Trump's Air Force One Tweet: Implications for SLS/Orion?
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Boeing Becomes Latest Company to Draw Trump’s Ire, Dow Jones
“The Air Force earmarked $1.65 billion between 2015 and 2019 to develop two replacement jets, and said it may acquire up to three. However, it hasn’t detailed the expected cost or delivery dates for building the planes as talks continue with Boeing, the White House and the Secret Service. “The statistics that have been cited [by Mr. Trump], shall we say, don’t appear to reflect the nature of the financial arrangement between Boeing and the Department of Defense,” said Obama White House spokesman Josh Earnest.”
Did Donald Trump tank Boeing’s stock because he was mad about a news article?
“As it turns out, though, the Trump tweet may not have been unprompted. CNN’s Jake Tapper noted on Twitter that shortly before the tweet (which was posted at 8:52 a.m. Eastern) the Chicago Tribune posted an interview with the company’s CEO, Dennis Muilenberg. “Anyone who paid attention to the recent campaigns and the election results realizes that one of the overarching themes was apprehension about free and fair trade,” Muilenberg told the Tribune’s Robert Reed. Fair trade has helped Boeing, which prides itself on being America’s largest manufacturing exporter.”
Trump sold all shares in companies in June, spokesman says, Washington Post
“Miller, the Trump spokesman, told The Post about Trump’s stock sale Tuesday morning, following Trump’s criticism of aviation giant Boeing. Trump reported owning between $50,000 and $100,000 of Boeing stock in the May filing. In the three years between Trump’s original tweet about buying Boeing stock and June 2016, Boeing’s share price climbed about 70 percent.”
Keith’s note: I just got back from the Aerospace Industries Association annual media luncheon in Washington EDC. There was a lot of nervous laughter about this news which was breaking just as well all arrived at the hotel. I am wondering what might happen if/when SLS/Orion cost increases and chronic delay – and the commercial alternatives – comes to Trump’s attention. There are hints that this might be an issue in the op eds written by on-again off-again Trump advisor Bob Walker.
Well maybe what we are witnessing is the first stage of Trump’s swamp draining. After all if what people on NW say is true and program costs are not based upon actual expenses but rather on how taxpayer dollars are divided and sent to the appropriate Congressional districts, then maybe the normally $400 million 747 gets to be a $4 billion expense?
Possibly, but in the big scheme of things, that $4 billion is nothing. It’s literally in the noise of the overall federal budget. The question becomes will Trump’s policy of cutting waste extend over the entire federal budget, or will it be relegated to a few high profile “examples” that actually do little to nothing to reduce the federal budget? Neither of these extremes would seem to pose an ethical problem.
But, somewhere in between the two extremes is a world where Trump picks winners and losers via Tweets. The losers are called wasteful and de-funded while the winners are left untouched or (even worse) see their budgets increase. This would be a US where crony capitalism ruled the federal budget and would be quite unethical, to say the least. Time will tell.
$3.2b today, how much after 6-10 years of overruns and schedule slips like KC-46A?
A billion here, a billion there and you are soon talking serious money, which is why many people have been fuming.
We are already there. It is usually just done in secret, on the golf course or in the smokey rooms of the Capitol Building. All Trump is doing is pulling the carpet back to see the rot and all the beltway cockroaches scurrying around..
I have a terrible feeling I’m going to spend the next.four years saying, “In this case, he actually has a good point.” A normal 747-800 costs about $350 million. The BBC report, with numbers I’m inclined to trust, said the estimated cost for the two, new presidential aircraft was.$3.2 billion. I know those aircraft require lots of modifications and special features. I don’t know what they are, and probably never will. There are good reasons why that would and should be classified. But a bit over a billion dollars to modify a $350 million aircraft? That strikes me as totally out of hand.
Wow. This is a wake up call to DoD excesses… Go Donald!
Hence the headline here: “Trump’s Air Force One Tweet: Implications for SLS/Orion?”
For one, AF 1 has to be able to be refueled in flight. That’s probably a non trivial modification.
