According to Boeing, the average cost of a 747-8 aircraft is around $380 million.
On Tuesday, however, President-Elect Trump tweeted (corroborated by NBC News) that two Boeing 747-8-varaints being built to replace Air Force One will cost $4 billion.
Now, even taking into account the intrinsic higher costs of a Presidential aircraft, the difference between $760 million (the cost of two standard 747-8 aircraft) and $4 billion is significant. That differential demands our attention for a number of reasons.
First off, $4 billion is already $1 billion more than the Air Force requested from Congress earlier this year. That request had already accounted for highly advanced avionics, communications, and defensive technology that the new Air Force Ones need.
Second, this is not the first time a presidential procurement has gone cost-haywire, just ask President Obama. On entering office in 2009, the President found that defense contractor, Lockheed Martin, projected costs had increased by over $5 billion (yes, $5 billion) for its development of a new fleet of presidential helicopters. Mr. Obama’s frugality with taxpayer money might since have evaporated, but he deserves credit for pulling the plug on that waste.
Nevertheless, the real issue here is not Air Force One or Marine One, nor even Trump tweets. The exigent concern is whether American taxpayers are receiving – or not receiving – value for money from defense contractors.
I do not believe they are.
I say that as a national security realist who supports significant defense spending. But if one objectively peruses the Pentagon’s accounts it is clear that American taxpayers are being taken for a ride. As I noted recently, Americans deserve better than bloated defense procurement budgets. And that this bloat is growing years after the withdrawal from Iraq is inexcusable. The procurement experience of U.S. forces in post-war Iraq should have taught us something because that experience was largely defined by huge delays in the right equipment reaching the frontline. Americans died because of that procurement failure from Washington. Don’t believe me? Read Robert Gates’s book Duty.
A perfect example of procurement waste is the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Designed for close-to-shore operations, the LCS has a good remit for the War on Terror. But in action, it is a joke. For one, the LCS’s modular-defense system renders it vulnerable to versatile threats. That means it must be deployed in concert with supporting ships such as destroyers or cruisers. But the LCS is also expensive in procurement and operation. The LCS, basically, is something that Admirals can smash champagne bottles against. But it is little else. It is certainly way too expensive to be called a minesweeper.
And this speaks to something: Trump should call out waste. Indeed, he has a responsibility to do so. These wasteful practices have been able to perpetuate for a simple reason. First, a large number of general officers and senior civilian officials keep ending up joining defense contractors on leaving DoD. Some join because they are talented professionals that seek to serve the nation (and legitimately earn some good money!) on leaving government. But others participate in reward for supporting expensive procurement projects while at DoD. It’s the military-industrial topic incarnate.
Still, it would be unfair to blame defense firms alone. The ultimate responsibility here lays with politicians. Take Democratic Senator Patty Murray. Responding to Trump’s Air Force One tweets, Senator Murray (a quite reasonable Democratic Senator – willing to compromise for the national interest) told Politico:
“The workers of my state and the workers of Boeing across the country do an incredible job and build an incredible airplane. I hope the President-Elect takes the time to talk to the Pentagon and the Air Force and Boeing about how defense contracts work before he tweets.”
Senator Murray showed her hand there. Those words prove that her priority is not taxpayer accountability from Boeing, but rather Federal profligacy in the service of her specific state.
As such, we as conservatives, need to be clear. Whatever our perspectives on foreign policy, there is nothing conservative about wasting money on defense procurement. To do so is rank hypocrisy against America’s military and the taxpayer interest. And that is all it is. Cost overruns sometimes happen. Unfortunately, at DoD, they happen far too often.
