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‘Cancel Order!’ Donald Trump Attacks Plans for Upgraded Air Force One ‘Cancel Order!’ Donald Trump Attacks Plans for Upgraded Air Force One
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has for years flown in a jet bearing his name, criticized a pending order for a new Air Force One, saying Tuesday morning on Twitter that the upgrade would cost too much. WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump took a shot on Tuesday at one of the nation’s largest manufacturers, Boeing, sharply criticizing a pending order for a new Air Force One and suggesting that the company was “doing a little bit of a number” with the cost of the next generation of presidential aircraft.
The post appeared to come out of the blue: Mr. Trump had not focused during the campaign on the cost of Boeing’s plans for a next-generation plane for the president. “Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Cancel order!”
And his criticism of the contract to build on a newer Boeing 747-8 airframe raised the possibility that he might prefer to keep flying his own, well-appointed 757. Although his post attracted attention because it was about the most famous airplane in the world, the significance may be broader: For perhaps the first time since President John F. Kennedy took on the steel industry in the early 1960s, the heads of big American companies are being confronted by a leader willing to call them out directly and publicly for his policy and political aims.
The Secret Service and the Defense Department might object to Mr. Trump keeping his own airplane. Beyond convenience, Air Force One carries an array of top-secret communications gear for conducting everyday business — and for managing a global crisis, if required, while aloft. It is also equipped with a number of never discussed security features. Although President Obama forcefully criticized Wall Street and the financial industry after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, he tended not to single out individual companies. But Mr. Trump is now targeting Boeing a week after he pushed Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to keep about 1,000 manufacturing jobs in Indiana, and three weeks after he singled out a Ford plant in Kentucky.
The current Air Force One, with its white and blue design recognizable around the globe, is aging. There are actually two of the Boeing 747-200B planes, each bearing the famous call sign only when the president is aboard. The Air Force designates them VC-25A. Executives who give him what he wants may also be rewarded. On Tuesday afternoon, the president-elect escorted the billionaire Japanese businessman Masayoshi Son to the lobby of Trump Tower to announce that the technology conglomerate SoftBank Group would be investing $50 billion in the United States. He called Mr. Son one of “the great men of industry.”
They were commissioned by President Ronald Reagan and delivered during the term of his successor, President George Bush. The new plane, which the Defense Department had hoped to deliver to the White House by 2023, would have been more powerful, able to travel farther and more technologically advanced. Mr. Son promised the investment, which will come from a previously announced $100 billion fund, as he is pressing to merge the wireless company Sprint, which his firm owns a controlling interest in, with T-Mobile: a merger that Mr. Obama’s regulators have blocked.
But given Mr. Trump’s Twitter post, it is unclear when — or whether — Air Force One will get an upgrade. What is motivating Mr. Trump is not always clear. His transition team is receiving information about major federal programs, and Mr. Trump received a briefing on Monday that included the cost of the Air Force One project, according to a person familiar with the discussion. But he also made his post about the Air Force One upgrade just minutes after The Chicago Tribune published comments from Boeing’s chief executive, Dennis Muilenburg, suggesting that the president-elect’s trade policies could hurt the company, which does substantial business in China.
In remarks to reporters at Trump Tower shortly after his message, Mr. Trump made clear that he was serious about the issue. He accused Boeing of escalating the costs of building a new plane. But Mr. Trump did not focus on Boeing broadly. Instead, he focused on the Air Force One upgrade, telling reporters at Trump Tower, “The plane is totally out of control.”
“The plane is totally out of control,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s going to be over $4 billion for Air Force One program, and I think it’s ridiculous. I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.” “It’s going to be over $4 billion for the Air Force One program, and I think it’s ridiculous,” he said. “I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number. We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”
In a statement just before noon on Tuesday, Boeing made no mention of Mr. Trump or his post on Twitter, but it said it remained committed to proceeding with the upgrade to Air Force One. In a statement after Mr. Trump’s Twitter post, Boeing said it had a $170 million contract to study the equipment that a redesigned Air Force One might need. That project has just gotten underway, so billions of dollars in cost overruns at this point appear to be impossible.
“We are currently under contract for $170 million to help determine the capabilities of these complex military aircraft that serve the unique requirements of the president of the United States,” said the statement, which was posted on the company’s website. “We look forward to working with the U.S. Air Force on subsequent phases of the program allowing us to deliver the best planes for the president at the best value for the American taxpayer.” “Some of the statistics that have been, uh, cited, shall we say, don’t appear to reflect the nature of the financial agreement between Boeing and the Department of Defense,” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said.
As an icon of presidential power, Air Force One has no equal and presidents of both parties have repeatedly expressed that they would miss flying the world on it once they leave office. President Obama last year said the plane was the No. 1 perk of his office. Air Force officials said they were proposing to spend $2.7 billion over the next five years to research, develop and test communications technologies and other advanced systems. The Air Force would then buy two 747-8 aircraft, which normally cost airlines $350 million to $400 million apiece, and refit them to include all the new systems and handle extra weight.
