What will it cost to renovate the ‘free' Air Force One? Don't ask.

Boston Globe

7 hours ago

Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where 'black budgets' are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.
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In recent weeks, congressional budget sleuths have come to think that amount, slipped into an obscure Pentagon document sent to Capitol Hill as a 'transfer' to an unnamed classified project, almost certainly includes the renovation of the new, gold-adorned Air Force One that Trump desperately wants in the air before his term is over. (It is not clear if the entire transfer will be devoted to stripping the new Air Force One back to its airframe, but Air Force officials privately acknowledge dipping into nuclear modernization funds for the complex project.)
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Qatar's defense minister and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed the final memorandum of understanding a few weeks ago, paving the way for the renovation to begin soon at a Texas facility known for secret technology projects. The document was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
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Trump's plane probably won't fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the Qatari gift — improved with the latest communications and in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential library after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.
Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Trump's government dealings and business ties with the Qataris, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But Trump said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.
'I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,' the president said in May. 'I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, 'No, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.''
It is free in the sense that a used car handed over by a neighbor looking to get it out of his driveway is free. In this case, among the many modifications will be hardened communications, antimissile systems, and engine capabilities to take the president quickly to safety as one of the older Air Force Ones did Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the United States. And there is the delicate matter of ridding the jet of any hidden electronic listening devices that US officials suspect may be embedded in the walls.
Then, of course, it has to be stuffed with the luxuries — and gold trim — with which the 47th president surrounds himself, whether he is in the Oval Office or in the air. The jet's upper deck has a lounge and a communications center, while the main bedroom can be converted into a flying sick bay in a medical emergency.
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So it's no surprise that one of Washington's biggest guessing games these days is assessing just where the price tag will end up, on top of the $4 billion already being spent on the wildly behind-schedule presidential planes that Boeing was supposed to deliver last year. It was those delays that led Trump to look for a gift.
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another massively over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington's long-running effort to rebuild America's aging, leaky, ground-launched nuclear missile system.
The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities and communications built to withstand both nuclear and cyber attack. By the time Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81 percent, to $140 billion and climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America's nuclear deterrent.
In testimony before Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the Air Force secretary, said that he thought the cost of the Air Force One renovations would be manageable. 'I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,' he said. 'But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we'd have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,' before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. 'So it wouldn't be anywhere near that.'
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'We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,' he said.
If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers and Air Force experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of Congress express concern that Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane. When asked last week, the Air Force said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it's classified.
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