Experts are divided on whether President Trump’s claims that he saved $1 billion on the program to build Air Force One are legitimate.
At a Saturday night rally, Trump said he managed to save more than $1 billion on the program to build two new Air Force One planes in about an hour of negotiations.
“We’ve got that price down by over $1 billion and I probably haven’t spoken for more than an hour on the project. I got the generals in who are fantastic … but I told Boeing that isn’t good enough, the price is still too high,” Trump said.
“I refuse to fly in a $4.2 billion plane,” he also said.
But Boeing would not get into specifics on where the savings were coming from.
“We’ll continue to work with the administration to provide the best capability — affordably — to our warfighters,” a company spokeswoman said.
Todd Harrison, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it’s “most likely” that Trump worked with Boeing to scale back the requirements for the planes and simply the testing it must undergo.
“There are a lot of ways you could do it cheaper. The way that you buy it from Boeing, the terms that you buy it on can affect the cost, but most importantly, the requirements you put on the aircraft that require additional development and testing and certification, that can add a lot to the cost.”
That tracks roughly with what Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in January after meeting with Trump.
“[W]e made some great progress on simplifying requirements for Air Force One, streamlining the process, streamlining certification by using commercial practices,” he said. “All of that is gonna provide a better airplane at a lower cost.”
But Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, was less optimistic that Trump’s claims meant true savings. He said the budget for the program originally was about $3 billion, but Trump criticized it as a $4 billion program previously on Twitter.
“That was a fabrication. Then when he was told, it’s a $2.7-2.9 billion program, he said I just saved a billion dollars,” Aboulafia said. “I’m embarrassed there are people who believe this.”
Harrison did note that the $4 billion number comes from a “funding wedge” that the Air Force put in its budget documents, essentially making it an internal estimate to reserve space in future budgets for the program. It is not a formal cost estimate because the program is still in its early stages.
The two 747-8 planes aren’t expected to enter service until 2024.
At the same rally, Trump said he would be looking at whether the country actually needs to buy two Air Force One planes. “Why they need two planes, we’ll have to talk about that,” he said.
While the two experts disagreed about the source of the savings, they both said two planes should be the minimum.
“The question of whether two are needed is based on a completely grotesque misunderstanding of how military requirements work,” Aboulafia said. “The president has to fly when he has to fly, especially in the event of a national emergency. If this thing is offline for maintenance or refurbishment 25 percent of the time, not flying in those circumstances is not an option.”
Only having one plane gives the country no backup in case the president needs to fly, such as on 9/11 when President George W. Bush remained in the air aboard Air Force One for hours until officials had determined what was going on and where the president would be safe.
In fact, Harrison said the Air Force would prefer to have three planes.
“There are times when one of the planes needs to go in for scheduled maintenance. During that time you have no backup, so if something breaks on one remaining plane, you have a security issue,” he said.