But it is also an expensive perk, reportedly costing as much as $180,000 per hour to fly. And building the plane, with its top-secret communications and defenses against attacks, runs in the billions of dollars. As of last year, the Air Force had asked for $3 billion over the next five years to develop and build the planes. The planes would not be ready to fly until 2024, so Mr. Trump’s $4 billion estimate may ultimately be about correct. However, since nothing but the basic study contract has been awarded yet, his administration could cut back or reshape the Air Force proposal in any way it or Congress wanted.
That has long prompted concerns over waste among government watchdog groups. And it is not only the president’s plane: During Mr. Obama’s tenure, the cost of replacing the equally iconic Marine One helicopter fleet had grown so much that Mr. Obama canceled that order, too. A new contract has since been drawn up. “We look forward to working with the U.S. Air Force on subsequent phases of the program, allowing us to deliver the best planes for the president at the best value for the American taxpayer,” Boeing said.
Air Force One is much better known across the world, serving as the backdrop for the president’s arrival in countries both friendly and not. Aviation analysts were more blunt.
On Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush flew the plane from air base to air base, staying aloft because of Secret Service fears that he might be targeted as the government scrambled to assess the terrorist attacks in New York and elsewhere. “This is getting ridiculous fast, when an important policy and acquisition decision is being made by Twitter,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation consultant with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.
While impressive — the current Air Force One is 4,000 square feet, including a bedroom and office for the president, conference rooms and a cabin for the traveling news media — it is not gold-plated like the fixtures in Mr. Trump’s plane. Mr. Trump’s willingness to intervene at the individual corporate level is a stark departure from Republican orthodoxy, which has long objected to the government’s picking winners and losers. Greg Hayes, the chief executive of United Technologies, seemed to imply on CNBC on Monday that he felt pressured.
It is unclear what motivated Mr. Trump’s Twitter post. Aides to the president-elect did not respond to requests about whether he or others on his team had conducted a review of the Boeing contract. “There was a cost as we thought about keeping the Indiana plant open,” he said. “At the same time,” he added, “I was born at night, but not last night. I also know that about 10 percent of our revenue comes from the U.S. government.”
On the morning transition conference call with reporters, Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Jason Miller, said the president-elect sold his entire stock portfolio in June. The remarks were in response to a question about an old Twitter post from Mr. Trump boasting about purchasing Boeing stock. Some of the jobs saved from Mexico will probably fall to automation. Carrier will invest $16 million in the Indianapolis plant to automate its operations and “drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive,” Mr. Hayes said. “What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.”
Last week, Mr. Trump announced a new panel of corporate advisers, called the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum. One member of that panel is W. James McNerney Jr., the former chairman and chief executive of Boeing. Mr. Trump’s Air Force One post came out of the blue: He had not focused in the campaign on the cost of Boeing’s plans for a next-generation presidential plane.
There is no reason Mr. Trump could not continue using the current Air Force One. Even if the Boeing contract goes forward, it is unlikely that a new version of the plane would be ready before the tail end of a second Trump term, should he win one. Last week, Mr. Muilenburg, Boeing’s chief executive, said that one-fourth of all the commercial airplanes it sold were for use in China, where Boeing is in a tense competition with Europe’s Airbus, its main rival. Like other major exporters, it is concerned that if Mr. Trump offends Chinese leaders or imposes tariffs against imports, China could retaliate by buying more planes from Airbus, which would reduce jobs at Boeing.
So Mr. Trump’s action — if he follows through on canceling the Boeing contract — would affect his successor more than himself. Mr. Trump certainly understands that as president, he will no longer be flying his own, well-appointed Boeing 757. The Secret Service and the Defense Department would object.
Beyond convenience, Air Force One carries an array of top-secret communications gear for conducting everyday business and for managing a global crisis — even wartime operations, if required — while aloft. It is also equipped with a number of never-discussed security features.
The communications systems on the planes now in use were designed in the 1980s. The new ones would incorporate the latest advances, as well as anti-hacking defenses. The planes would also need other highly classified systems to protect the president that the Air Force will not discuss. But among the proposals considered several years ago for a new presidential helicopter were technologies to help prevent terrorist attacks and to resist the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear blast.
Mr. Aboulafia said Air Force One needed to have antimissile defenses like jamming and electronic countermeasures to keep the president safe.
Mr. Trump could eliminate some of these features to cut costs. But “talk about the ultimate in penny wise and pound foolishness,” Mr. Aboulafia said. “We’re talking about Pentagon weapons accounts that are going to $200 billion a year, and you’re going to nickel and dime the survivability of the president’s jet. That is about as dysfunctional as it gets.”
Mr. Trump could make good on his threat and cut the project from his budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October 2017, the first budget year of his presidency. But ultimately, Congress controls the federal purse strings, and lawmakers with parochial interests are already weighing in.
“Replacing the 26-year-old Air Force One aircraft will support good-paying jobs throughout northwest Washington and is important to ensuring the safety and security of future presidents,” Senator Patty Murray, Senator Maria Cantwell and Representative Rick Larsen, all Democrats of Washington, said in a joint statement; Boeing’s largest factories are in the Seattle area. “The president-elect’s tweet does nothing to change those basic facts.”