{"id":592919,"date":"2026-08-14T10:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592919\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T10:14:09","slug":"trump-orders-pentagon-to-redesign-us-aircraft-carrier-to-use-steam-catapults-to-launch-jets-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/592919\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump orders Pentagon to redesign US aircraft carrier to use steam catapults to launch jets \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> has directed the Pentagon to redesign a new aircraft carrier to replace the modern system with the old-fashioned catapults he prefers.<\/p>\n

Trump signed a national security memorandum on Thursday directing the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

The memorandum gives the Pentagon leaders 60 days to come up with \u201ca 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\u201d the USS Doris Miller, a Ford-class aircraft carrier, which is already two years behind schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know the catapult is quite important,\u201d Trump told Time magazine in 2017 before recounting a conversation he said he had with an unnamed navy officer.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I said, \u2018What is this?\u2019 \u2018Sir, this is our digital catapult system\u2019\u201d, Trump went on. \u201cIt sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it\u2019s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said \u2013 and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers \u2013 I said, \u2018What system are you going to be\u2019\u2013 \u2018Sir, we\u2019re staying with digital.\u2019 I said, \u2018No you\u2019re not. You[\u2019re] going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it\u2019s no good\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

A Guardian review of Trump\u2019s public remarks shows he has retold that story, with variations, every year since 2017.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Trump brought it up during a Thanksgiving day phone call with the commanding officer of the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier docked in Hong Kong at the time. In 2019, he recounted his conversation with the \u201ccatapulter\u201d to Republican donors at a fundraiser. In 2020, as the nation was grappling with a pandemic, the tale became a regular part of Trump\u2019s campaign speeches. In 2021, he told the story at the Conservative Political Action Conference. In 2022, he shared it in a campaign speech in Texas. He repeated it on the campaign trail in Iowa in 2023. At one of his final campaign events before the 2024 election, Trump told Tucker Carlson the same story.<\/p>\n

After he returned to office in 2025, Trump brought up steam catapults during the swearing-in of Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence and did so again in remarks to the crew of the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier based in Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe built an aircraft carrier for $19 billion, which is crazy. The price is crazy,\u201d Trump recalled last month at the Army War College in Pennsylvania. \u201cIt had all sorts of modern-day things that were all \u2013 instead of using steam for the catapults, they used electric.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I went to the ship, because I came into office and the ship was way over budget, built in Newport News [Virginia],\u201d Trump continued. \u201cI said: \u2018I want to meet the catapulter\u2019, and a man came over, along with four of his assistants. And I said: \u2018What\u2019s better: electric catapult or steam?\u2019 He\u2019s been there for 25 years. He said: \u2018Steam is better, sir. We can fix it with a hammer and a blowtorch. When the electric goes bad, I have to send to MIT to get geniuses over here.\u2019 I said: \u2018Steam is better?\u2019 \u2018Yes, sir, it\u2019s better.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the order, senior US navy and industry leaders \u201chave resisted the move due to the enormous expense of tearing out such a complex system that was integral to the design\u201d of the latest aircraft carriers.<\/p>\n

General Atomics, the company that builds the electromagnetic aircraft launch system for the Ford-class carriers, said Trump\u2019s decision to revert to steam \u201cwarrants careful reconsideration\u201d. The company told the Journal its work on the new ship was nearly 50 per cent complete and \u201cchanging course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and a former astronaut, was more blunt in his reaction to the news.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a master\u2019s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn\u2019t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships,\u201d Kelly wrote on social media. \u201cDonald Trump should stick to what he knows best \u2013 ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order to redesign the aircraft carrier comes amid reports of an intensifying mental health crisis onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, as the carrier\u2019s 5,000 sailors and marines endure a record-breaking deployment at sea tied to the war with Iran. – Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After nearly a decade of loudly complaining about the fact that modern US aircraft carriers use electromagnetic systems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,43,26574,40,38,41,39,115],"class_list":["post-592919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}