Also is that 747-800 with or without interior (seats galleys, etc.), avionics, or engines – that is, what’s covered in the $350M.
solutions required… not shooting from the hip totally ignorant of the aircraft to tweet a sound bite. Engines, skin, but so many more considerations as the insides are only produced a few times every ‘decade or so’.
This capability must be maintained over decades regardless of the quantity of planes with high trained individuals with various security classifications, not to mention that one must checkout required to ensure it functions properly to prevent a catastrophic launch, or to ensure that the plane is not ‘hacked’, or if required, allow the POTUS to tweet to SNL during a crisis.
Probably the largest expense is modifying all of the avionics and communcations gear to be sufficiently radiation hardened, in the event of a nuclear attack the aircraft still has to be functional.
Also, there are sophisticated (read: expensive) anti-missile defenses – radar jammers, flares, anti-radar decoys, and probably chaff. Similar countermeasures are built into the Marine One helicopters as well.
Back in 2002-2008 there had been some looking into replacements for the Marine One helicopters (a requisition of 28 helicopters) that would have cost $11.2 billion, or $400 million each. That was also cancelled after that price tag came out.
*edit* found this, describes some known equipment on Air Force One:
https://electrical-greece.b…
http://www.defensemedianetw…
I still can’t make the numbers add up. $350 million for a stock 747. Communications? An E-4B cost $223 million in FY1998 dollars. Defensive capabilities? A F-35, without engines, runs about $100 million, depending on the model. The current VC-25 (aka Air Force One) cost $325 million each, presumably in late 1980s dollars, since that’s when they were purchased. (All numbers from Wikipedia, since I don’t actually care enough to dig through the references.) The estimated cost per unit for the new presidential aircraft is $1600 million. As I said, I have trouble reconciling the numbers.
The whole aircraft is custom – like a concept car, and look how much they cost compared to regular ones.
One-off assembly of anything is very expensive. We’re also talking about modification of the airframe, to incorporate all the extra anti-missile equipment and communications equipment. The base cost of the aircraft really doesn’t figure into the number, and it’s possible the number includes X years of maintaining and operating the planes.
You probably won’t be able to reconcile the numbers unless you get a chance to look at the cost estimates from Boeing.
Trump’s outburst was not about the cost, but about Boeing’s prior criticism of his trade policy. If Boeing had praised Trump, he would have praised/defended them.
Perhaps Mr. Trump had extraneous motives for flaming Boeing. But that doesn’t mean Boeing wasn’t charging an excessive amount. That wouldn’t make them unique in the field; so far, being on the receiving end of a Trump tweet does.
It doesn’t mean they were.
That’s the point. Trump’s comments had no relationship with whether Boeing was or wasn’t overcharging. It was purely because someone from Boeing criticised him.
Had the CEO of Boeing instead personally invited Trump to come and pick out the decor of the new AF-1 planes, publicly praising his understanding of style, Trump would have found Boeing to be an extraordinary American company delivering great value for the US. And he would have denounced anyone who criticised the cost of the program. “Loser democrats want US President riding on Greyhound. No understanding of leadership. Sad.”
It has nothing to do with the cost. It’s purely about having them fawn over him. The fact that Trump picked one of the few Boeing contracts that apparently is considered reasonable value shows that.
As in Putin’s Russia, it doesn’t matter whether you are corrupt, all that matters is whether you are a favourite of Putin and his circle.
Consider that AF-1 also has most of the functionality of an E-4 built into it. In my opinion, $1.6 billion for a brand new 747-8i that does all the things this ….
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Is a pretty good deal.
This was on CNN last night as well. The person they were talking to said that someone clearly rounded the number up to $4 billion because it was a nice round number for a talking point. The other point that person made is that now that’s it’s been said a few times in the press, that $4 billion is what will stick in people’s minds, even when the USAF counters with the “real” number.
So, if you want to kill something, exaggerate the cost and call it waste.
We should probably called the President Elect “Seems Like”- as in, “it seems like that’s too much for a 747”, without actually knowing what goes into the number (long term service?) or indeed if the number is accurate.
Or perhaps it actually is accurate, but the president-elect has no more idea than I do. He’s shooting from the hip.
