Coal Kit." The famed creator of Trump University and a stable genius!

[dumbcat]

31. HA!

I could see that!

[Achilleaze]

10. republican Draft Dodgers are experts at military techology*

* Sure.

[BillyBobBrilliant]

11. Next thing you know

He'll be designing a car 'for the people.' Tentative name: "Trumpferswagon."

[RKP5637]

25. He'll want to bring back the Stanley Steamer!Just some FYI for folks that might not know what it was

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Motor_Carriage_Company

The Stanley Motor Carriage Company was an American manufacturer of steam-engine vehicles; it operated from 1902 to 1924. The cars made by the company were colloquially called Stanley Steamers, although several different models were produced.

Early Stanley cars had light wooden bodies mounted on tubular steel frames by means of full-elliptic springs. Steam was generated in a vertical fire-tube boiler, mounted beneath the seat, with a vaporizing gasoline (later, kerosene) burner underneath.

[NewJeffCT]

13. because nobody knows aircraft carrier design better than Trump?

[Docreed2003]

14. Did anyone bother to tell him the USS Wasp isn't an aircraft carrier?

[Captain_New_York]

37. And no catapult

These amphibious assault ships look like carriers and about the same size as other countries carriers. We have 10 commissioned, 2 older ones in reserve and 1 being built https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasp-class_amphibious_assault_ship . No other country has more than 1. Oh let’s not forget the 11 (and 2 in construction) “half carriers” of the San Antonio class
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio-class_amphibious_transport_dock ,

Or the 11 super carries of the Nimitz/ Ford class is whose air wing alone is larger than most countries Air Force

Our navy is larger than the next 10 navies put together. And 8 of 10 of those navies are allies

[Jim__]

15. So the "poll" was based on who cheered loudest?

I think input from people who actually use equipment as to what types of problems there is with the equipment can be extremely valuable. Making what I would assume is an extremely technical decision based on the loudness of cheers is idiotic.

[brush]

39. Yes, yes, yes! Idiotic. And how many in the audience know anything...

about naval weapons engineering either? Our president is a fool who doesn't know what he doesn't know.

[durablend]

16. Trump: "AND WHY ISN'T MY PICTURE ON IT?!?!?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Is there some Mar-a-Lago member who hates the electric version for some reason?

It's not as if Trump has experience with catapults, carriers, warships, weapons, or engineering of any sort. He hasn't even played around with boats, like many trust fund louts (eg Betsy deVos) do.

So why does he keep returning to this fantasy of being a naval weapons engineer? Someone must be repeating it to him, otherwise the Navy would be able to put forward their plans without having the guy whose main experience is as a tasteless interior designer of casinos, golf clubs and hotels try to overrule them.

[Javaman]

18. if he lasts, presidents get ships named after them. I give you the USS trump...

[RKP5637]

28. K&R !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[underpants]

34. If that's a Cleveland Steamer it's fitting for him

[MyOwnPeace]

45. And..........

It will have NO problem staying afloat, because that's what SHIT does!

[jmowreader]

47. Wrong picture.

The MS Trump is the lead ship in a new class of New York City garbage barges.

[sinkingfeeling]

19. Because he knows more than any other person on earth.

[LonePirate]

20. We are so fucked whenever he makes a decision about anything.

I can operate a car but I am not an engineer so I cannot design or build one. The same is true for those fine men and women of the Navy in this situation.

[GoCubsGo]

21. The stupid. It burns.

I'm sure Vlad planted all of this nonsense in his syphilitic brain.

[Gothmog]

22. trump has been showing signs of senility for a long time

[lpbk2713]

30. Go back to WW-I biplanes.

They don't require as much flight deck space to launch and recover.
They use less fuel too.

OMFG

[Anon-C]

32. Steam Force!

Could make it work?

[underpants]

35. LOL

[spanone]

33. He knows more than anyone who's ever been on an aircraft carrier.

in his mind.

