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Trump disses digital catapults
Biden likes General Atomics drones
“It sounded bad to me. Digital,” Trump told Time in a May 11, 2017 interview about a tour he had made of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier then nearing completion.
Biden drones on
The recent rash of mysterious UFO sitings over New Jersey and elsewhere have some eyes turning to a La Jolla-based Poway drone maker with friendly ties to Joe Biden and a chilly relationship with incoming President Donald Trump. Back during his first presidential stint in the first months of 2017, Trump dissed a costly and long-troubled high-tech aircraft carrier launch system that used a catapult and was sold to the Navy by General Atomics. “It sounded bad to me. Digital,” Trump told Time in a May 11, 2017 interview about a tour he had made of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier then nearing completion.
Joe Biden supports India’s demand for unmanned surveillance.
“You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system.’ He said ‘Well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology].’ I said, ‘You don’t use steam anymore for catapult?’ ‘No sir.’ I said, ‘Ah, how is it working?’ ‘Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know, the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.’ It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.
“And I said — and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, ‘What system are you going to be?’ ’Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You’re going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”
Two years later, Trump was still at war with the Navy and its contractors over the catapult’s fate. “He kicked his old-tech obsession up a notch during his visit to Japan, telling U.S. service members he plans to order the Navy to outfit all its new carriers with steam catapults,” according to a May 2019 Politico dispatch.
Said the president to sailors and Marines during a speech on the U.S.S. Wasp at a Navy base south of Tokyo, per the account: “So I think I’m going to put an order: when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam. We’re spending all that money on electric, and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions.” Subsequent calls to the White House seeking confirmation and further details of Trump’s plans to ditch the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, EMALS for short, were not returned, noted the story. Thomas Callender, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow and ex-Navy officer and Pentagon civilian executive, opined that dumping the system couldn’t happen overnight. “If you’re serious and were to try to abandon the electromagnetic system … it would be 15 years from now, and it would wind up costing even more money to do that major redesign of the aircraft carrier.”
Apparently he was right; despite Trump’s vows to stop the program, the digital catapult didn’t die, as a February 28 General Atomics news release from this year attests. Rolf Ziesing, vice president of GA’s Maritime Programs was quoted as saying, “U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78, is the first carrier to bring the safe, efficient, and robust capabilities of EMALS and the Advanced Arresting Gear into areas of operation as part of its deployment in the Mediterranean. CVN 78 has successfully conducted 22,900 successful aircraft launches and recoveries since its commissioning in 2017 with more than 8,700 sorties completed during the ship’s recent deployment. We are extremely proud of our role in supporting this new era of carrier aviation as Ford-class carriers join the fleet to support our Allies and defend our national interests.”
The John F. Kennedy, CVN 79, the next of the so-called Ford Class carriers, has been testing the same General Atomics-provided system since earlier this year. “EMALS can also more easily adjust power levels to launch smaller, lighter aircraft such as drones,” reported Popular Mechanics in a March 7 story on the trials. And drones, as it happens, provide another huge source of government cash to GA’s business.
Linden Prause Blue: in the green after sale to India.
Departing president Joe Biden has been far friendlier to General Atomics than his predecessor, going so far as to invite Linden Prause Blue, CEO of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and son of James Neal Blue, brother of Linden Blue, who runs General Atomics, to a June 2023 state dinner at the White House for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This fall, a Biden-blessed deal between GA and India came to fruition. “India inked the $3.3 billion contract with the US government for the 31 ‘birds’ or weaponized MQ-9B Predator remotely-piloted aircraft, along with another $520 million deal with drone-manufacturer General Atomics to set up a MRO facility here, in South Block,” reported the Times of India on October 24. “The ‘birds’ will provide a quantum jump in the ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities of our armed forces,” an official told [Times of India]. The two unarmed drones taken on lease from General Atomics since September 2020 — one of them crashed in September — have certainly helped India keep close track of the increasing presence of Chinese warships and spy vessels in the Indian Ocean Region as well as the People’s Liberation Army’s build-up along the 3488-km Line of Actual Control.”
Meanwhile, as the Biden administration has remained generally mum about what’s going on with the unidentified drones in U.S. skies, the General Atomics factory in Poway has been cranking out new generations of its lucrative unmanned vehicles. SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian are some of the company’s latest. “SeaGuardian can stay aloft for much longer than a human-crewed aircraft, making it ideal for the long loiter times involved with surface operations or hunting subsurface targets,” says a February 20 GA-sponsored post on Breaking Defense. “The aircraft can release sonobuoys — sensors that splash through the ocean surface to search for submarines — and then monitor their signals. Or it can leave that monitoring role to another aircraft or take on the duty of monitoring sonobuoys released by another aircraft, such as a naval helicopter.” Adds the promotion: “The U.S. Navy, for example, has integrated the SeaGuardian into several sophisticated international exercises in the Pacific — using the aircraft to escort surface action groups, serve as a communications relay for warships and aircraft, and establish new concepts of operation against hostile submarines.”
A smaller drone the company calls Sparrowhawk, coincidentally or not about the same size of those sighted over New Jersey, is also being tested. “An MQ-9B might patrol to the edge of international airspace, for instance, and then release a Sparrowhawk for a closer look over a contested island. Upon mission completion, the Sparrowhawk would return, and the larger aircraft would reel it in with [GA’s] aerial recovery system.”
— Matt Potter
(@sdmattpotter)
The Reader offers $25 for news tips published in this column. Call our voice mail at 619-235-3000, ext. 440, or sandiegoreader.com/staff/matt-potter/contact/.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Trump disses digital catapults
Biden likes General Atomics drones
Trump disses digital catapults
Biden likes General Atomics drones
“It sounded bad to me. Digital,” Trump told Time in a May 11, 2017 interview about a tour he had made of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier then nearing completion.
