Aircraft carriers and President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order order on aircraft launch catapults and weapons elevators for the Ford-class were the topics for this radio interview and podcast with John Batchelor and Gordon Chang. Highlights below, and audio clip here.

John Batchelor:  The U.S. Navy is in action right now all around the world, especially in the Middle East, and the carrier battle groups are the centerpiece of the U.S. ability to project power.  One system on the new carrier has been controversial for years.  Recently, on the USS Gerald R. Ford, there was much talk about the steam launch being replaced.  The steam catapult.  It worked, and then we decided to fix it.  What did we fix it with?

Rebecca Grant: The steam catapults have been great since the 1950s.  Think about Top Gun.  You see the pilot salute, the landing signal officer gives the wave, and that catapult slams the F/A-18 off the deck and launches it into the air.  Fantastic system, we’re still going to use catapults, but the new USS Gerald R. Ford has replaced the old steam catapults that date from the ’50s with an electronic catapult.  The number one difference here is torque.  With the newer catapults, you can dial down the level of power if you’re launching a lighter drone; the U.S. Navy is getting Stingray refueling and reconnaissance drones later this year.  Or, you can dial it up for heavier launches, like an F/A-18 that’s bulging with weapons, to go fly in Central Command; or the Navy’s new secret stealth fighter, that’s going to have longer range.  So instead of one big slam with the steam, you’ve got that adjustable system, and that’s why the Navy loves it.

John Batchelor:  The President’s remark on this debate, it seemed to surprise some.

Rebecca Grant.  This was a big surprise because an Executive Order came out from the White House last week.  It’s all about rebuilding the combat power of the Navy, which is fantastic, but this EO directs a study of going back to steam, and also changing around the advanced weapons elevators.  We’ve got a better weapons elevator, that moves ordnance around the ship faster.  So, President Trump asked to reconsider both of those, and here’s why that is a big issue.  One, USS Gerald R. Ford already has the electric catapults. They’ve done over 30,000 sorties; they did 11,000 launches with them just on their Middle East deployment most recently.  The Kennedy, CVN 79 [new aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy] also has electronic systems. But the Executive Order might take another ship that’s in construction, CVN 81 and maybe go back to steam.  That could delay that carrier by 5, 6, 7 years and leave us with a huge gap at a time when China’s Navy, already bigger than ours, is becoming a super threat in the Pacific

Gordon Chang: I’m glad you mentioned the elevators, because that’s the other controversial issue, which hasn’t of course gotten as much attention as the catapults, the EMALS system.  How are the elevators doing? Because I understand that they were like the catapults themselves, they went through a lot of teething problems.  Where are the elevators right now in terms of performance?

Rebecca Grant: That’s right. They were both new technologies, and it took some time, but now they’re working extremely well. The thing about these new elevators is they are electromagnetic.  They don’t have the fragile pulley system, again that dates from decades back.  The capacity of these new elevators is 24,000 lbs.  That is double the capacity of elevators installed on the older Nimitz-class ships.  They also move faster, so you can move a load at about 150 feet per minute, and that’s again, a significant increase in speed.  What that means is that your crew that’s trying to get weapons up to the flight deck and load on aircraft to launch, maybe under combat conditions, can do this much, much faster.  They’re also placed around the ship in more strategic locations.  So we’ve got to stick with these new elevators.  You don’t want to go back to the old, slow elevators.  They’re going to slow down the sortie generation rates so that’s why we want to stick both with the new catapults and the new elevators.  The new elevators have probably done 50,000 to 75,000 reps on deployment and in exercises and they’re working fine.

John Batchelor:  Is the CNO now scrambling due to this ambush?

Rebecca Grant: The Navy, the CNO, and also Acting Secretary Hung Cao, have the tasking to do this study and basically take it back to the President.  They’ve got 60 days to go back and say, hopefully: “Hey, Sir, we looked at this, but we really need to stick with the electronic system.”  If you get rid of those electronic catapults, there go your chances of having drone carriers, and using a lot of that new drone dominance technology for the Navy.  And if you get rid of those elevators, well, good luck trying to carry those bigger hypersonic missiles. Because I’ve got a secret for you, those missiles are big and they’re heavy. They need those new weapons elevators for the advanced weapons.

Gordon Chang:  President Trump appears determined to go back to steam.  Do you think the Navy is just going to try to wait him out, because he’s only around for two more years?

Rebecca Grant: Well, it’s an Executive Order, not an executive request, so they will have to come back with an answer.  I think we’ll see the Navy Department really try to hold firm, because they know that if they have to restart on CVN 81, the Doris Miller, which already has some modules nearing completion, that that’s going to be a huge gap.  We could go as low as maybe only 8 or 9 operational carriers at a time when we can’t afford it.  You know, we’re really seeing that the carriers, their mobility, their maneuverability, are a key asset for power projection.  They can move around.  They can avoid drone and missile attacks, and that’s something that we’re struggling with now at our land bases.

John Batchelor: For commanders of the Navy, how’s their morale, given all the tasks that they’ve been given and some of the blows that they’ve received in the media?

Rebecca Grant:  Let’s remember we’ve got operational security covering everything going on in the Middle East.  But the reality is the two aircraft carriers there, and all our other ships, they are doing a tremendous job.  They are just kicking butt over there in CENTCOM.  We’re going to see some stories come back, about attacks by naval aviation on Iran targets, about their work in the Strait, about drone defense, and you’re going to see medals given out, and aviators and sailors that have done an incredible job.  I think it’s a very exciting time for the Navy, as they reel in this combat experience, and start to apply a lot of that to their operational concepts for China and the Pacific.

John Batchelor: Does that extend to the brass?

Rebecca Grant:  Oh, 100%. They are thrilled, I think, with how the carriers are operating. Not to minimize it; it’s hot, it’s difficult, they’re all on super-long deployments out there, but this is what they train for, and America’s fighting Navy has written an incredible chapter.  We haven’t seen this rate and level since Vietnam, maybe even World War II, and this time it’s really carriers in the lead.

This article was originally published on the Lexington Institute: Trump’s Order On Aircraft Carrier Catapults and Weapons Elevators (From The John Batchelor Show) | Lexington Institute

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