[dumbcat]

38. Does anyone here really know anything about the electromagnetic catapults

and why the navy is having problems making them operational? Are they still having problems? In doing a little searching on the 'net I see most of the articles complaining about the test results were back in 2013-2014. I don't see much in the way of recent criticism.

Aside from the Dolt spewing his crap, does anyone here have knowledge of the current state of the new launch system?

[Anon-C]

42. Interesting China's purportedly on the cusp of deploying catapult launch systems in their carrier...

... development, and whether or not China's new carrier will have an electromagnetic or steam-driven launch system is a question.

OTH, I find it incredible that the operational failures would so dissuade the US Navy from pursuing a novel technology that could multiply the number of
combat sorties a carrier could launch as the tech matures. Nope, doesn't work, back to steam!

Looks like it could be chaff to me but, who knows?

[dumbcat]

52. I would guess that they are trying to assess the risk

of the number of combat sorties that would be aborted by launch system failure (and the MTTR, whatever that is) to the efficiencies of more combat launches as the technology matures. Then a big question is how long does it take for the technology to mature, how much does it cost, and what is happening (combat-wise) in the meantime. I know it is hard to get a grip and a consensus on all these imponderables, even with all the fancy models and simulations. In my career I was involved i such issues, albeit in much smaller scale systems , and it was always controversial, no matter what the system involved.

[EX500rider]

56. I think the thing is to perfect it on land, then put it in a training carrier....then the fleet..

....work the bugs out

[EX500rider]

53. I was just reading about it this weekend:

"The Ford class has become a major crisis. In February 2018 the navy confirmed that it had major problems with the design and construction of its new EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) catapult installed in its latest aircraft carrier; the USS Ford (CVN 78) and the three other Ford-class carriers under construction. During sea trials, the Ford used EMALS heavily, as would be the case in combat and training operations and found EMALS less reliable than the older steam catapult. EMALS was also more labor intensive to operate and put more stress on launched aircraft than expected. Worse, due to a basic design flaw, if one EMALS catapult becomes inoperable, the other three catapults could not be used in the meantime as was the case with steam catapults. This meant that the older practice of taking one or more steam catapults offline for maintenance or repairs while at sea was not practical. The navy admitted that in combat if one or more catapults were rendered unusable they remained that way until it was possible to shut down all four catapults for repairs. During the initial at-sea tests the EMALS failed once every 75 aircraft launches. The standard for steam catapults is one failure every 4,166 launches. The landing and recovery system also had reliability problems, failing once every 76 landings, which is far below the standard of one failure per 16,500 landings. In effect, these problems with launching and recovering aircraft make the Fords much less effective than the older Truman (and other Nimitz class CVNs). The navy has long had a growing problem with developing new ships and technology and the Ford is the worst example to date. With no assurance as to when and to what extent the launch and recovery systems would be fixed (and be at least as effective as the older steam catapults) the navy was overruled and told to keep the Truman.

The navy also asked for another delay in performing mandated shock tests for the Ford, in which controlled explosions were set off near the hull that generated at least 66 percent of the amount of force the ship was designed to handle. This would reveal what equipment was not sufficiently built or installed to handle shock and make changes as well as confirming that the hull can handle the stress overall. The navy wants to wait until the second Ford-class carrier enters service in 2024 because, it admits, it is unsure how badly shock tests would damage new systems and design features. Meanwhile, there are some other major shortcomings with the Fords, including electronics (the radars), some of the elevators and a few other mechanical systems. But none of these are as serious as the malfunctioning catapults. Progress is being made in improving the reliability of the new launch and recovery system but such progress has been very slow and there is no convincing plan to achieve parity with steam catapult systems any time soon.

