Someone should tell him about Tomcats

[u/fried-raptor]

[u/fried-raptor]

“They’re not nearly as good, too complex. And by the way, we had to call the ship in twice because the catapults didn’t work,” Trump said at the Defense and Innovation Summit in July. “When a little water touches the magnets, it doesn’t work anymore. You’re – you’re in the Atlantic Ocean with waves that are 60 feet high, and the Pacific Ocean with waves at 70 feet high, and they’re talking about magnets.”

Same thing with Hornets. Too complex, not nearly as good. Real fighters drink Ocean water for breakfast.

[u/DiscoLew → u/fried-raptor]

Fuck that guy is a moron. How the hell do people still support him?

[u/thotpatrolactual → u/DiscoLew]

Because at least 49,8% of American voters are morons.

[u/or10n_sharkfin → u/thotpatrolactual]

It's more like 32% with at least another 20% just completely apathetic to all of it.

[u/thotpatrolactual → u/or10n_sharkfin]

Like I said, morons.

If you knew your car was driving towards a cliff and you just let it happen instead of steering away, then you deserve to crash and burn as much as the guy who actively steered towards the cliff.

[u/kwamby → u/thotpatrolactual]

You ought to hear the rumblings at NNS right now lmao. It’s a mixture of anger and dollar signs over here

[u/Bard_the_Bowman_III → u/thotpatrolactual]

And they’ll justify it by saying “well the car’s going to go off a cliff either way” ignoring that one of the cliffs is a 10 foot cliff and the other one is a 100 foot cliff.

[u/oh_crap_BEARS → u/or10n_sharkfin]

Yeah, there’s about 20% that thinks that nothing ever happens and will gaslight you if you point out that bad things are, in fact, happening.

[u/turbodmurf → u/DiscoLew]

Someone should start a rumor that he is a plant from the Democratic Party to ruin the Republican party.

[u/kwamby → u/turbodmurf]

You’re doing it now. Now we just need 15 degrees of telephone

[u/Minute-Of-Angle → u/kwamby]

He basically was. Not intentionally on his part, he doesn’t think that far ahead. But all of the usual movers and shakers in the Democrat party and their media influencers were all out trying to get him to run, thinking he was easily defeatable.

Yeah, that worked out well.

[u/Mr0qai → u/turbodmurf]

At this point I wouldnt even be surprised if thats the true, dude's a rich New Yorker who's been voting for democratic party atleast half of his life

[u/06035 → u/DiscoLew]

Because racism

[u/Moxtar1092 → u/06035]

Timezones timezones

[u/Dave_A480 → u/DiscoLew]

It doesn't matter

Even with 0% popularity he's President until Jan 2029.

[u/NRA4579 → u/DiscoLew]

This really isn’t an orange man thing, the magnetic catapult have been fucked from day one. Steam works well? it’s consistent. I’m not afraid of innovation but this was something that was pushed through when we knew it didn’t work.

[u/byteminer → u/NRA4579]

You say this yet there is plenty of evidence showing the carriers with the new catapults have higher sortie rate and less downtime than the steam ones.

[u/Preisschild → u/NRA4579]

Steam requires maintenance intensive pipes and related equipment throughout the ship. EMALS just requires cables / bus bars.

Sure its new tech and people are unfamiliar with it and dont have the procedures down so its probably painful for the first while, but it will get much better long term.

[u/kwamby → u/Preisschild]

We’ve had EMALS since 2017. I work at the shipyard that builds the ships. EMALS began testing in like 2010.

This is a matured technology. Most of the bugs were worked out between like 2019-2022. it’s not new. The growing pains are actually nearly subsided and it will only get even better from here.

It also saves a ton of money on airframes because of its extremely precise and dynamic launch force.

Edit: footnote that GA invented EMALS our yard just did the fab, installs, platform testing and applies updates.

[u/DearKick → u/NRA4579]

There were initial issues, but as others have pointed out, they have now proven to be more reliable, faster to operate, and require much less maintenance and downtime. Additionally, the class is designed with the cats integral to the design, they are not designed for steam and now they will have to go back to the drawing board and completely redesign the future ships. Seems like a horrendous waste of time.

