The Bunker: Anchors astray!

This week in The Bunker: President Trump metamorphoses into Captain Nemo with orders to remake key elements of the U.S. Navy; then he ungraciously dismisses the mental-health concerns of sailors kept at sea to fight his self-spontaneously combusted war with Iran; and more.

TOY SAILOR

Whims o’er the waves

Commodore-in-Chief Donald Trump last week launched the most brazen strike against the U.S. Navy since the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But unlike Japan’s, Trump’s attack didn’t come as a surprise. He’s made clear the U.S. Navy needs shaking up, and if it takes some torpedoes like those he fired at the Navy’s amidships last week, all the better. It’s long overdue.

Alas, most of those torpedoes missed their mark. Like Trump’s order to replace 21st Century electric catapults, used to launch warplanes off the Navy’s future carriers, with their 20th century steam-powered ancestors. And those to make tomorrow’s carriers look more like yesterday’s. And then there’s Trump’s continuing embrace of his backward-looking $275 billion fleet of 15 not-yet-built (and never will be) Trump-class battleships.

Trump apparently believes that foes unconditionally surrender only if confronted with World War II-era weapons … but, as data dweebs never tire of telling us, correlation is not causation. Senator Mark Kelly, the Arizona Democrat who sits on the armed services committee, is perplexed by this Oval Office maritime engineering. “I’ve launched off the front of aircraft carriers hundreds of times, have a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, and am a test pilot and even I wouldn’t suggest to the Navy how to engineer specific systems on its ships,” he said. “Donald Trump should stick to what he knows best — ballrooms, bankruptcy, and bullshit” (the retired Navy officer still speaks like a sailor).

Then there’s Trump’s breath-taking August 14 dismissal about the mental health of sailors aboard the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, their sea time extended because of the Iran war. Family members have been complaining about their loved ones’ lengthening time away from home, which began last November. Has the deployment gone on too long? “No, not nearly long enough,” Trump responded. That’s especially rich coming from an impudent rich kid who avoided military service during the Vietnam war because of purported bone spurs.

INDUSTRIAL BASELESS

Bolstering Navy shipbuilding

Sections of Trump’s August 13 memo sounded a lot like what The Bunker has been saying for years. Too many U.S. warships have been bombarded with ever-expanding requirements that have ended up sinking them (cf. Zumwalt destroyers, Constellation frigates). “The United States Navy has experienced a series of shipbuilding setbacks stemming from overly complex designs and iterative design change procedures, which have resulted in cost growth, delays, and cancellations,” Trump wrote. His memo bars larding U.S. naval blueprints with additional missions and capabilities absent approval from the defense secretary.

Good for him! It’d be even better if he fired some of the senior admirals responsible for the Navy’s string of shipbuilding snafus, instead of letting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mysteriously cashier many other officers for unknown reasons.

Trump is willing to approve more foreign investment in U.S. shipyards, and to buy warships from overseas contractors. U.S. shipwrights feel wronged. While U.S. law requires that U.S. warships be built in the U.S., the president is allowed to waive that requirement by citing a U.S. “national security interest.” The Navy has largely handed over its in-house ship-building capability to private yards, which are withering as commercial shipbuilding has moved overseas. The service still runs four struggling yards, in Hawaii, Maine, Virginia, and Washington state; Trump’s order calls for the creation of a fifth.

In fact, U.S. military shipbuilding by foreign firms is already happening. Last month, the Trump administration awarded a $2 billion contract to a South Korean firm to build a pair of missile-range tracking ships. The Hanwha Philly Shipyard will build them at its Pennsylvania facility, part of what had been the Philadelphia Navy Shipyard. That became the first U.S.-owned shipyard when the Navy took it over in 1801. Up to 40,000 workers toiled there during World War II; by the time the government shut it down in 1995, there were only 2,000 left.

REVERSE CATAPULT

Full steam ahead!

In the 19th century, the Navy debated the merits of powering its vessels by wind or steam. It took a while before the prevailing (engineering) winds gave the edge to steam. In the 21st century, Trump has ordered the Navy back to the future. In his August 13 memo, he instructed the sea service’s future Ford-class aircraft carriers to fling their fighters into the sky aided by steam-powered catapult relics instead of the high-tech electromagnetic ones installed aboard the first three of the Ford class. For good measure, he also insisted that the elevators that move munitions between carrier decks be powered by hydraulics instead of magnets.

“We’re not letting any more ships be built with the ridiculous billions of dollars more they spent on electric catapults, and they’re not good,” Trump said last month (he’s been saying as much since 2017). “They’re not nearly as good — too complex. The same thing with the magnetic elevators. We want them to be made hydraulic.” The complex change will likely cost billions of additional dollars.

The Navy has struggled installing these “cats” aboard its newest carriers. But their kinks have largely been fixed, and they have launched 36,863 aircraft as of March. Both France and China are using them on their newest flattops. This fledgling but proven technology makes them a far better bet than Trump’s gung-ho support for his pie-in-the-sky Golden Dome missile shield, which will never be ready for prime time.

This isn’t the first time the president has waded into military procurement. He got involved in negotiations over the F-35 program and Air Force One, as well as tinkering with and championing specific warship classes. Yet the Navy website for Trump’s promised “Golden Fleet” remains “currently under construction,” as it has been for months. Bottom line: If you like the way he’s running the war with Iran, you’ll be delighted to see his fingerprints all over the Pentagon’s latest hardware.

FRAYING FORCES

Trump dismisses sailors’ stress

It’s never a good idea for a U.S. politician to belittle those wearing the nation’s uniform — especially when they are worn out waging a war unilaterally launched by that same politician. The roughly 5,000 sailors aboard the carrier Lincoln, have been away from their San Diego home port since November 21 (nearly a week before Thanksgiving). Its crew hasn’t been ashore since a Guam visit December 11 (two weeks before Christmas). The Iran war has kept it on station near, and around — surprise! — Iran. Though it was originally scheduled to return to San Diego in May, Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao has only said that the ship will return home “soon.”

The Bunker sees a blue-water U.S. Navy as critical to preserving freedom of navigation (ignoring, for the moment, the Strait of Hormuz). Unlike ground forces and military aircraft, which can be provocative when deployed to global hotspots, U.S. Navy vessels can show the flag 24/7 in international waters, no matter what China says. (Military science, in other words, often isn’t.)

But such forward presence is not cheap. The U.S. Navy’s annual budget was nearly $96 billion in 2001, when 9/11 happened. It has ballooned to $267 billion this year and is slated to rise to roughly $378 billion — a 23% boost — in 2027 (PDF).

That’s $1 billion a day.

Military officers always want more ships, but rarely do we see just how often the Navy misses those requested missions. We got a rare peek into that gap when the Government Accountability Office reported that the service could only provide 44% of what the Pentagon’s combatant commanders wanted in 2015. For the math-challenged among us, that means that 56% of the commanders’ “needs” — more than half — went unfulfilled. Yet life went on pretty much as normal. That suggests their needs are mostly wants.

The Navy needs to trim its sails. The nation has to stop expecting its hard-working sailors to patrol all seven seas as if they were American ponds. Especially when its naval forces are strained by war. Rhetoric, as is so often the case when it comes to the wants and needs of the U.S. military, has to be tempered by reality.

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