The crew mans the rails as the ship is brought to life during commissioning ceremonies for the USS Gerald R. Ford.
The crew mans the rails as the ship is brought to life during commissioning ceremonies for the USS Gerald R. Ford.Rob Ostermaier/Newport News Daily Press/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
  • According to his former defense chief, Trump often said that the ship was overpriced and broke.

  • Trump fixated on the look and location of the command center.

  • The ship will never work, he said about the aircraft launch system and elevators.

When Donald Trump was president, he was a big fan of complaining about the look of the large ship.

In "A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times", the author writes that Trump complained that the $13 billion carrier was broken. The command center was positioned too far back and not close enough to the middle of the carrier according to the former president.

The former president proposed moving the structure closer to the middle of the ship, which would have been a costly and pointless endeavor, according to Trump.

A book written by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa that came out last year noted the former president's frequent complaints about the placement of the island.

According to the book, the Navy tried to explain to the president that the command center was positioned to better facilitate aircraft operations, but he insisted that it just doesn't look right.

The most important thing always seemed to be about the image and the look, according to the author.

The former defense chief wrote that he remembers the president calling the US ships ugly and comparing them to Russian and Italian models, as he flipped through pictures of foreign ships.

He wrote that Trump did not seem happy with the answer, which was that ships are built to fight and win, not win beauty contests.

The carrier will never work, said Trump, who considered scrapping plans to purchase additional Ford-class ships.

The catapult system on the ship uses electrical currents to propel aircraft off the flight deck, and Trump complained about it both privately and publicly. The new technology is intended to be an improvement over the steam catapults on the carriers.

The new catapults were designed to be more efficient and safer than the older ones. Despite this, Trump claimed throughout his presidency that the new tech was too complex, at one point stating "you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out."

The Advanced Weapon Elevators were complained about by Trump, who claimed they would break if exposed to water.

One glass of water. Just one. All it will take is one. According to the new book, Trump said that elevators will never work once it splashes them.

The elevators, which are used to move weapons around the ship, have experienced some integration challenges and delays, but they are designed to operate aboard naval vessels at sea.

He tried to explain the issues to the president many times, but he never heard them.

After significant delays and cost overruns, the first-in-class Ford is expected to be ready for naval operations this year. Three other Ford-class carriers are in various stages of development.

The original article is on Business Insider.

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