Trump’s Micromanaging Warship Design Will Set the Navy Back by Decades

Image: Seven aerial photographs showing the major different modernizations of the U.S. Navy Essex-class aircraft carriers from 1944 to 1974 (l-r): USS Franklin (CV-13); USS Wasp (CV-18); USS Hancock (CVA-19); USS Antietam (CVA-36); USS Bennington (CV-20); USS Hancock (CVA-19); USS Oriskany (CVA-34). Image credit: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. Article by Brynn Tannehill. The New Republic – August 18, 2026.

Last weekend The Washington Post published an article reporting that Donald Trump wants the Navy to redesign the Gerald R. Ford-class of aircraft carriers to better meet his sense of aesthetics by moving the island control tower closer amidships. The reason is reportedly that it would make the carriers look more like the WWII-era Essex-class carriers that were the standard in the early years of the Cold War when Trump was growing up. […]

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