Mark Kelly rips Trump over reported aircraft carrier overhaul, says stick to ‘bulls***’

Mark Kelly is a former Navy pilot who flew combat missions off carriers, so when he says something about flight deck operations is nonsense, that carries more weight than the average senator's floor speech. But it's worth asking what actually set him off here. The Wall Street Journal reported Trump signed a memo pushing the Navy to look at switching launch systems on carriers, a change that would run into the billions and take years, assuming it's even feasible on hulls not designed for it. That's a legitimate thing to question. Kelly's answer to it, though, was to tell the president to go handle his other business and leave the ships alone.

That's not really a rebuttal. It's a brushoff. If the concern is that swapping catapult systems is a boondoggle waiting to happen, say that and back it up with the engineering and the cost estimates. Kelly has the background to make that case seriously. Instead the soundbite was built for cable news, not for the Armed Services Committee.

None of this means the idea is good. The Navy has been burned before by ambitious carrier redesigns that ran over budget and behind schedule, and if this memo is really pushing a switch without a clear operational reason, that's a fair target. Congress has real oversight tools for exactly this kind of thing. Using them would do more than a one-liner about what the president should stick to.