The Navy has delayed a program to replace the aging fleet of 19 helicopters used to ferry the president, raising new concerns about the safety of the first family when they travel on Marine One. As a result, the so-called “white-tops” will be used well past 2030, 20 years after replacements were supposed to be ready.
Money is a key issue, but one program analyst told Washington Secrets: “How much is it worth spending to protect the president, and does the American people’s answer depend on who that president is?”
Deciding on the new Marine One will probably occur after the presidential election. In a new audit, the Government Accountability Office pegged the reason for the delay on the Navy’s struggle to decide among 52 low-cost options. The service is likely to pick an “off-the-shelf” helicopter and in the meantime is extending the life of the current copters by over 25 percent, or about 4,000 more hours of flying, said GAO.
President Obama in June 2009 cancelled an earlier $13 billion program to build a new helicopter, citing ballooning costs as designers filled it with bells and whistles. Because only 23 are needed for White House use, the costs can’t be averaged over hundreds of aircraft like a typical aviation program.
The GAO raised several potential safety concerns in the new delay. For example, with so few helicopters in the HMX-1 fleet and the president constantly on the road, it is difficult to find time to fix and upgrade the fleet of VH-3Ds and VH-60Ns. Plus, they’ve been weighted down with so much post-9/11 security and communications equipment that the flight range has been cut.
A former top Navy official said the service is fully capable of prolonging the life of the copters, but older aircraft eat spares and repair parts. “It’s like keeping classic cars–novel to look at but ghastly expensive to operate. And when you skimp on the spares and maintenance, the unsafe operations can kill ya.”
