'Trump knows nothing': Mark Kelly fumes after president directs Navy on systems to launch jets

WASHINGTON, DC: Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, representing the Arizona seat in the upper chamber, blasted President Donald Trump for directing the Navy to use an older system of launching jets off the aircraft carriers.

Mark Kelly argued that the president knows nothing about this field after Trump ordered the US Navy to remove the advanced system used to launch fighter jets from its newest type of aircraft carrier and return to using older steam catapults.

Mark Kelly questions Trump's qualifications after Navy order

Mark Kelly questioned Trump’s qualifications to have a say on what systems should be used to launch jets and argued that reverting to older catapult systems would be costly.

“He’s a marginally failed real estate developer with multiple bankruptcies,” Kelly said in an interview with MS NOW on Thursday, August 13. “He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems, on aircraft carriers.”

Kelly is a former Navy combat pilot and NASA astronaut who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. He warned that the order would force the Navy to redesign ships that are well into development and are “probably going to cost billions of dollars.”

“Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff,” the senator continued in the interview. “Not in any world would I suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point.”

Kelly said, despite his qualifications and wide experience in the field, he still would not tell the Navy how to design a carrier.

He added, “I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed?”

Trump calls new method expensive and complicated

Trump has been highly critical of electromagnetic catapults for years, calling them too expensive and complicated compared with the steam system used on older carriers.

“Billions of dollars more they spent on electric catapults, and they’re not good,” the president said at a defense summit in Pennsylvania last month.

However, the Navy said earlier this year that preliminary testing showed EMALS and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) aboard the USS Gerald R Ford contributed to a higher rate of aircraft launches.

The directive released on Thursday directs the Pentagon and the Navy to present Trump with plans to remove the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, also known as EMALS, within two months.

It also says the Ford-class carrier's electromagnetic weapons elevators should be replaced.