The existing aircraft used as Air Force One (which is actually the call sign for the aircraft with the president on board, not the “model” of aircraft) are actually USAF military aircraft that are based off of the B-747.
There are a lot of modifications that you will not find on any other B-747. Not the least of which are in air refueling capability, advanced military communications capabilities, and defense capabilities. These things do not come cheap, but are essential to defend the aircraft and enable it to operate as a mobile command and control center, especially in cases of war.
It is quite unclear if Trump understands any of that, or if he is just comparing the interior appearance of Air Force One to his own private jet, which lacks these arguably essential modifications.
“It is quite unclear if Trump understands any of that”
Actually it’s clear that he doesn’t.
This has nothing to do with the cost of building a new Air Force One. It was a petty response to the Boeing president’s comment on Trump’s foreign policy.
I think most here wouldn’t be surprised to see cost growth in such a specialized project. Added requirements usually result in higher costs. Some requirements may be nice but not really needed.
It would be good if this signifies some more careful review to reign in costs and business as usual but I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing changes.
It wasn’t clear to me if that number (which I believe he just made up) also includes maintenance and support from Boeing, which over the aircraft lifetime could easily hit a billion. In any case, I actually think he’s slamming this because he wants his personal jetliner (the one he owns) to be the swankiest in flight. He’ll never fly on this Air Force One since it would be ready for flight after he’s out of office.
They will officially be US Air Force aircraft. Routine operations and maintenance would, therefore, be by the Air Force, not a civilian contractor. Major maintenance and repairs might be another matter.
There are other examples of aerospace systems of “outrageous” costs, I wonder if it’s because the industrial base is not as strong like it was back in the days. I’m thinking there were lots more users of hundreds of specially designed specific parts for aircraft such as UH-1s and F4s that were built by the thousands (and frequently lost in Vietnam). These days only need to make far fewer so per price per airplane is much higher (and that airplane will continue flying after all of us are worm food).
I wonder what the cost of the last batch of 747s that were modified were? They were being integrated and tested at the E-Systems facility in Greenville, TX in the early 80s. That division of E-Systems specialized in the outfitting of custom aircraft for government use – they did a similar plane for the Saudis, did refits of Gulfstreams for government use, and also did work for one or two-off SpecOps planes.
Wait till Trump hears about JWST problems. $9B? For a telescope?
Boom!
It got fact checked…
http://www.politifact.com/t…
“Our ruling
Trump tweeted, “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”
The company is actually building two planes, not one. As for the price tag, Trump has more of a point. The project’s current cost is $3.73 billion, which is within shouting distance of Trump’s “more than $4 billion.” That’s a projection over 12 years. Also, that figure is an amount that could rise as time goes on.
However, Trump glosses over some important context. National-security requirements, not Boeing, have been the primary driver of high costs. Experts say the costs are broadly in line considering the high-tech and security requirements of a presidential plane.
The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so we rate it Half True.”
Politifact tends to bent over backwards to be “unbiased”, which means they tend to underscore right-wing lies over overscore everyone else.
Example: Trump tweeted, “building a brand new 747″. The cost is for two. Faffing about over whether it’s sort-of-kind-of-close-to-$4b and whether that’s sort-of-maybe-value-for-money is irrelevant if its a factor of 2 out from the beginning.
Boeing at one time also had the contract to build the presidential aircraft for China. Unfortunately the aircraft, delivered in 2002, was found to contain over 30 satellite-controlled bugs, possibly installed without Boeing’s knowledge. My Chinese friend says the aircraft was unusable because there was no way to be sure all the bugs had been identified. It is impossible for me to believe that Boeing itself would have risked irritating one of its largest customers, or would have believed that the bugs would go undetected indefinitely, since they had to radiate to download their data. Let’s see, who was in charge of the CIA in 2002?
That’s not exactly shocking. Intelligence agencies play the same game when new embassies are built. The US embassy built in Moscow and a Soviet embassy built in Ottawa are the two Cold War examples which come to mind. Spys do things like that, because it’s sort of in their job description.
It looks to me like they are combining the capabilities of Air Force One with the Airborne Command Post, which they tried to retire a few years ago.