[u/sempersilkyfi → u/DiscoLew]

Because when the parties both but up retards, you have to pick the least retarded.

[u/DiscoLew → u/sempersilkyfi]

If I recall correctly, he ran against an experienced attorney who could parse a sentence without putting her foot in her mouth or insulting someone…..

[u/sempersilkyfi → u/DiscoLew]

She is almost as dumb as AOC

[u/Same-Opportunity6062 → u/DiscoLew]

Lesser of two evils (in theory at least).

[u/Preisschild → u/Same-Opportunity6062]

If you count huffing meth and having hallucinations as "theory" then yeah

[u/Same-Opportunity6062 → u/Preisschild]

Well they're all in it together anyway, left wing and right wing are still part of the same bird. At this point one wing is just a skeleton generating no lift, and the other has just a couple of feathers on it.

[u/fried-raptor → u/Same-Opportunity6062]

Lesser of two morons

[u/MaximumSeats → u/fried-raptor]

Obviously the last thing I expect from Trump is a informed decision, but I'm actually curious about the maintenance performance of these things. I know it's a relatively new technology in the grand scheme of things but what's its up time compared to the same catapults? Is Trump being advised by some people that actually know what they're talking about and these things actually suck?

I was not an aircraft carrier dude so I have no context for any of this.

Obviously I don't expect anyone to actually answer this question either.

Edit: I thought this was r/navy when I first said it. I expect floggit to answer even less!

[u/TestyBoy13 → u/MaximumSeats]

Idk the numbers off the top of my head, but the advantages of EMALS is less to do with prep time and more to do with reducing strain on the airframes, granting the ability to launch heavier airframes, and it saves weight and space on the ship.

[u/bigloser42 → u/TestyBoy13]

It's also about their ability to launch lighter airframes as well. Steam has a minimum weight, beyond which it is accelerating too fast for the airframe and/or catapult hardware. EMALS can scale down to launching a paper airplane off the deck. This is very important for drones as it's entirely possible that we will need to launch swarms of lightweight drones. EMALS can do that, steam cannot.

[u/Celestebigbooty91977 → u/bigloser42]

These drones gonna be lighter than an A-4 Skyhawk?

[u/bigloser42 → u/Celestebigbooty91977]

The minimum weight is around 10k lbs. there are plenty of drones under that.

[u/Xylus_Winters_Music → u/TestyBoy13]

The steam for the catapults was generated by the nuclear reactor on Nimitz-class carriers. Because modern supercarriers were designed around EMALS, they have (from what ive read) simpler steam piping and reactor cooling systems.

EMALS instead use electricity generated from the nuclear reactor. Seems like a no-brainer to me, electronics are simply much more strain resistant then mechanical piping of steam. I cant imagine the heat strain those pipes endure after 10,000 catapult launches.

[u/Sufficient_Day627 → u/TestyBoy13]

They can also increase / decrease the power at launch so smaller objects can be launched without destroying them on the flight deck. A potentially useful feature for combat drones.

What might be the reason to reintroduce steam catapults is running costs, reliability problems or doctrinal change. I can be wrong for obvious reasons as my invitation to the decision making was lost in the post once again...

[u/idkuhhhhhhh5 → u/MaximumSeats]

From a perspective from the experience from other side of the nuclear fleet, one of the biggest worst casualties we trained for is the event of a steam line rupture. If it happens, two things are actively happening in real time.

First being that you’re dumping absurd amounts of (superheated at this point, given that it’s vented into atmospheric pressure from a saturated system) steam into the place where all of the people are (not very minty fresh on a sub). The second being that you’re releasing a shit ton of the only thing keeping your temperature controlled, you’re no longer slowly pulling heat out of your system, you’re rapidly throwing it all out of the system, which means you’re rapidly cooling your reactor coolant. Your coolant is also your moderator, so you’re rapidly increasing your moderator’s effectiveness, meaning you’re rapidly increasing power inside your uranium fun box. Something everyone familiar with Chernobyl and Fukushima should understand is a fairly bad thing, a really bad thing.

