Archive through August 25, 2026
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Non-Game Discussions: Real-World Military:
Archive through August 25, 2026
USA today has reported that the President, white House and senior Navy officials (both civilian and uniformed) have ceased referring to the U.S.S. Doris Miller by reverting to “CVN-81”.
While there is a lot of partisan opposition to honoring the current president, it should be noted that there is a long running campaign to petition the Secretary of the Navy to revert to naming aircraft carriers after historic warship names.
There is a web site that allows people to sign a petition to rename CVN-82 from William J. Clinton to U.S.S. Yorktown.
I can’t find it, but there was a website advocating that the Carriers Lexington and Saratoga should be honored as well.
Well, you have to admit, that's ONE way to confuse the enemy.
"Sir..our sensors are picking up a ship, it's...the Trump..."
'WHICH Trump, Ensign?! The SSN USS Trump? The SSBN USS Trump? The carrier USS Trump??? The BATTLESHIP USS Trump?!?!'
[Camera zooms in dramatically as the Ensign lowers his voice to a gravelly tone]
"ALL of them"
'My...gods...it must be two-for-Tuesday at the local McDonald's...'
Ahem, my name is Stephen not Steve, I had to call Hegseth to make sure he didn’t screw it up.
For a few months now, Ukraine has been using a new satellite network called Bravo One Alpha. This is mostly a create of the Dutch Space Command. Who knew they had one. Soldiers as low as senior privates has access to satellite targeting data that is only 15-90 minutes old. Without any review higher than the drone company commander, they can receive a report of a newly spotted target and hit that target with a drone within half an hour.
THE MILITARY SHOW, YouTube
There is further information concerning ADM comments above:
Navy lookout(a UK web site primarily about the Royal Navy), posted an opinion about the U.S. navy reverting to steam rather than electric EMALs.
“ The instruction is unusually specific: “Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall provide to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), a plan on the required measures to replace the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of CVN-81, including timelines and resourcing requirements.”
Nobody knows today if ADM’s two year estimate will hold up… but 60 days clock is all ready running… and The President has proven that he will fire people for cause.
Anyone want the bet on how many dept. of War Navy officers and civilian appointees will be willing to end their careers over this?
Do you know of any naval designers that will stake their careers on a redesign of this magnitude in only 60 days?
At least ones that would make a ship that you would be willing to serve on?
As to steam vs. EMALS, EMALS may not be ready yet, if ever. I am commenting on the likely hood of getting people to go along with this sort of change being promoted by someone who will be who will be gone in two and a half years, when the part of the Navy who designs and build ships have been committed to this for over a decade.
Unlike the LCS, this appears to be working, China has fielded a carrier using EMALS, France is under contract for the same system the US uses, and India is looking at using EMALS.
This appears to be more inline with the Zumwalts, a design that will work, but may be far too expensive to be practical.
The president’s executive order (partially quoted above) specified a deadline of 60 days.
Guess we will have to wait to see if they decide to comply.
The second part of your last post held that other nations use or are looking at using EMALs.
China currently has the Fujan class conventionally powered carrier equipped with EMALs.
We talked about it before, first, the ship does not possess the electric generation capacity (per posted news reports quoted here before) to launch more than one aircraft at a time.
Simply put, this is a Very poor comparison to make, and not evidence of a fully functional and reliable system.
Secondly, look at the data. 36,000 successful launches of aircraft using EMLs with an average breakdown occurring at 691 event frequency, if you do the math, means 1 breakdown (on average) at or about 52 launches.
(We also talked about the problem that a breakdown of one EMALs catapult also causes the other three EMALs catapults to stop operating.)
A Ford Class carrier operates between 60 and 90 aircraft, which means they can not launch a full alpha strike, before they have to repair the fault.
Ten years the Navy has been trying to get EMALs to work.
Still trying.
The Russian company OZON is a competitor to Wildberries. Somwhat smaller, it is still very big. Last night, drones hit the first Ozone warehouse, a very large building in Samara. It burned to the ground.
Denys, Suchomimus, YouTube
Wild berries has 50% of the Russian mail order market, ozone has 30%.
In other news:
nine of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) 18 judges are currently under U.S. sanctions following designations announced by the Trump administration.
Judges Sanctioned: 9 out of 18
Both deputy prosecutors, the former chief prosecutor, and a senior trial staff member/lawyer.
The measures escalated after the U.S. State Department placed sanctions on ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane and a senior trial lawyer, bringing the total number of penalized judges to nine.
The sanctions freeze any assets held by these individuals in U.S. jurisdictions and block them from the U.S. financial system.
The U.S. government views the ICC as politicized and overstepping its mandate by attempting to investigate or prosecute officials from non-member states, such as the United States and Israel.
The International Criminal Court has strongly condemned the actions as a direct assault on the court's judicial independence.
