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Boeing Has Now Lost More Than $1 Billion on Each of Air Force One's Two New Jets (cnn.com) 132

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
Cost overruns for the new Air Force One jets continue to pile on massive losses for Boeing. From a report: Boeing on Wednesday reported another $482 million in red ink on the contract to retrofit two 747 jets into the next generation of the presidential plane. Boeing has now lost more than $1 billion on each of the two jets. The company has been reporting losses on the planes for years, as CEO Dave Calhoun admitted last year that the company should never have signed the contract with the Air Force to produce the jets for $3.9 billion. Supplier costs have soared since then, and the delivery date has been continually pushed back. Boeing took $1.45 billion in losses on the planes last year, and $318 million in 2021.

"Air Force One, I'm just going to call a very unique moment, a very unique negotiation. A very unique set of risks that Boeing probably shouldn't have taken," Calhoun said in April last year when discussing $660 million of those losses reported at that time. "But we are where we are." The company said the latest loss on the program is a result of engineering changes, labor instability, as well as the resolution of negotiations with one of its suppliers. Very often higher costs on defense contracts can be passed onto US taxpayers, but under pressure from then-President Donald Trump, who was threatening to cancel the contract for the planes, Boeing agreed to a fixed price contract on the two new jets.
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Boeing Has Now Lost More Than $1 Billion on Each of Air Force One's Two New Jets More

Boeing Has Now Lost More Than $1 Billion on Each of Air Force One's Two New Jets

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  • Free Advertising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:48PM (#63953651)
    It should give the company a lot of prestige having their jets serve as presidential jets, likely for the next quarter century or more. Would they rather the president fly around in an Airbus?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      Presumably it will also give them maintenance contracts which will be padded to refill they (certainly not) depleted coffers.

      That said, it's just another example of Boeing's inability to manage costs. A 747-8 costs ~$418mm new ... and while I'm sure there's a lot of top-secret retrofits for solid gold presidential toilets (ya ya and some air defense) one has to ask if they cost $1.5 billion more than a fully-fitted commercial plane.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Apparently they had to rip out a lot of the wiring and move it, plus other design changes, to leave room for the top secret stuff that needs to be installed. With all the engineering and recertification it's more like designing and building a new plane than just taking one of the assembly line (which is also no longer running).

      • Boeing is managing its costs very well if it's upselling the plane by egregious amounts.

        The government however, is not

      • Re:Free Advertising (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @10:56PM (#63954847)

        It's just par for the course for Boeing. Compare their space contracts with SpaceX. Boeing never delivers on the original contract price where SpaceX has not even once asked for more.

        It's totally reasonable and arguably should be expected for the government to demand services at the original price, and stick it to their ass if they don't (by e.g. getting a complete refund of any money already paid,) because it's really their own fucking fault if they don't. No more blank fucking checks. If SpaceX can do it, then why the fuck can't Boeing? Trump did the right thing here.

    • I'd rather have two billion dollars than some advertising.

    • Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:43PM (#63953891)

      Exactly. The difference here is that Trump understood the value of this contract for Boeing and wasn't in Boeing's pocket. He, alone among effectively all president's in the modern era, was both capable and willing to put the screws to Boeing.

      Boeing doesn't lose money to the U.S. Federal Government. Boeing makes billions every year on government projects and contracts. The only actual problem Boeing has is an inability to anticipate the costs involved with a such a project, because their entire corporate culture is wedded to the expectation that tax payers will always be the sucker. The one time that hasn't been the case has revealed just how incompetent they are.

      If Biden or Obama or either Bush or Clinton or even Reagan had negotiated this contract these planes would be $15 billion each and 15 years late.

      • Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TerryMathews ( 57165 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @03:30PM (#63954051)

        Having witnessed the outcome of Trump's first term, it's fair to say I'm not a fan and that's putting it mildly **but** I will give the devil his due and recognize that this specific contract was very well negiotiated relative to his peers.

        • Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

          by fropenn ( 1116699 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @04:11PM (#63954187)
          It seems more likely that Boeing's CEO at the time - Dennis Muilenburg - made a terrible deal and deserves the blame (rather than Trump getting credit). Muilenburg was CEO during the 737 Max catastrophes and was later fired as CEO. It was announced earlier this year that Muilenburg's investment venture post-Boeing has now failed, too (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/former-ceo-muilenburgs-next-venture-after-boeing-fails/).
        • Haha, and if Trump was still in office he'd probably take the jets and not pay Boeing at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Pascoea ( 968200 )

          recognize that this specific contract was very well negiotiated relative to his peers.

          That assumes the planes get delivered.

          I will give the devil his due and

          I would tend to do the some thing. Assuming they get built, and Boeing doesn't get an extra dime? Agreed, well done on his part. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

      • Re:Free Advertising (Score:5, Insightful)

        by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @03:34PM (#63954071) Journal

        If there's one thing the Oompa Loompa is good at is making companies lose money.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          If there's one thing the Oompa Loompa is good at is making companies lose money.

          To be fair, Boeing was going down the toilet long before the tangerine thundercunt ascended to his throne.

          The issue isn't that Boeing is losing money on Air Force 1, it's that they're losing money in total. It's normal for large companies to take on vanity projects to promote the brand (see also: any car maker in Formula 1) that will make a loss to be made up by additional sales. The problem Boeing has is that Muilenburg, the ex-CEO had set the company on a downward spiral with the 737 Max (the jet no-bo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Vulch ( 221502 )

        The two times this hasn't been the case.

        Don't forget Starliner, now due to take its first flight with crew sometime next year after a 1B+ over-run.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by sierra077 ( 949923 )

        The one time that hasn't been the case has revealed just how incompetent they are.

        And starship... and KC-46... basically any time they try to do a fixed price contract. But they learned their lesson. It's simple, no more fixed price contracts in the future [arstechnica.com] (no, they are not going to go back to competent engineering management.)

      • Yeah that's exactly what we want. The maker of our presidents planes to go broke over the deal. It's not like they'll try to cut costs on the plane or anything.

    • But does the free advertising have any benefit to Boeing?

      Excluding the 260 Boeing Business Jets that have been sold, its aeroplane customers are the airlines. They make big fleet purchases based on their existing fleet (some airlines use plans exclusively from Boeing, or Airbus), and others with mixed fleets will make decisions to swing one way or the other based on volume discounts.

      I do whether customer demand and excitement does come into play. We have a curious situation in Glasgow (Scotland) with Emirat

      • For those customers that actually make the airline the bulk of their money per flight (Business Class), yes it makes a huge difference - I fly Business between NZ and the UK roughly once a year, and we pick based on the plane - Emirates 777s have a worse business cabin than the A380s for example (777s are in a 2-3-2 configuration, so not all seats have direct aisle access, while the A380s are 1-2-1 with all seats having direct aisle access), so we avoid that aircraft.

    • Ah, yes. $2B is definitely money well spent for free advertising. Thatâ(TM)ll certainly help get the word out to customers who can afford $100M planes who havenâ(TM)t heard of Boeing before.

    • Given how well ecerythig works the President might need a Canadair CL-415 instead to be able to escape to out of reach locations.

    • The 747 is no longer being manufactured. Boeing should have just said no.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      It should give the company a lot of prestige having their jets serve as presidential jets, likely for the next quarter century or more. Would they rather the president fly around in an Airbus?

      The problem for Boeing isn't that they signed a stupidly lopsided contract for publicity... It's that they're losing money from their regular business of passenger and cargo jets as airlines are buying fewer Boeing jets. The "prestige" from AF1 is not paying off as their reputation is now terrible in aviation circles and customers use that to get cheaper prices on jets. There's a reason budget airlines are buying 737s and 787s... they don't care how uncomfortable their passengers are and know they can squee

  • So Trump actually did something right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OverlordQ ( 264228 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:48PM (#63953657) Journal

    ~nt~

    • that they were cozying up to him. It was always way, way too good a deal and Trump was preening and primping about it from day one. Everyone expected a second Trump term and they were probably going to leverage this deal into some quid pro quo or talk Trump into giving them more money (not hard to do given his track record in business).

      Still, even the blind hog catches the acorn some days.
      • The only people who ever expected a second Trump term were his cheering sycophants. Now maybe some of those were executives at Boeing, but I can't recall a single moment when a second Trump term was predicted by any respectable pollster or statistician.

