Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ridge Leoni/U.S. Navy via Getty Images
The USS Gerald R. Ford underway on its own power for the first time, April 8, 2017.
- In a speech on Tuesday, President Donald Trump delivered a wide-ranging speech that including his long-standing fixation with the Navy's new Ford-class supercarrier.
- Trump has repeatedly and often unexpectedly criticized the carrier's new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, advocating the return of the steam launchers that were used for decades.
- Trump insists crew members must be "Albert Einstein" to operate the new systems, which have faced their share of developmental setbacks.
President Donald Trump likes to talk about the US Navy's new, elite Ford-class aircraft carrier, which he has called a "100,000-ton message to the world," but there is one frustrating thing he just cannot get over.
During a freewheeling 80-minute speech Tuesday at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner - where Trump also warned of cancer-causing windmills - the president unexpectedly turned to an old fixation: the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, on the Navy's newest carrier.
The Navy used EMALS, instead of the steam launchers that were used for decades, and new advanced arresting gear on the new carriers for smoother, more efficient launch and recovery operations. But developmental setbacks with the new equipment have driven up costs, delayed delivery, and repeatedly drawn Trump's ire.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has been noticeably obsessed with and highly critical of this new system.