The reason I Am posting this (based on an article published in the U.K. Magazine Economist.) is it is how terrorists and terrorist organizations are treated by the U.S.
Some of these individuals are not native of europe and must travel back and forth, increasing the chances one or more people could be apprehended by law enforcement.
Should the US bomb ICC buildings as well, or is that a bridge too far? 
Quote:By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, August 21, 2026 - 11:29 pm: Edit
There is further information concerning ADM comments above:
Navy lookout(a UK web site primarily about the Royal Navy), posted an opinion about the U.S. navy reverting to steam rather than electric EMALs.
“ The instruction is unusually specific: “Within 60 days of the date of this memorandum, the Secretary of War, in consultation with the Secretary of the Navy, shall provide to the President, through the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), a plan on the required measures to replace (Emphasis mine ADM) the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Weapons Elevators with steam and hydraulic systems for the construction of CVN-81, including timelines and resourcing requirements.”
You realize all this says is that they have 60 days to make a report outlining what needs to be done to switch over to steam? Not any specifics on how?
There is no design work here.
Actually, I do realize that.
Do you understand that the plan outline would need to detail the changes required?
Once that gets specified, the work required to make the actual design requirements can follow.
We have had this discussion before (not you and I, I mean a discussion on the bbs.)
When JFK announced the goal of landing a man on the moon, he did not have any design plans, or schedules or specifics on how.
Same with FDR and the decision to produce 100,000 aircraft.
That is not the a presidents job.
His job is to decide on policy, and that includes making a call on building ships, tanks or aircraft.
Jimmy Carter canceled the B-1 without being an aircraft designer, yet as president, he had the authority to cancel a military appropriation passed by both houses of congress and signed into law.
You know, you can be upset with a president for various reasons, but the history is in this nation that Presidents can decide to cancel programs.
For you to demand that president Trump produce detailed plans, time tables and building schedules is not the Presidents job.
Its called a policy decision.
Which still doesn't change the fact that detail plans take a lot of time to get right, when you have this extensive a set of changes*, after the plans are done it takes time to create the request for the bids to do the work. Once the companies who will build the actual equipment, have submitted the winning bids, it will take time for the bids to be approved. If there is no Court challenge by the companies that lost the bids, the companies will then need to build the needed forms and jigs, or CNC programs for the specific parts, then it will take time to build the new equipment, and properly test it to make sure it works within spec. (In fairness, this has been the big issue for EMALS.) Then it will take time to train the installers on this specific design, install it, and insure it works. Find out what, if anything, does not work as expected, redesign, and replace what needs to be. (Once again a major problem for EMALS.) Then have the Navy certify the design, so that it can be used on any ship other than CVN 81. Assuming Congress writes the legislation to pay for this, or the Administration will have to determine which part of the DoWs budget would be better spent on this.
All in 27 months, after the review report is submitted. I would be very shocked to learn that the Navy's bureaucracy cannot drag this out long enough to avoid actually changing back to steam, IF they seriously don't want to. If everything goes as fast as it practically can, in only twenty nine months one of these is started to be built with steam, if the next Administration determines that going back to EMALS is preferred, given our lack of yard space for large ship designs there won't be more than one. The build time for CVN 81 is projected to take another eight years, also note the Defiant Class BBG will compete for the same power plants the CVNs use, a current bottleneck with CVN production.
The issue is not what President Trump directs to be done, the issue is the time/space to do so.
*Noting that EMALS is reported to have a significantly different shape and space requirements than steam, you will need to find someplace for the items that are now in the way. You will also need to design the steam supply system so that it provides sufficient steam for use, this will take significantly more space than power cables for EMALS, properly insulated so that the steam does not cool too much in being transferred, proper access to the new steam system for maintenance. Space, bunks, and supplies for the larger crew requirements for steam, etc. Unless they make CVN 81 bigger, this will cause cascading design issues to fit everyone and everything in to the space available. Making CVN 81 bigger will be other design issues.
David,
You are making one basic error here.
The president sets goals.
FDR did it when he called for the production of 100,000 aircraft. He did not have specific designs, research or production goals. Heck, many of the production facilities that eventually produced the aircraft did not exist at the time.
JFK did it when he said the goal was to put a man on the moon within ten years. The Apollo program , as such wasn’t even a blue print or a serious proposal yet.
Abraham Lincoln over ruled his designers, naval architects and ship builders when he hired Erickson to build the U.S.S. Monitor.
Jimmy Carter was not a skilled or experienced aircraft designer when he cancelled the B-1A bomber program (note: Congress did in fact approve, funded and adopted that particular program long before the president cancelled it.)
Richard Nixon, likewise had zero professional qualifications when he cancelled the SST (super sonic transport).
None of these examples had the qualifications that you are demanding of President Trump.