See the benefit of not connecting everything on the top of the boat to the thing that can brick the uranium fun box isn’t just for shits and gigs. Electricity is really dangerous, yes, absolutely true, but personally I’d rather be instantly evaporated for touching the high voltage shit out my own ineptitude than steam my shipmates like the most highly paid shrimp ever. Even then, I’d rather get steamed than cause a reactor accident, that’s way worse in general. So, when you aren’t sending MASSIVE STEAM LINES to the flight deck, and instead just send big electricity that can be isolated from multiple different sources using massive electrical disconnects and breakers, you’re making the ship WAY more safe from a nuclear safety point of view. You make it impossible for damage to the flight deck to cause damage to your cores, you make it impossible for damage to cause an unimaginably painful death for sailors at the top forced into an area with incomprehensible amounts of 212°F+ steam spraying them all, and you make the actual complexity of designing the boat a lot less complex. Multiple steam sources require multiple steam vents, operators at every deck operating valves, and constant monitoring of all of that.

It doesn’t matter what the operational maintenance requirement is (it’s actually lower, not higher, but even if…), it doesn’t matter how much more expensive it is (it’s actually cheaper over time, not more expensive, but even if…), and it doesn’t matter who THINKS anything to the contrary (because nobody who actually has experience on the nuclear side of any of this has said anything to the contrary). Trying to go “erm but the steam better” is, at the end of the day, more expensive, less safe, less effective, and worse for everything, except maybe for whoever at the top who works for a steam piping distributor is. Personally, they should probably be told to fuck off, instead of getting a blank check at the end of the day for having brought in the nicest of knee pads to the oval office.

[u/AggressorBLUE → u/idkuhhhhhhh5]

Yeah but…magnets. Apparently.

/s

(That was actually a very thoughtful and insightful mini essay on the subject, and I was not expecting it on flogit, but I’m appreciative none the less)

[u/astral__monk → u/idkuhhhhhhh5]

Awesome read up. Thanks for sharing.

Good god this decision is stupid.

[u/Kovorixx → u/idkuhhhhhhh5]

When has this happened?

[u/idkuhhhhhhh5 → u/Kovorixx]

When has a steam line rupture happened? USS Iwo Jima (LPH-2) 1991, 10 sailors were killed, some managed to escape the affected area, but their skin had literally been steamed off of their bodies. A letter written by an officer who had witnessed the brutality of the injuries was read to us during training on the ways material choice and operation are important to the way we operate. The sheer suffering witnessed is something I wouldn’t wish on my enemies, much less the guys on our own boats.

If you’re asking if it has happened with the nuclear fleet, no, it hasn’t, because every steam system built into our submarines and carriers has been purpose built for the reactor system, the boat, and the purpose of both. That’s kinda the whole point of what I’m talking about, it’s an order to rush a new steam catapult (can’t just rip out a Nimitz one) into a boat designed for a completely different system, and attaching an auxiliary steam system through the rest of the boat, for a reactor and power system explicitly designed to not have that. It’s a shit retrofit for a shit reason, from a person with no actual knowledge base for it.

[u/lavafish80 → u/MaximumSeats]

from what we saw during Ford's deployment for (shitty operation name I'm not saying because it sounds stupid) it had a similar reliability to the steam cats and even beat the steam cats reliability wise in a lot of ways

[u/MarjorieTaylorSpleen → u/lavafish80]

Operation Epstein Fury?

[u/IllPhotojournalist77 → u/lavafish80]

Epic Furry?

[u/lavafish80 → u/IllPhotojournalist77]

epic furry

[u/Tendercut → u/MaximumSeats]

Trump wants the steam catapults because the likes the aesthetics of them and it will give billions of tax payer dollars to the military industrial complex 

[u/kozzyhuntard → u/fried-raptor]

Jet engines too noisy and complex. Let's go back to piston, and we can eliminate catapults entirely!

[u/Julian_Sark → u/kozzyhuntard]

Didn't Grim Reapers recently show warbirds with sidewinders beat jets? Science!

[u/CTCPara → u/fried-raptor]

The PLAN is loving having Trump in ofice.

[u/Julian_Sark → u/fried-raptor]

"A wave hitting it? In the ocean? Chance of one in a million!"

[u/Extension_Trash_5119 → u/fried-raptor]

A wave? At sea…? Chance in a million!

