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Trump's Likes: Steam-Powered Catapults, Coal and Telephones

From airplanes and ships to burgers, Donald Trump likes what he knows.

Trump's Likes: Steam-Powered Catapults, Coal and Telephones
An attendee gives the thumbs up while wearing a Donald Trump mask during a campaign event for Donald Trump, 2016 Republican presidential nominee, in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- From airplanes and ships to burgers, Donald Trump likes what he knows.

The president made that known again Tuesday, reiterating his preference for steam-powered catapults on new aircraft carriers instead of the next-generation electromagnetic system.

It’s the latest instance of Trump shunning new technology in favor of the tried and tested. He has considered sticking with the F-18 over the newer, controversy-prone F-35, lamented that commercial planes are now too complex to fly, and needled Boeing Co. over the cost of a new Air Force One.

“He hasn’t usually picked crazy targets for his wrath,” said Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “The F-35, the presidential aircraft -- these have been among the biggest-ticket items, with cost overruns.”

To be sure, Trump doesn’t eschew all technology -- he’s an avid Twitter user and has hailed the pursuit of 5G networks. But his preference for the familiar reigns supreme. He champions coal power while criticizing renewable-energy technology; he steers trade talks to autos and steel over intellectual property and the digital economy; he doesn’t use email, preferring a chat on the phone, and has an enduring penchant for the classic American hamburger.

The Navy’s costliest warship, the $13 billion Gerald R. Ford, is already undergoing trials at sea that have been flawed by failures of the electromagnetic launch-and-landing systems. In addition, a second carrier -- the John F. Kennedy -- is under construction, and the Navy has announced a $15 billion deal for two more Ford-class carriers.

“We’re spending all that money on electric and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions,” Trump said Tuesday on the USS Wasp at a naval base near Tokyo. “So I think I’m going to put an order -- when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam.”

In January, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer told a Washington audience that he’s explained to Trump the advantages of the new system over steam and that “we’ve got the bugs out.”

In March, Spencer tweeted that the launching system is “a game changer for carrier-based operations that is so simple to use, no Einstein is needed.”

Spencer’s tweet recalled a comment by Trump after the deadly March crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 in Ethiopia that prompted a worldwide grounding of the aircraft.

“Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” Trump tweeted. “All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot.”

Trump’s apparent disdain for new and unconventional technologies has begun to appear regularly in his rally speeches -- such as the use of wind turbines to generate electricity. He’s said the turbines kill birds and mocked the technology’s ability to deliver energy: “‘Darling, I want to watch television.’ ‘I’m sorry, the wind isn’t blowing.’”

In an off-the-cuff poll by Trump, sailors and Marines vocally backed steam systems over the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS. But the orders are longstanding, and the Navy is proceeding with carriers that use the new system.

Billions at Stake

On Tuesday, the Navy referred questions to the White House, which didn’t respond to a request.

The carrier program is too far advanced to overhaul its catapult system now, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think-tank.

“It’s a settled matter, which is why he keeps saying things and nothing changes,” Eaglen said. The window has closed to change the design of the ship, and its catapult, she said. “That is at the white-drawing-board stages, and that passed years and years ago.”

Changes now would likely cause delays in the program and contractual penalties, triggering what she called a potential “acquisition death spiral” for the carrier program, she said.

The carriers are built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc. of Newport News, Virginia. The catapult system is built by General Atomics of San Diego. General Atomics says on its website that its system will “lower operating costs, require fewer people to operate, improve catapult performance and expand the range of manned and unmanned aircraft that the aircraft carrier can launch.”

In addition to the billions of dollars that could be at stake for General Atomics if the Navy returns to a steam-based launch system, dozens of subcontractors could be affected, according to Bloomberg Government’s senior defense analyst Rob Levinson. According to Bloomberg Government data, 168 subcontractors have received about $920 million for work on the electromagnetic system for the Kennedy.

Trying to force a change on the carriers already under construction would be “hugely expensive,” Levinson said, because the ships would have to be redesigned and the contractors who worked on the electromagnetic system “would be entitled for work already done as well as potential penalties.”

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.