President has suggested steam catapults every year since 2017, saying digital systems are too ‘complicated’

Trump has suggested steam catapults every year since 2017, saying digital systems are too ‘complicated’

After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems to launch fighter jets instead of steam-powered catapults, Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.

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.

  • Jesus_666English
    44·
    17 hours ago

    You’d think that an electric system should allow for relatively easy isolation – isolating electric circuits from each other with breakers is hardly new technology. Is this lack of isolation a design flaw of EMALS or is there an actual physical reason why it couldn’t be designed with independently powerable tracks?

    • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
      6·
      10 hours ago

      As the other person mentioned, they’re looking to fix the “shortcomings” of the current system. Happens in government projects that corners get cut and that short-term “fixes” ends up having long-term “issues”.

      That said, dropping the whole thing to go back to steam because of corners being cut is a royally stupid idea. But I mean we are talking about a guy who decided to just level an entire wing of the White House before anything to replace it was actually thought out and approved.

      • IHeartBadCode@fedia.io
        4·
        10 hours ago

        Ding, ding. Yeah. Happens with Government contracts. Corners get cut. Just a symptom of … gestures towards Washington DC

      • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
        20·
        15 hours ago

        Absolutely wild that this wasn’t part of the original design. I can turn off power to my stove without shutting down my whole house, but the US Navy can’t independently power launch systems.

      • Jesus_666English
        11·
        16 hours ago

        You’d think the United States would take great care when designing their main tools for global power projection. And you’d probably be right; I can imagine that countless hours were invested into determining where the parts get built and which senators get to politically benefit from that. Technological details don’t really matter; at worst you can just turn flaws into lucrative followup contracts for companies in the stock portfolios of top politicians.

    • partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
      3·
      17 hours ago

      I’m wondering if they mean that the points of failure are overall harder to isolate? Like, I don’t know… can the steam system work if the ship looses power? That would be a level of isolation that I imagine EMALS can’t do. But then I’d wonder, what if each track had its own generator? Oh… hey, just use steam generators. Problem solved, Trump won’t tell the difference,