The Air Force estimates it will cost less than $400 million to modify a luxury aircraft gifted from the Qatari government into President Donald Trump’s flying command center, according to the service’s top civilian official.
That projection is far less than the $1 billion congressional democrats and some aviation experts have said would be required to harden the plane’s defenses and install the countermeasures, encrypted communications and other capabilities needed to fulfill the Air Force One mission.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Thursday in a House Armed Services Committee hearing that the assumptions some are making about the modification costs include things like training and buying spare parts — expenses the service has already accounted for through its broader VC-25B presidential aircraft program. While the Air Force may now need to procure those things earlier, it won’t be paying for them twice.
“There’s been a number thrown around on the order of a billion dollars,” Meink said, adding later, “It’s probably less than $400 million to retrofit that aircraft.”
The White House announced last month it would accept Qatar’s offer to gift the president a modified Boeing 747-8, worth roughly $400 million. The plan is to use the gifted plane throughout the rest of Trump’s term and then donate it to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation after Trump leaves office.
The Air Force, which will oversee the upgrades, hasn’t provided details on the scope or schedule of the modifications or confirmed who will perform the work. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that L3Harris has been tapped to convert the aircraft at a facility in Texas and expects to complete the upgrades later this year.
The Air Force is already in the midst of a major modernization program, started in 2015, to convert two 747-8 aircraft through the VC-25B presidential aircraft program. Boeing is under a $3.9 billion fixed-price contract to conduct the modifications. Deliveries were previously slated for last year, but have since been pushed to 2029 — a delay that has frustrated Trump.
The president on his social media platform Truth Social last month described Qatar’s offer of a 747-8 to fill that gap as “a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE” to the Defense Department.
Democrats have taken issue with the deal on multiple levels, criticizing the president’s acceptance of a $400 million aircraft from a foreign government as a conflict of interest and claiming the cost to turn it into an airborne situation room could balloon to billions of dollars.
During Thursday’s hearing, Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., raised the issue of the modification costs, speculating they will fall closer to $1 billion or more. He also called for greater transparency from DOD on what that price tag will be.
“Based on the experience that we already have gone through with retrofitting planes, 747s, it’s clear that this is going to be a drain on the Air Force’s budget,” he said. “I think that the sooner we just sort of rip the Band-Aid off and get that information out there, it would be helpful for us in terms of deciding whether this is a smart path to go down.”
Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.
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