Biden drones on
The recent rash of mysterious UFO sitings over New Jersey and elsewhere have some eyes turning to a La Jolla-based Poway drone maker with friendly ties to Joe Biden and a chilly relationship with incoming President Donald Trump. Back during his first presidential stint in the first months of 2017, Trump dissed a costly and long-troubled high-tech aircraft carrier launch system that used a catapult and was sold to the Navy by General Atomics. “It sounded bad to me. Digital,” Trump told Time in a May 11, 2017 interview about a tour he had made of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier then nearing completion.
Joe Biden supports India’s demand for unmanned surveillance.
“You know the catapult is quite important. So I said what is this? ‘Sir, this is our digital catapult system.’ He said ‘Well, we’re going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology].’ I said, ‘You don’t use steam anymore for catapult?’ ‘No sir.’ I said, ‘Ah, how is it working?’ ‘Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn’t have the power. You know, the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam’s going all over the place, there’s planes thrown in the air.’ It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.
“And I said — and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, ‘What system are you going to be?’ ’Sir, we’re staying with digital.’ I said, ‘No you’re not. You’re going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good.”
Two years later, Trump was still at war with the Navy and its contractors over the catapult’s fate. “He kicked his old-tech obsession up a notch during his visit to Japan, telling U.S. service members he plans to order the Navy to outfit all its new carriers with steam catapults,” according to a May 2019 Politico dispatch.
Said the president to sailors and Marines during a speech on the U.S.S. Wasp at a Navy base south of Tokyo, per the account: “So I think I’m going to put an order: when we build a new aircraft carrier, we’re going to use steam. We’re spending all that money on electric, and nobody knows what it’s going to be like in bad conditions.” Subsequent calls to the White House seeking confirmation and further details of Trump’s plans to ditch the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, EMALS for short, were not returned, noted the story. Thomas Callender, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow and ex-Navy officer and Pentagon civilian executive, opined that dumping the system couldn’t happen overnight. “If you’re serious and were to try to abandon the electromagnetic system … it would be 15 years from now, and it would wind up costing even more money to do that major redesign of the aircraft carrier.”
Apparently he was right; despite Trump’s vows to stop the program, the digital catapult didn’t die, as a February 28 General Atomics news release from this year attests. Rolf Ziesing, vice president of GA’s Maritime Programs was quoted as saying, “U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, CVN 78, is the first carrier to bring the safe, efficient, and robust capabilities of EMALS and the Advanced Arresting Gear into areas of operation as part of its deployment in the Mediterranean. CVN 78 has successfully conducted 22,900 successful aircraft launches and recoveries since its commissioning in 2017 with more than 8,700 sorties completed during the ship’s recent deployment. We are extremely proud of our role in supporting this new era of carrier aviation as Ford-class carriers join the fleet to support our Allies and defend our national interests.”
The John F. Kennedy, CVN 79, the next of the so-called Ford Class carriers, has been testing the same General Atomics-provided system since earlier this year. “EMALS can also more easily adjust power levels to launch smaller, lighter aircraft such as drones,” reported Popular Mechanics in a March 7 story on the trials. And drones, as it happens, provide another huge source of government cash to GA’s business.
Linden Prause Blue: in the green after sale to India.
Departing president Joe Biden has been far friendlier to General Atomics than his predecessor, going so far as to invite Linden Prause Blue, CEO of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and son of James Neal Blue, brother of Linden Blue, who runs General Atomics, to a June 2023 state dinner at the White House for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This fall, a Biden-blessed deal between GA and India came to fruition. “India inked the $3.3 billion contract with the US government for the 31 ‘birds’ or weaponized MQ-9B Predator remotely-piloted aircraft, along with another $520 million deal with drone-manufacturer General Atomics to set up a MRO facility here, in South Block,” reported the Times of India on October 24. “The ‘birds’ will provide a quantum jump in the ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities of our armed forces,” an official told [Times of India]. The two unarmed drones taken on lease from General Atomics since September 2020 — one of them crashed in September — have certainly helped India keep close track of the increasing presence of Chinese warships and spy vessels in the Indian Ocean Region as well as the People’s Liberation Army’s build-up along the 3488-km Line of Actual Control.”
Meanwhile, as the Biden administration has remained generally mum about what’s going on with the unidentified drones in U.S. skies, the General Atomics factory in Poway has been cranking out new generations of its lucrative unmanned vehicles. SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian are some of the company’s latest. “SeaGuardian can stay aloft for much longer than a human-crewed aircraft, making it ideal for the long loiter times involved with surface operations or hunting subsurface targets,” says a February 20 GA-sponsored post on Breaking Defense. “The aircraft can release sonobuoys — sensors that splash through the ocean surface to search for submarines — and then monitor their signals. Or it can leave that monitoring role to another aircraft or take on the duty of monitoring sonobuoys released by another aircraft, such as a naval helicopter.” Adds the promotion: “The U.S. Navy, for example, has integrated the SeaGuardian into several sophisticated international exercises in the Pacific — using the aircraft to escort surface action groups, serve as a communications relay for warships and aircraft, and establish new concepts of operation against hostile submarines.”
A smaller drone the company calls Sparrowhawk, coincidentally or not about the same size of those sighted over New Jersey, is also being tested. “An MQ-9B might patrol to the edge of international airspace, for instance, and then release a Sparrowhawk for a closer look over a contested island. Upon mission completion, the Sparrowhawk would return, and the larger aircraft would reel it in with [GA’s] aerial recovery system.”
— Matt Potter
(@sdmattpotter)
The Reader offers $25 for news tips published in this column. Call our voice mail at 619-235-3000, ext. 440, or sandiegoreader.com/staff/matt-potter/contact/.
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