Matt Hildreth/Planet Pix via ZUMA
Behold our commander-in-chief making the tough decisions on weapons procurement for our newest trio of aircraft carriers:
You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]. I said you don’t use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, “Ah, how is it working?” “Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power.” You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.
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 going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.
The Ford-class carriers use an electromagnetic catapult that goes with an entirely new shipwide electrical system: “Together, AAG and EMALS will not only reduce maintenance costs, Moore said, they’ll improve operations, allowing 30 percent more sorties per day — making a Ford the operational equal of 1.3 Nimitzes.”
Needless to say, it’s too late to switch back to steam since the Ford is basically finished and will begin acceptance trials shortly. This means that somebody in the Pentagon has to figure out how to quietly ignore the president’s ramblings. Maybe someone should tell Trump the Chinese plan to use EMALS in their future carriers. We can’t let ourselves fall behind the Chinese, can we, Mr. President? No, of course not. Now how about a nice nap? That’s good. You just rest, Mr. President, while we take care of things for you.
