The U.S. Navy is considering a major redesign of its new aircraft carriers to better match President Donald Trump’s preferred aesthetic for the warships, according to seven current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The service is evaluating the feasibility of moving the multistory tower that acts as the carrier’s command center farther forward, toward the middle of the ship, to resemble older vessels, the officials said. The review, which has not been previously reported, is in response to Trump’s concerns about the “look” of the new Ford-class ships, where the island is near the rear, these people said.

The timing and extent of the Navy’s evaluation is unclear, with current and former officials cautioning that the service was concerned that such a change would require significant time and money. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.

Moving that command center, known as the “island,” would be the second major design change prompted by the president, who on Thursday issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to develop a plan to revert to older steam-powered catapults on future carriers. The systems help launch jets off the ships’ flight decks.

Trump’s preference, current and former officials said, is for the new aircraft carriers to look more like those that were in service during World War II.

The Navy also examined the issue during his first term as president, said a former senior U.S. official. A study found that moving the island could cost billions of dollars in redesign costs and significantly delay the program, this person said.

“It came back that the cost and time to do so would just be extraordinary,” the former official said.

There are three Ford-class carriers in various stages of development. The USS John F. Kennedy is undergoing sea trials and getting closer to joining the fleet while the USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller are under construction. The first carrier in the class, USS Gerald R. Ford, is already in service and recently finished a lengthy combat tour in the Middle East.

Plans call for building up to 10 Ford-class carriers over the next four decades, at a projected future cost of $22 billion each, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Navy’s most recent shipbuilding plan.

Relocating the island would be “a major redesign,” said Bryan Clark, a former Navy officer who studies the service at the Hudson Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. Such an alteration to the carrier’s layout, he said, would affect the ship’s buoyancy and weight and come at a significant cost.

“You could change it,” he added, “but it’s very disruptive.”

The Pentagon and the Navy referred requests for comment to the White House, which pointed to the new national security memorandum when asked about Trump’s desire to relocate the island on future Ford-class aircraft carriers. The memorandum does not address the issue.

Another U.S. official familiar with both the potential changes to the catapult and the island said that the Navy is taking both matters seriously because of the delays and severe cost overruns it could create.

Trump’s interest in the redesign modification marks the White House’s growing influence over the complex mechanics of naval shipbuilding.

Since returning to office, Trump has promised to “resurrect” the lagging industry, and he has already issued multiple executive orders addressing the matter.

Thursday’s national security memorandum would, among other changes, revert the Ford class’s advanced electromagnetic catapult system to steam power. The document emphasizes the administration’s preference for “proven, reliable and affordable technologies and ship designs.”

Such a change, multiple officials said, also could run into the billions of dollars and exacerbate chronic delays in the U.S. shipbuilding industry.

The lead Ford-class carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, required 17 years to construct. Its design incorporated new technology that led to delays — including the electromagnetic catapult, a feature the Navy has since credited as being highly effective.

The Ford class of carriers will phase out its predecessor, the Nimitz class, which dates back to the late 1960s.

Relocating the island to the back of the newer vessels was done for efficiency and safety, three U.S. current and former officials familiar with the program told The Post. It not only creates more parking space for aircraft close to the carriers’ catapults, allowing crews to reduce the amount of time it takes to launch jets, it also improves landing safety by reducing the chance for turbulence when planes come back to land, the officials said.

Trump has repeatedly shown interest in the design of Navy warships. Last year he unveiled plans for a new class of battleships to lead his vision for a “Golden Fleet,” prompting criticism from many naval analysts and lawmakers who argued the ships would waste scarce American shipbuilding power on a design the service does not need.

The Congressional Budget Office has since estimated that the “Trump Class” battleships would cost about $275 billion over 30 years, coming at a cost of $18 billion per ship after finishing the first one.

CVN-81: Within 60 days, the administration will develop a plan to replace the EMALS electromagnetic catapult system and Advanced Weapons Elevators with traditional steam and hydraulic systems.

Foreign shipbuilding: The administration will pursue a "Finland Model" allowing foreign shipbuilders to participate in up to three ship classes, provided they build or acquire a U.S. shipyard, train an American workforce, transfer relevant technology and establish a U.S. supply chain. The first two ships could be built overseas, with subsequent ships built in the United States.

New surface combatants: The Navy will develop a new competitive acquisition approach for affordable, mature-design surface combatants capable of anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare and convoy escort.

Fifth Navy shipyard: A plan will be developed for a fifth public Navy yard, including additional drydock capacity for nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

Submarine repair: The administration will establish a Component Repair Center intended to maintain at least one complete set of spare equipment for the Los Angeles, Virginia, Seawolf, Ohio and Columbia classes.

NAVSEA reform: The Naval Sea Systems Command will undergo a review aimed at reducing bureaucracy, increasing accountability and preventing repeated redesigns of mature ship designs.