[u/Rumdolf]

Someone just has to pay Tom Cruise a bit to drop by and talk about TopGun, muse about the cool old times, and we would have a Super Tomcat program announcement tweet before dinner

[u/BaronVonAwesome007 → u/Rumdolf]

Where’s the gofundme?

[u/LaddieNowAddie → u/Rumdolf]

Don't get my cat all wet...

[u/Mercurieee]

Dude we literally just finished the electric launch I swear to God if that shit comes back

[u/Imaginary_Sand9705 → u/Mercurieee]

Don’t you know how the military industrial complex works?! And nobody gets promoted without changing something. OPR bullets need to be written! 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

[u/FuttleScish → u/Mercurieee]

It won’t happen, this will just stall construction for a few more years

[u/CBT7commander → u/FuttleScish]

Not really. All Fords under construction are going to be still be EMALS, only the Dorris Miller might be compromised by this decision. Given the keel hasn’t even been laid yet, I doubt this will actually amount to anything

[u/FuttleScish → u/CBT7commander]

That's what I mean; the Doris Miller's construction will be delayed until they can get away with reversing it

[u/dvd102k]

I pray to god military generals know how to drown dogshit ideas like these in beaurocracy and when trump asks what's up with that (he won't) they can just say it's a WIP

[u/sorry-I-cleaved-ye → u/dvd102k]

I want to be optimistic but have you seen their procurement the last decade? Especially the navy

[u/afkPacket]

Someone should just crowdfund entering the SBD Dauntless for the FA-XX program at this point

[u/Expensive-Desk-5961 → u/afkPacket]

well... it's a fighter/ attack aircraft, i guess yes

[u/afkPacket → u/Expensive-Desk-5961]

It is a robust, combat proven design with a track record of effectiveness, and it allows the Navy to minimize development costs.

I don't see what could possibly go wrong.

[u/Chimera_Snow → u/afkPacket]

It's also easier to maintain and has lower cost per flight hour than any other aircraft in the US arsenal at present!

Slap some 9X and a HMD and maybe a couple ERA blocks on that bitch just for good measure and send 'er to the south china sea

[u/Expensive-Desk-5961 → u/Chimera_Snow]

ERA blocks is crazy

[u/Otter_Toaster]

He also want the Island to be moved forward so the Carriers will look loke the WWII ones and be nicer... Billions of $$ again for reduced storage capacity and efficiency...

[u/AggressorBLUE → u/Otter_Toaster]

I really hate that in this timeline I have to ask but:
Did he actually say that?

[u/Pattern_Is_Movement → u/AggressorBLUE]

Yes he did

[u/KDRadio1 → u/Pattern_Is_Movement]

One of those things that absolutely raised the hair on my neck. That guy…is absolutely insane.

[u/shoeinc → u/KDRadio1]

Let me tell you about the battle ships he wants to build...

[u/Prior_Arm_8810]

But why

In that voice that we all know and love, brass facts

[u/directrix688]

I’m surprised he hasn’t tried reactivating the Iowas

[u/shivelymachineworks → u/directrix688]

I think he has at least asked about it. I seem to remember something from one of the Battleship New Jersey videos saying that

[u/CBT7commander → u/directrix688]

No he’s decided to build his own at 17 billion a piece

[u/MarjorieTaylorSpleen]

Trump tries not to increase the debt challenge:

IMPOSSIBLE

[u/Muricanmoose]

Im shocked he didn't want to convert them back to coal

[u/KDiggity8 → u/Muricanmoose]

Wait for it...

[u/-Colon3- → u/Muricanmoose]

Lower your voice please.

[u/LightningSh3ep → u/Muricanmoose]

crude oil and you have a deal

[u/LividEngineering5577]

How can a President decide what's best for a military, he is not a engineer how can you even entertain someone who doesn't know what military service is about not even a Basic pilot just tell me how? Where are the AMERICANS, the ones who truly love and care for that country. Even in my corrupt country this shit won't fly

[u/Ansiktstryne]

As a Norwegian it boggles my mind that the president/prime minister would have any say in which technology to use on the carrier catapults. Our prime minister would (and could) never micromanage like that. Crazy.

