Full steam in reverse: Trump orders US Navy back to old-style aircraft catapults

Navy Lookout – President Donald Trump has ordered the US Navy to develop a plan to abandon electromagnetic aircraft launch systems on future Ford-class aircraft carriers and return to steam catapults. The wider memorandum contains some sensible measures to address America’s serious naval shipbuilding problems, but imposing a fundamental engineering redesign on an aircraft carrier already under construction is extraordinarily difficult to justify.