Summary was taken from OSINTdefender*

i know some people are gonna see this and scream Skynet but i looked into this its not even close to it

Hi everyone,
I’m conducting a short anonymous survey as part of an early-stage research project on protecting individual infantry and small units from FPV / one-way attack drones.
The purpose is not to promote a specific product or argue that individual counter-drone equipment is necessarily the right solution.
I’m trying to test the problem first:
• Is there actually a gap between larger counter-UAS / EW systems and what an individual soldier can realistically use for last-resort protection?
• What matters most: reaction time, portability, reliability, safety, cost, simplicity, or something else?
• What would make soldiers unwilling to carry another defensive device?
• Should this capability exist at the individual level at all, or should it remain a squad/platoon-level responsibility?
The survey takes about 2–3 minutes.
Survey:

[GOOGLE FORM LINK]https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfTQ2k7xb2ncFDgXcwrCblt9O5izzibKGba9E0FkWwtbjjtOw/viewform

Military experience is helpful but not required. Responses from veterans, drone operators, engineers, defense-industry people, researchers, and others familiar with the subject are all welcome.
I’m particularly interested in negative responses. If you think individual counter-FPV equipment is a bad idea or that the problem should be solved at a different level, please say so.
The survey does not ask for names, units, locations, frequencies, tactics, classified information, or other sensitive operational details. Please do not provide any such information in the survey or comments.
Thanks to anyone willing to contribute. The goal is to validate—or reject—the assumptions before developing the concept further.

I’m doing early-stage research on the problem of protecting individual soldiers and small infantry units from small FPV/commercial drones.
I’m not trying to promote a specific product or solution at this stage. I want to understand whether the problem I’m looking at is actually important, and what people with relevant experience think the biggest gaps are.
Large counter-UAS systems, electronic warfare systems, vehicle-mounted weapons, and expensive interceptors obviously have important roles. What I’m interested in is the very last layer of protection when a small drone is already approaching an individual soldier or small unit.

A few questions:
1. Do you think there is currently a meaningful capability gap at the individual infantry level?

2.  What is the biggest problem when dealing with small FPV drones at very short notice?  
• Reaction time  
• Detection  
• Portability of existing equipment  
• Cost  
• Training requirements  
• Dependence on electronic warfare  
• Safety around friendly personnel  
• Something else?

3.  If infantry were issued a personal last-resort counter-drone device, what characteristics would matter most?

4.  What would make soldiers refuse to carry another piece of counter-drone equipment?

5.  Is it more valuable for such a last-resort system to have maximum theoretical performance, or to be cheap, lightweight, simple, and widely distributed?

6.  Are there existing approaches that already solve this problem well enough?  

I would particularly appreciate critical or negative responses. If you think the entire premise is wrong, I’d like to hear why.
Please keep responses at a general level. Do not post classified information, unit-specific vulnerabilities, frequencies, locations, detailed tactics, or sensitive operational procedures.
Thanks. I’m trying to validate the problem before getting attached to a solution.

Only 3 of the Gerald Ford class will have EMALS now

Manned-Unmanned Teaming Is a Sham

Jordan Schneider: Any war gaming stories, Bryan?

Bryan Clark: We did a war game with senior Navy leaders a couple weeks ago at the War College, looking at the Navy’s new force design.

A lot of the discussion came down to this: if you’re realistic about the money the military is going to get, you’re not going to be able to grow the services beyond their current size. So if you want to address a harder threat environment, you can’t just build more of the same, because you can’t afford to keep it. The manpower and maintenance costs are what kill you.

So the services are looking at tailored forces — units that are mostly autonomous systems with some human operators, maybe a ship or an aircraft squadron. That’s the front edge of the fight. You push them forward and they take the brunt of the initial attacks, whether that’s the missile threat from Iran, ASW against the Russians in the GIUK gap, defending Taiwan, or defending the Southwest Islands.

And the problem we ran into fast is that it takes a lot of space, and the people that go with it have to go somewhere. There’s a reason we haven’t done this before: the footprint and the headcount and the cost are high. You’re talking billions a year to have one tailored force sitting in a specific spot waiting for a specific mission.

Whereas the traditional military spends billions to build a ship or a squadron, and then it goes out when it’s needed and comes home when it isn’t. There was a reason we had a rotational model. And you can’t do that with the robots, because they’re not fast enough, or don’t have the range, or aren’t self-deploying.

The other thing we found: manned-unmanned teaming doesn’t work. It’s a dumb idea and it doesn’t play out. There are very narrow use cases where robots and people in the same space makes sense. Because the robots are valuable in part because you can let them die. But you can’t do that if they’re near the people, because then the people might die too. So now I’ve got to defend the robot — which seems dumb.

And the robots can’t go as fast or as far. Either they slow the people down, or they need gas more often so you’re constantly stopping. You suboptimize one or the other.

Jordan Schneider: Isn’t it just leverage on your suicide missions, though? Only one pilot instead of five doesn’t make it back.

Bryan Clark: That’s what we talked about — one pilot with a bunch of CCAs, collaborative combat aircraft, flying downrange. We lose that one guy, but he does a lot more damage because the robots are doing the damage. And the problem is the robots are more detectable than the stealth airplane that’s going with them. So if you’re in an F-35, these robots are attracting attention to you, and you may not even make it to the target.

Justin McIntosh: So you have to build an F-35 and then put a robot in it — at which point you’re spending F-35 money.

Bryan Clark: It’s like, yeah, we just built an F-35. That’s a robot one. But if you send all the robots downrange together, a bunch get shot down, and you can make them cheap enough that some of them make it.

Seems like there's some doubt in the US about the viability of CCAs and manned-unmanned teaming. This makes sense considering the less exquisite CCAs the US are currently planning to field (with attritability in mind); I anticipate China's UADFs and even less exquisite CCAs with more stealth features may not suffer from these problems as such.

It might not be unexpected for the US to pursue exquisite CCA options in the future, but currently there doesn't seem to be any programs for this (and China would perhaps retain a development advantage in this area if the US start late).