Trump vows a return to steam-powered aircraft carrier catapults in Memorial Day speech in Japan

President Trump has been known to fixate on certain details, like fabrics for his hotels and the aesthetics of his border wall, and in a speech to U.S. service members in Japan on Tuesday, he hit on another of his preoccupations: aircraft carrier catapults. After wishing about 800 members of the U.S. Navy's 7th fleet gathered on the USS Wasp "a very happy Memorial Day," Trump asked the friendly audience if they prefer steam-powered or electromagnetic aircraft catapults, apparently announcing he will order the Navy to revert to steam-powered catapults in future aircraft carrier orders.

Trump has criticized the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) several times since taking office, saying at various times that "you have to go to MIT to figure out how this damn thing works," that "you have to be Albert Einstein to really work it properly," and "it's like when you get a new car and you have to be a computer genius to fix your seat." ("You sort of have to be Albert Einstein to run the nuclear power plants that we have here as well, but we're doing that very well," Capt. Pat Hannifi, commander of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, told Trump last Thanksgiving.)

EMALS, installed so far only on the USS Gerald R. Ford, is over-budget and behind schedule. "It's not clear how the president became interested in this somewhat obscure military technology issue," The Washington Post noted in November, but the Navy says EMALS takes up less space, increases the variety of aircraft that can be launched, will launch them more quickly with fewer operators and less wear on aircraft, and will cost significantly less than steam over time.

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"EMALS is a poster child for immature technologies sent to the field too soon," Kyle Mizokami explained in Popular Science in May 2017. "That said, by all accounts the principles behind it are sound," its "problems will eventually be worked out," and the president "micromanaging complex engineering programs is a bad idea."