Presidents are expected to make difficult decisions about national defense. Some involve war and peace. Others involve alliances, nuclear deterrence and the deployment of American forces.
President Trump has apparently been thinking about aircraft-carrier catapults.
For years.
This week, he finally did something about it.
The president ordered the Navy to abandon electromagnetic aircraft-launch technology in favor of steam catapults, fulfilling what Foreign Policy describes as a “longtime goal.” The change could cost billions of dollars.
Whether steam is superior to electromagnetism is a question best left to naval engineers.
Why the President of the United States has a preferred aircraft-launch mechanism is another matter entirely.
Especially at a moment when considerably larger questions of military readiness might command presidential attention.
Perhaps this is what civilian control of the military has finally come to mean: the admirals run the Navy, the engineers design the ships, and the president picks the catapult.
One can only hope nobody asks him about the propellers.
— Dunneagin
Keep reading: The Truths Presidents Hear—or Don't
📬 To receive each new essay by email the day it publishes, subscribe to Civics Unhinged.
☕ Reader editions and collected volumes—including Volumes 1, 2, 3, and The Liar’s Guide to Autocracy—are available on the Fourthwall bookshelf.
If this week’s dispatch aligned with your reading, forward it to an un-unhinged colleague who still keeps an eye on the clockwork.
Reader and listener correspondence is always welcome at dunneagin@dunneagin.net. Questions, observations, or a note on how you first stumbled into the chronicle are particularly appreciated.
_ A note on the shelf: Every Tuesday dispatch compiles toward a permanent, physical record. We print what the screen forgets._