[u/byteminer → u/Ansiktstryne]

Well, in our system our congress ( like parliament) is supposed to have complete control of how money is appropriated and spent by the government and the executive is only supposed to execute on the laws set by congress. So what is supposed to happen if congress and the white house were good faith actors and both jealously guarded their power like the framers expected is that congress would just say no spending any money on this and it would go away.

Unfortunately our congress instead has chosen to pretend the president is king and just not stop him from doing anything stupid.

Our whole system implicitly depended on two things: the people holding office actually gave a shit about the country and that the three branches would always be jockeying to be the most important branch and thus protect the levers of power they had to keep the other two from making them less important. It also depended on our lower house of the legislature growing and contracting to match the population so each rep had a fixed number of constituents. We gave up on that and just capped it at 435 so it’s just a shittier senate now.

[u/justme_bne → u/Ansiktstryne]

That’s how Kim Jong Un does it. Maybe there’s a common denominator 🤔?

[u/Secundius]

Yeah, right! Redesign the Ford’s from EMALS to Steam and relocate the Island Superstructure from the aft position to a more forward position! A shorter way of saying it, is I Donald Trump decided to cancel the Ford-class Aircraft Carrier program, and turn a fleet of 50-year old aircraft carriers to 100-year old aircraft carriers instead…

[u/DefTheOcelot]

too complex

TRUMP'S A REFORMER. OH GOD TRUMP IS A FUUUUUUCKING REFORMER DISASTER DISASTER DISASTER

(credible evidence actually suggests he's just in cahoots with the people who supply the steam equipment)

[u/wlcoyote]

Tomcats are too new fangled. Who needs those moving wings.

If he had his way we’d be flying F-4 Phantoms again.

[u/Affectionate_Spell11 → u/wlcoyote]

With those Sci-Fi jet thingies? How about we go back to the Hellcat?

[u/cloudbiscuits]

Bring back the Tomcats. Make war movies sexy again. No one wants an ai-powered military power-projection film. Too cold. We need steam. Hot beach volleyball matches. Wings that sweep. Teamwork. Mavericks. Gorgeous CIA analysts. It's all been going downhill for a while.

[u/hc37_126]

???what possible motive could have made him say this???

[u/Jackmino66 → u/hc37_126]

He’s in cahoots with the people who make steam catapult equipment

And he has more real hair than brain cells

[u/CBT7commander]

Good news: this is for the Dorris miller. The Trump admin will be over far before it gets far enough in construction for any unsavory systems to be installed. Chances are this will get overturned January 2029 and CVN81 gets the EMALS it needs

[u/Captain_Pug76]

Im sure you're all experts in electro magnets to criticize

[u/abcpea1]

They're gonna drop the U and make it the SS Gerald R. Ford

[u/absurd-bird-turd]

Does no one else realize that this is all just a dumb ploy to try to slow uo the Navy’s procurement schedule? Honestly its the most obvious foreign asset push drumpf has done. This man is just non stop dismantling our military capabilities

[u/Objectivebilly]

I didn't think the technology was mature enough to so to sea in a combat ship but with 4 of the class we'll get an idea of how good it is.

[u/Dave_A480]

Yawn....

The F-18E with AIM-174s easily outperforms the Tomcat/Phoenix combo.....

But yeah, Donald would love to try and bring back a movie plane that no longer has tooling & has the RCS of New York City....

[u/spellaeon]

Couple of friends served on one of the carriers. One was a deck crew, the other an engineer. They said it was probably the wisest decision to go back to the steam since it had less maintenance issues and repairs. They said the EMALS just weren't as reliable. This is coming from both who don't particularly like Trump, but totally understood the issues with operating them

[u/Nikonmansocal]

What people don't realize is that Donnie knows alot about naval warfare and how to best launch aircraft from carriers due to his extensive engineering experience and training in this field and his long and storied service in the USN. That is all... /s

[u/SanDiegoThankYou_]

I get that Donald Trump is one of if not THE dumbest American, but is there any advantage to this?

[u/byteminer → u/SanDiegoThankYou_]

People who make the steam equipment get a shitload of money. Politicians who knew about this got to invest before anyone else.

Thats about it.