Perhaps you are correct… just expect that there will be a lot of careers sacrificed.
Might end up being the best way to clean out the dead weight in the ship building system.
I'm not assigning any skills to President Trump on this. I'm noting how extensive a redesign he has requested, the rate at which the Navy moves, and if they don't want it, how much the Navy can drag this out.
Navy, "Oh, you fired the guy that works with the ship builder? The new guy will need at least 6 weeks to get up to speed on all the projects we have with this builder."
Ad nauseam, if President Trump fires to many folks Congress will start their oversight duties. Presidents Lincoln, FDR, and Carter had a lot of oversight hearings that interfered with how those Presidents thought things should be done. One of FDR's was Senator Truman on cost over runs and wasteful spending, and he wound up as FDR's last Vice President, and the became President after FDR's cerebral hemorrhage.
Also worth noting on President Carter, Congress approved the B1 then Victor Belenko flew his MiG 25 to Hokkaido and the US learned that the B1 was very unlikely to successfully penetrate Russian airspace. President Carter then started the program that led to the B2.
FDR's 100,000 request was in 1943 when the US was firmly in the war, and was likely to produce 125,000 in 1943. Now the request for 50,000 in 1940, before we joined the war was a much bigger request. It was made six days after Germany began the invasion of France, and the Low Countries, when the US Army Air Corp only had 12,000 planes. In either case they were requests sent to Congress for expanding war production, not directives.
JFK's was also a State of the Union request, not a directive, and without his assassination may not have happened at all.
President Lincoln used a program approved by Congress for experimental ships that may have capabilities over looked by the Naval community.
I'll grant that this one is closer to President Trump's directive, but still not the same thing.
On President Nixon, only Boeing, the airlines, and some enthusiasts really cared on cancelling the SST, given that by the time it was canceled it was becoming obvious that sonic booms would prevent Supersonic speeds over the US.
Guys, please drop it.
Acknowledged.
Drones hit three more mailorder warehouses this morning, all were destroyed. Two were OZON, the third another company.
There was an article posted by the Navy-Times magazine back on April 29, 2026. I missed it, but came across it today.
The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps have extended the lifespan of the lead Wasp-class amphibious assault ship by five years and are considering doing the same for other vessels in the amphibious fleet.
Expeditionary Warfare Director Brig. Gen. Lee Meyer told reporters Tuesday at Modern Day Marine exposition in Washington that the Navy lengthened the operability window of the USS Wasp following a study on Wasp-class amphibious assault ships.
“The CNO approved the service life extension of the USS Wasp,” Meyer said. “He extended it by five years until 2034. The other LHDs, we’ve got to study to see if we can extend them and the plan is going to be to do that.”
A study of amphibious dock landing ships is expected to be delivered by Naval Sea Systems Command within several days, Meyers added. The study will provide updates on the status of those landing ship docks and recommendations for service life extensions.
The report will also help inform the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ plans to sustain amphibious ships across their 40 year service life, with hopes of pushing it to 50, to bolster the service’s military readiness.
The report (at the time) also stated that by act of congress, the Navy is to maintain an amphibious warfare force of thirty ships.
At the time of the article, the navy had active 32 ships, ten of which are amphibious assault ships.
The readiness figures for the amphibious force was 41%.
Interesting article about Ukraine's tanks. Crews are still being trained but the tanks themselves are hidden and unused. Also how the Ukrainians have installed anti-drone cages/nets.
"What Happened to the Coveted Western Tanks Sent to Ukraine?
Ukraine pleaded for the expensive weapons, and ultimately got them, but drones have rendered them almost unusable."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/world/europe/ukraine-russia-tanks.html?smid=url-share
Reports in the news. US Navy claims all mines swept from Straight of Hormuz.
I hope they're right; we only need one counterexample to ruin all credibility in US Navy ability to protect international shipping into, and out of, the Persian Gulf.
Russia has passed a law allowing the Government to "temporarily" seize private enterprises which in its opinion are insufficiently protected against drone attacks, or which are not rebuilt after drone attacks.
Communism was never truly eliminated from Russia, or is Putin working towards becoming the new Tsar and claiming that he, alone, OWNS Russia and its once and future domains? In short, it is amazing how "temporary" can mean
"temporarily on a permanent basis".
Putin's Russia; Given the various private entities that are in Russia, Wildberries being the current well known one. I think he is trying for a modern Tsar variant, erm, President for Life.
The fuel crisis in Russia is worse. Only 28% of gas stations have fuel to sell, down from 41% only thirty days ago.
I think Will, Jessica, and ADM may have called this one, and that Russia is close to collapse. Two asterisks there.
1. In October Putin will draft 500,000 men into the military. That may trigger a revolt or an economic collapse.
2. Russia still has nukes and if you push a nuclear-armed tyrant far enough...