Navy officials secretly plan to ignore Trump’s warship demands

Five and one-half months into his war with Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump has specific ideas on how he wants warships to be designed. But according to The Hill, Trump's ideas present challenges for U.S. Navy officials — who are grappling with possible ways to respond to his warship demands.

The Hill's Filip Timotija reports, "President Trump is increasingly putting his thumb on the scale by wading more into the designs of U.S. aircraft carriers, backing potentially seismic design changes that would increase construction costs and scramble timelines to complete the build. The president has ordered a return to steam catapults on Ford-class aircraft carriers, and the U.S. Navy is conducting a review to consider possibly moving the multistory aircraft carrier's command center tower toward the middle of the vessel."

According to Timotija, defense industry experts "believe Trump's aesthetic concerns will not be implemented in the long run, as the current aircraft carriers' build is underway." The experts, Timotija reports, "suggested that Navy officials either will convince Trump that the newer electromagnetic aircraft launch systems (EMALS) and advanced weapons elevators (AWE) on the warships are the way to go or will wait him out."

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Hill, "I think the idea with this and with the electromagnetic catapult is to do the studies and maybe do some of the redesign work, but not actually incorporate it into the ships, because the actual construction part of those ships is far enough in the future that they could wait it out, right, and wait until the president's out of office — and then just not implement the change."

According to U.S. Navy veteran Brett Sadler — a senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation's Allison Center for National Security — Trump's mind may be made up when it comes to warship design.

Sadler told The Hill, "It's all part of the same review. So, the president has a view. He.… wants things to be more grand. He wants things to be more reliable. And I think when he gets the math back, the engineers give him back the study in 60 days. I think you'll see things moderate, but I don't think he's going to let up."

According to U.S. Navy Adm. Gary Roughead, "disruptions" in warship design are a challenge for the Navy.

Roughead told The Hill, "I think they also will have to look at what are the engineering changes that are required, the amount of effort and man hours that will go into making that design change if, in fact, the decision is made to change the design, and the effort and the engineering effort and design effort obviously will detract from other shipbuilding design initiatives that are in play and engineering issues that are in play."