The Bunker: A shot across the bow?

STEAMED

Did the Navy just get a keel of steel?

President Trump designs aircraft carriers the way kids build paper airplanes. It’s just that his cost billions and can inflict far more pain than paper cuts. Nearly a decade ago, he concluded that the Navy’s plan to help launch planes from aircraft carriers using new-fangled electromagnetic-force catapults instead of the tried-and-true steam-powered versions was stupid … apparently based on what a sailor told him. “How is it working?” Trump asked one back in 2017.

“Sir, not good. Not good,” Trump said the swabbie responded. “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.” Trump said he told the sailor that Navy carriers would be “going to goddamned steam.” He finally made that official in an August 13 National Security Presidential Memorandum, nine years later.

The Navy has acknowledged that it had problems getting the new electromagnetic catapults operating properly. But the service says that after a decade of tinkering they are working well. In fact, Admiral Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, raised nautical eyebrows August 22 when he said the new electric catapults are putting more planes into the air — a carrier’s raison d'être — than their steam-powered predecessors. The new Ford-class sortie-generation rate, he said, is 120% to 130% compared to the older Nimitz-class flattops and their steam-powered launchers.

Talk about a sea battle! Will the Navy stick to its guns, or surrender to Trump’s yearning for yesterday? The service hints it may be ready to fight. “We’ll give the president a full and complete picture of what we’re talking about here,” the CNO said. “If we were to go back to steam … we need to really understand the total cost of that. I can tell you that will be a significant design change.”

That’s because redesigning new Ford-class carriers to accommodate steam catapults — the first three carriers of the class have already been built with the electromagnetic versions — isn’t like a heart transplant. Given the complexity of the two power sources, it’s more like replacing the ship’s entire circulatory system. For the Navy to acknowledge the better performance of hardware Trump disdains is a slap to the commander-in-chief’s countenance. Of course the president, as he regularly does, could eventually back down: After all, Trump Always Catapults Out.

But, coincidentally or not, the Navy itself is weighing more than a catapult change to the fourth Ford-class carrier now being built. During the first Trump administration, the Navy announced this carrier would be named in honor of Doris “Dorie” Miller. He was a Pearl Harbor hero who died 717 days after December 7, 1941, when a Japanese torpedo sank his warship. The USS Doris Miller would be the first carrier to be named for an enlisted sailor and the first named after a Black person. But now, according to multiple reports, the Navy is considering changing the ship's name to honor Trump. Miller’s family is understandably upset. All that’s bad enough. What’s worse is that neither the Navy nor the White House apparently has the ballast to deny such discussions are underway.

NO NEW NEWS HERE

F-35 fighter’s cost jumps 10%

“When a dog bites a man, that isn't news. It often happens,” John B. Bogart, a 19th century New York newspaper editor, said. “But if a man bites a dog, that is news.” In that case, the new Pentagon report on the price of its F-35 fighter, the most costly weapons program in the history of the world, isn’t news. Once again, a warplane designed to soar into the skies has a price tag that is leapfrogging beyond it into the stratosphere.

The 2,470 Lockheed F-35s that the Air Force, Navy, and Marines were planning to buy for $485.2 billion when last estimated in 2023 are now projected to cost $536.2 billion — a 10.5% hike. The excuses cited for the cost growth are an all-too-familiar litany of thinly sliced baloney. They boil down to supersonic optimism colliding with gravity’s reality. (The F-35’s original 2001 estimate — you know, low-balled enough to get the program off into the wild green yonder — was $233 billion.)

If you’re into military-procurement money masochism, you can check out the details in this Department of Defense Selected Acquisition Report (PDF). It’s dated April 21, but it only surfaced August 26. The rest of us will pass. Instead, we’ll await that elusive F-35 “man bites dog” accounting that contains good news about this deeply troubled program.

We’re not holding our breath.

A REALLY BIG DEAL

New money for an old warbird

Two days before the news of the F-35’s latest cost hike surfaced, the Pentagon made a far bigger investment in a far older warplane: It announced it would be spending as much as $131 billion on the 1970s-era F-15 fighter for the Air Force and U.S. allies. That’s real money. In fact, the $131,230,000,000 contract is the same size as the Air Force’s entire 2009 budget (PDF). The contract will buy, improve, and sustain the twin-engine Boeing (née McDonnell Douglas) fighter through 2037.

The Bunker doesn’t recall seeing such a huge deal awarded to a single company in decades of poring over the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements (yes, TB’s really that boring). Sure, the F-15 has been upgraded since it first flew, and dollars don’t go as far these days as they used to. Nonetheless, the sheer size of the sum is staggering — it’s close to $400 for every American. Earlier this year, the Air Force said it planned to boost its buy of the latest version of the F-15 from 129 to 267 aircraft. The F-15s now rolling off Boeing’s St. Louis assembly line cost $138 million each.

Boeing “referred a request for comment to the Air Force,” Breaking Defense reported. In fact, the company apparently didn’t issue a press release about the deal (although it did issue one about its $250,000 donation to help eastern Washington state recover from wildfires).

Budget dweebs will note that the $131 billion deal is its potential ceiling. Only a piddling $343,740 was “obligated” — actually spent, in other words. But this so-called “indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract” also contains some definite Boeing gold: “This contract was a sole-source acquisition.” Nice trick for a plane that first flew during the Vietnam war and now finds itself sharing the skies with stealth aircraft, cruise missiles, and drones unimaginable when it first took off.

This is what happens when you plan to spend more than $1 trillion annually on the U.S. military as far as the eye can see: You’re spending billions today to fight tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s weapons, spending billions today to fight tomorrow’s wars with today’s weapons, and spending billions today to fight tomorrow’s wars with tomorrow’s weapons.

By the way, Boeing did issue a press release about that last one.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

The Bunker thanks you for refueling your military migraine by dropping by this week. Encourage friends to do the same by forwarding this on so they can subscribe here.