There is a particular species of executive decision that does not arise from briefing books, cost-benefit analyses, or the accumulated testimony of engineers who have spent careers inside the machinery in question. It arises, instead, from a feeling. A vibe, if you will. And in the case of Donald Trump’s national security memorandum directing the Pentagon to tear the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System out of the USS Doris Miller and replace it with steam and hydraulic catapults, the feeling has been marinating for nearly a decade.
One hesitates to call this policy, because policy implies a process, and process implies the participation of people who know things. What we have instead is a man who, in 2017, told Time magazine that the electromagnetic system “sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital?” and has now, eight years and countless retellings later, signed an order imposing that aesthetic judgment on a $19 billion warship already two years behind schedule.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe relevant literature here is not classified. General Atomics, which builds the electromagnetic launch system for the Ford-class carriers, told the Wall Street Journal that its work on the Doris Miller is nearly 50 percent complete and that “changing course now would introduce significant cost, schedule, and integration risks.” Senior Navy and industry leaders have resisted the move, according to the Journal, “due to the enormous expense of tearing out such a complex system that was integral to the design.” This is the language of people who understand that a carrier is not a ballroom whose chandeliers can be swapped on a whim. It is an integrated system in which the launch apparatus is structurally and electrically woven into the ship’s architecture. You do not retrofit steam catapults into a hull designed around electromagnetic launch any more than you retrofit a steam engine into a Tesla. The physics are not interchangeable. The plumbing alone would require redesigning sections of the vessel that are already built and, in some cases, already welded shut.
Senator Mark Kelly, who possesses the rare combination of having actually launched off carrier decks hundreds of times, holding a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and serving as a Navy test pilot, offered the most economical assessment: “Even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships.” He then advised Trump to stick to “ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit,” which is unkind but not, strictly speaking, inaccurate.
Unknown photographer, US Navy; restored by User:Coffeeandcrumbs (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsWhat is genuinely striking, though, is the compulsive quality of the fixation. A Guardian review found that Trump has retold his “catapulter” story, with variations, every single year since 2017. Thanksgiving calls to carrier crews. CPAC speeches. A fundraiser with Republican donors. The swearing-in of Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, an event that has nothing whatsoever to do with naval aviation. He told it to Tucker Carlson. He told it in Iowa. He told it last month at the Army War College. This is not a man who arrived at a position through deliberation. This is a man who had a conversation he did not understand, experienced it as a slight to his comprehension, and has been metabolizing that slight into policy ever since.
The memorandum gives Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao 60 days to produce a plan. One suspects the plan will be long on compliance and short on feasibility, because the alternative is telling the president that his decade-long crusade on behalf of steam is engineering nonsense. That is not a briefing anyone in this Pentagon is eager to deliver.
U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Cory Rose (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsMeanwhile, the USS Abraham Lincoln, with 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard, is enduring a record-breaking deployment tied to the war with Iran, and reports describe an intensifying mental health crisis among its crew. That is a Navy problem worth a president’s attention. Steam catapults are not.
The institutional pattern here is the thing to watch. A president who treats engineering preferences as loyalty tests, who elevates anecdote over analysis, and who cannot distinguish between the things he does not know and the things he has decided are simple. The carrier is a symptom. The disease is the conviction that expertise is a conspiracy and ignorance is a virtue.