Former President Donald Trump was fixated with the Navy’s supercarrier USS Gerald Ford, complaining to senior military officers that the $13billion ship ‘just doesn’t look right’ and bragged that he understood construction from his career as a real estate mogul, according to a new book.
‘I know aesthetics,’ Trump reportedly told senior military leaders when he told them he didn’t like the ship’s high cost, the advanced weapons elevators used to transport arms aboard, and the location of the ‘island’ - or command center - on the ship’s deck.
It is smaller and further back than on previous carriers. This was intended to enlarge the flight deck and provide more space for sorties - aircraft departures - as well as take into account the smaller number of sorties scheduled for the carrier over the course of its life.
The enlarged space on the flight deck also makes it easier for pilots to land the aircraft. It also allows for more space for the crew to perform aircraft maintenance.
As if to drive home the point about his 'knowing aesthetics,' Trump reportedly rubbed his own hair in front of senior military officers, saying: 'Can't you tell?'
'The generals and admirals were horrible businessmen, Trump complained repeatedly, and particularly terrible at acquisition and deal making on ships, ensuring the military was always being ripped off,' authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa write in their new book, Peril.
An excerpt of the book, which is due for release next week, was obtained by Business Insider.
In one meeting, Trump is reported to have complained that the advanced new weapons elevators were at risk of being flooded with water.
‘I know about elevators,’ Trump is quoted as saying to military leaders.
‘If water gets on them,’ they would malfunction, the then-president is reported to have said.
The 11 weapons elevators aboard the USS Gerald Ford have been one of the ship’s trouble spots since the supercarrier’s unveiling in 2013. It was formally commissioned by Trump in July 2017.
Former President Donald Trump complained to senior military officers that the $13billion ship USS Gerald Ford (seen in the above undated file photo) ‘just doesn’t look right’, and was unhappy about the position of its command center, known as its island
The former president was particularly irked by the placement of the ship's command center - also known as the 'island' (seen above)
Trump was also reported to have favored the older Nimitz-class aircraft carriers due to their reliance on steam power to launch aircraft. The image above shows the USS Nimitz in the Indian Ocean in November 2020
The Nimitz, pictured in 2020, also has a larger island than the USS Gerald Ford
The USS Gerald Ford is the world’s largest aircraft carrier and the largest warship ever constructed in terms of displacement - which is measured at 100,000 long tons.
The elevators’ job is to move missiles and bombs from its weapons magazines up to the flight deck so that they can be then loaded onto aircraft for bombing missions.
When the ship was delivered to the US Navy in 2017, none of the 11 elevators were operational, according to Business Insider.
Since then, the Navy has gradually been bringing the elevators online. All of the elevators are scheduled to be fully operational by the end of this year, according to the military.
While the elevators were a source of problems on the ship, it was not because of water, as Trump had feared, but because of integration issues.
The book also reports that the former president was highly critical of the new aircraft carrier’s reliance on an electromagnetic aircraft launch system.
Trump complained that the new system was too complex and that ‘you have to go to MIT to figure out how this damn thing works,’ according to Woodward and Costa.
The former president is also reported to have once said: ‘You have to be Albert Einstein to really work it properly.’
Unlike other aircraft carriers, the USS Ford launches planes off its decks and catches them upon landing via a high-tech Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and an Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG).
Older carriers use a steam-driven catapult for propulsion and hydraulic-engine arresting gear.
Like the weapons elevators, the EMALS system has also experienced trouble since the ship’s delivery.
Earlier this year, Pentagon testers released a report indicating that the new technology was beset with flaws.
'Poor or unknown reliability of new technology systems critical for flight operations,' which include EMALS and AAG, could 'adversely affect' the USS Ford's ability to carry out military sorties,’ wrote director of testing Robert Behler.
The assessment the report was based on included 3,975 launch and landing operations on the aircraft carrier during 11 post-delivery trials at sea, conducted from November 2019 through September 2020.
EMALS was expected to be able to carry out 4,166 launches before experiencing operational mission failures.
Instead, it managed just 181 cycles between failures, which Behler wrote was 'well below the requirement.'
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