Some of the problems with EMALS were of the sort that could be fixed while the new ship was in service. That included tweaking EMALS operation to generate less stress on aircraft and modifying the design of EMALS and reorganizing how sailors use the system to attain the smaller number of personnel required for catapult operations. But the fatal flaws involved reliability. An EMALS catapult was supposed to have a breakdown every 4,100 launches but even after some initial fixes, in heavy use, EMALS actually failed every 400 launches. By the end of 2017, the Navy concluded that an EMALS equipped carrier had only a seven percent chance of successfully completing a typical four-day “surge” (multiple catapult launches for a major combat operation) and only a 70 percent chance of completing a one-day surge operation. That was mainly because when one EMALS catapult went down all four were inoperable. In effect, the Ford-class carriers are much less capable of performing in combat than their predecessors. The navy hopes they can come up with some kind of, as yet unknown, modifications to EMALS to fix all these problems. In the meantime, the new Ford carrier is much less useful than older ones that use steam catapults.

There are no easy solutions. For example, it would cost over half a billion dollars to remove EMALS and install the older steam catapults. This would also take up to several years and lead to many other internal changes. The navy even considered bringing a recently retired (because of age) carrier back to active service as a stopgap because whatever the fix is it will not be quick or cheap. The most worrisome part of this is the apparent inability of Navy shipbuilding and design experts to come up with a solution for the problem they created. For the navy officers and civilian officials involved, there is another problem. When the EMALS problems became obvious the current Secretary of Defense was a retired Marine Corps general who has a good idea of how the navy operates without being part of the navy (the Marine Corps and Navy are two separate services in the Department of the Navy). The marines have a well-deserved reputation for being less understanding about failure and in a situation like this, a former marine general as Secretary of Defense was very bad news for the navy officers responsible for creating, sustaining and being unable to fix this EMALS disaster. The marine general resigned after two years but his civilian replacement knew that the flawed Fords were still a major problem that could not be ignored."

https://strategypage.com/htmw/htnavai/articles/20190526.aspx

[dumbcat]

54. Ouch! That is what I was afraid of

It doesn't look good. As I mentioned above, my career was in military RDT&E, mostly on the Army T&E side. I saw way too many examples of this happening, albeit on much smaller systems. I saw systems that had an estimated development cost of 100's of millions and 5 years balloon into $billion+ systems taking 15 years, and then failing and being terminated.

The problem was usually one of the "concurrent engineering". The requirements were such that the technology to do what was wanted didn't exist yet, but the contractors would say that, "well, we'll figure it out as we go, don't worry." And the Military Program Managers and Program Executive Officers would buy it, because that is what they are paid to do. Then, reality strikes, and it's always ,"just a little longer, give us another year, we're almost there, we can't quit now, you can't let us fail, ..." I've heard them all.

I'm glad I don't have to make the decision. Maybe steam is still the way to go.

[edhopper]

41. who are the subcontractors?

That could explain this.

[RKP5637]

43. Yep, those that see $$$$$'s, and likely tRump takes a cut ... like Cheney with his GSA no-bid

contracts given to Halliburton for Iraq. ... bunch of sleazy bastards.

[maxrandb]

46. Jesus Fucking Christ! The fucking WASP doesn't even have catapults

It's a fucking LHD and carries USMC Harriers and Helicopters... plus a Marine Expeditionary Unit.

This fucking embarrassing POS must be fucking impeached, tried for tax evasion, money laundering, fraud and misappropriation of funds, and jailed for the rest of his miserable fucking life.

His fucking DNA ought to be captured and anyone with even a fucking microscopic link to his fucking genes should be exiled to a deserted island in the South Pacific.

My fucking God!!! America will NEVER recover from this embarrassing shitshow!

[dalton99a]

48. The all-knowing moron

[Chin music]

55. Wish he 'knew when to leave."

Better than anyone else.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

49. Because Cheetolini knows more than our generals and admirals

[jmowreader]

50. I can just imagine Trump as president in 1876

This “telephone” thing that idiot Bell invented has too many problems to be useful. I’m going to write an order that all Americans send letters and visit instead of installing one of these useless things in their homes!

[Grasswire2]

51. this may be akin to his reported obsession with fabric swatches...

His cohorts have reported that he was continually obsessed with inconsequential details of developments. Fabric swatches. Finishes. Etc. To the detriment of other matters.