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President Donald Trump again called to install steam catapults on future aircraft carriers, in a move experts say would cost billions of dollars and reduce the capital ships’ capabilities.

Trump, who has been critical of the Ford-class carriers’ new electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS) system, said he prefers the steam-powered catapults found on the older Nimitz-class CVNs. He again called on the Navy to revert back to the old technology while speaking to naval forces in Japan over the Memorial Day weekend.

Tuesday, while visiting sailors and Marines aboard amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD-1), Trump faulted EMALS for causing delays and cost overruns on the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78).

“We’re spending all that money on electric, and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions,” Trump said in his speech. “I’m going to just put out an order, we’re going to use steam.”

However, installing steam catapults on a Ford-class hull is not so simple. Ford-class hulls were designed to accommodate an entire power system that doesn’t rely on steam pipped throughout the ship. Instead, the power generated from the nuclear reactors drive turbines that power a shipwide electrical grid. Space on the ships is allocated differently because there’s no need for all the steam piping found on Nimitz-class ships.
“The Navy would have to spend several billion dollars to redesign the ship,” Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told USNI News on Tuesday.

More than a decade ago, the Navy spent $1.3 billion on Ford-class design work, according to the Northrop Grumman 2006 annual report. Northrop Grumman later spun off its shipbuilding business into what is now Huntington Ingalls Industries, the Ford-class builder.

The Navy would have to look at USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), the last Nimitz-class carrier built, for design ideas. But the Navy can’t just use old Nimitz-class plans because of other new technologies developed since Bush was built, Clark said. The Navy would need to create a Ford-class and Nimitz-class hybrid.

The Navy does have some time before needing a new carrier plan. Ford has already delivered and the next carrier, John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), is due to be christened later this year. Next in line is Enterprise (CVN-80), which is already too far along in construction to try installing a steam catapult system, while the yet-to-be-named CVN-81 was paid for as part of a block buy with Enterprise and will be identical to Enterprise, retired Capt. Tal Manvel told USNI News. Manvel was part of the Ford-class design effort a decade ago.

The first chance for steam catapults would be CVN-82, Manvel said, “which isn’t scheduled to begin construction until 2028.”

Other considerations include the Navy’s other planned big-ticket purchases, Manvel said. The Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine program and proposed medium and large surface combatant programs will all require billions of dollars of design work. Manvel isn’t sure there would be much of an appetite on Capitol Hill to also fund re-inventing a ship class that just entered production.

Cost aside, Clark and Manvel said there are capability-driven reasons to stick with the Ford-class design.

The Ford class incorporates new technologies designed for ships that are not configured to accommodate steam. An example, Clark said, is directed energy. If laser weapons, which require a significant amount of power to operate, are put on a ship with steam catapults, operating both becomes a problem, he said. But a ship that is optimized to produce electrical power could operate the flight deck and a laser weapon.

Long-term, the Ford-class design is supposed to save the Navy money over the life of the ship compared to the cost of operating Nimitz-class carriers, according to a May Congressional Research Service report.

“The Ford-class design uses the basic Nimitz-class hull form but incorporates several improvements, including features permitting the ship to generate more aircraft sorties per day, more electrical power for supporting ship systems, and features permitting the ship to be operated by several hundred fewer sailors than a Nimitz-class ship, reducing 50-year life-cycle operating and support (O&S) costs for each ship by about $4 billion compared to the Nimitz-class design, the Navy estimates,” the CRS report states.

EMALS is easier than steam catapults to calibrate for different types of aircraft, which becomes essential as the Navy moves toward incorporating lighter unmanned aircraft into the air wing, Manvel said.

“EMALS works,” Manvel said. “Still has some wrinkles to smooth out, but it works well.”

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“The Navy would have to spend several billion dollars to redesign the ship,”

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Originally posted by slosig:
Knowing nothing about EMALS, I’ll hazard a guess that like any new technology: it with have teething troubles, there will be several things that don’t work exactly as expected and require minor or major tweaks or redesigns to get to the projected performance (or as close as possible). Only by going through the process and fixing/tweaking whatever needs fixed/tweaked will we get to the point where we can say for sure whether it was worth it.

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Originally posted by corsair:
EMALS uses technology that you'd find on modern roller-coasters, big difference is they aren't flinging 30-ton aircraft on a rolling/pitching deck. Navy has been working on this for over 15-years and put all their efforts into this one kind of tech. One of the rumor issues is the system besides having a 10% failure rate, is it's unknown if it can function when the deck is pitching/rolling in foul weather or, humid/tropical conditions. There's also scuttlebutt that it's power distribution system is all tied together so, if one cat goes down for maintenance or damage, all the others are off-line as well. The benefits getting off steam and freeing up internal space by reduced piping and engineering are appealing, the development of this tech just hasn't come around and a decision should've been made years ago to shelve-it.

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Originally posted by markand:
No expert on carrier operations by any means, but...

Every weapons system, from the M-16 to the M-1 Abrams, had major development issues, failures to perform to expectations and cost overruns. Generally, these systems undergo extensive testing and design modifications and work out those issues and become quite successful and effective.

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Steam catapults can't launch lightweight drones. Never will. The steam launch impulse can't be regulated or dialed down precisely enough.

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I don't know what the answers are, but I don't think we have much of a choice but to get EMALS to work. The real problem probably isn't the technology, but the government bureaucracy involved in implementing it. This isn't rocket science, its just engineering, so get it done already!

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Originally posted by slosig:

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Originally posted by corsair:
EMALS uses technology that you'd find on modern roller-coasters, big difference is they aren't flinging 30-ton aircraft on a rolling/pitching deck. Navy has been working on this for over 15-years and put all their efforts into this one kind of tech. One of the rumor issues is the system besides having a 10% failure rate, is it's unknown if it can function when the deck is pitching/rolling in foul weather or, humid/tropical conditions. There's also scuttlebutt that it's power distribution system is all tied together so, if one cat goes down for maintenance or damage, all the others are off-line as well. The benefits getting off steam and freeing up internal space by reduced piping and engineering are appealing, the development of this tech just hasn't come around and a decision should've been made years ago to shelve-it.

10% failure rate? As a pilot, [BLEEP] that!!! I guess if it just doesn’t fire at all, you’re still safely on the deck, but if you need to go fight, that isn’t particularly useful. A short shot on the other hand (enough to get you moving and dribble off the end of the deck, but not enough to get you to flying speed, no thank you!

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Originally posted by slosig:
You know it will never happen, but I kinda like the idea of, “You think you have the best new idea since sliced bread? Great! Develop it, debug it, bring us a finished product and we’ll buy and deploy it.” No more blank check to figure it out on the taxpayer’s dime.

Maybe some sort of fixed priced development contract (think NRE, or Non-Recoverable Engineering), but if you burn through that and don’t have a functioning, spec meeting product, then it is up to you to spend *your* money to get it to meet spec or abandon it. If you abandon, all IP, tooling, parts etc becomes property of the taxpayer and it is up to the taxpayer to decide whether to scrap, hire someone else to finish the job (and get the production contracts), or whatever.

The procurement process could use a little more adversarial relationship between the defense companies and the future defense company employees/board members^H^H^H^H Uh, I mean procurement officers.