        However, a single term can still be more than enough opportunity to cash in on cronyism. A second term isn't required for that.

  • So, Trump was right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:48PM (#63953659)

    "Very often higher costs on defense contracts can be passed onto US taxpayers, but under pressure from then-President Donald Trump, who was threatening to cancel the contract for the planes, Boeing agreed to a fixed price contract on the two new jets."

    Trump was the first president who ever owned an airline. He knew better than to let them pass the cost overruns on to us,
    Every government contract should protect the taxpayer like this one does.

    • Re:So, Trump was right (Score:4, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:59PM (#63953695)

      It could be simpler than that. Boeing probably just underestimated the amount of gold leaf required to cover all the interior surfaces of the planes like in Trump's NY apartment [houseandgarden.co.uk]. :-)

    • Re:So, Trump was right (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:05PM (#63953723)

      It's important to give the man credit where credits due and this was a good move and one that the government seems to be learning at last as well.

      The NASA commercial crew projects were all fixed contract and when it comes to the Boeing Starliner that was a smart move because they are taking a bath on that as well.

      The new Air Force B-21 Raider program I also read is on a fixed price contract and at the time of it's announcement there was a lot of lessons learned from the F35 program so they worked on coordinating goals and expectations with the supplier to avoid the huge overruns.

    • Re:So, Trump was right (Score:5, Interesting)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:13PM (#63953767)
      To be a little fair, a lot of times, cost overruns and delays are due to the government changing its mind on specs and capabilities after the project is in motion. Or cutting orders so the fixed R&D costs skyrocket when broken down on a per-unit basis. Uncle Sam loves to order 150 of something and then decide, once it's in production, that they really only want 3.

      In this case, though, it's all on Boeing not understanding how to properly bid a fixed-fee project. They have been in the cost-plus world of DoD contracts for too long.

      • Re:So, Trump was right (Score:4, Informative)

        by ewibble ( 1655195 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:36PM (#63953871)

        That's not fair at all you in include in the contract if you change the spec the the price changes, you reduce the order size there is a penalty, its quite simple.

        Anyone any business that signs a contract that says the customer can randomly change what is required at no extra charge is an idiot, and I am sure that the execs at Bowing are paid enough that they should be smart enough to know that. But from my experience a high salary or position is not an accurate indicator of intelligence.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )

          Anyone any business that signs a contract that says the customer can randomly change what is required at no extra charge is an idiot

          That's why they don't do that. Cost-plus contracts you bid what you think it will cost, and the government pays the cost plus a percentage as a profit. If the government decides it wants 5 instead of 500, they still pay all the costs the contractor incurs, and thus the price for the whatever it is they are buying goes up and the project is hit with a cost overrun. You know the thing my comment was talking about. I even said it in the first sentence, so no excuses for you missing it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          That is how cost plus contracts work already. There is a lot of mythology around these contracts that mostly comes from TV pundits and other people who don't actually understand them but have really strong opinions anyway. In cost plus projects, every single cost comes out of a conversation between the gov and company about some bit of feedback. In many ways it is like having long sprints.. but are less driven by 'we need more money' and more 'we have feedback on what you made'.

        • and I am sure that the execs at Bowing are paid enough that they should be smart enough to know that

          The one who presided over the 737 MAX disaster and was subsequently fired for his incompetence? That exec?

      • >To be a little fair, a lot of times, cost overruns and delays are due to the government changing its mind on specs and capabilities after the project is in motion. Or cutting orders so the fixed R&D costs skyrocket when broken down on a per-unit basis.

        Neither of these should be an issue for a company the size of any MIC supplier. You have the lawyers write up the fixed price contract contingent on the purchase of X units. If you want to automate the reprice, include a section related to amortizing t

      • If the client (the government) changes the specs and capabilities of the order, that should be an additional set of fees -design work, component costs, build fees, testing, etc. on top of the original contract cost. Additional time to deliver as well. If the client decides that they only want 3 out of the 150 ordered... fine: 3 for the price of 150. Client wants to cancel the order altogether... pay a cancelation fee (depending on how far along work is).

        However, if the vendor cannot deliver what they prom

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      In general, only truly experimental contracts should be cost plus.

      For example SLS - a straight-forward (for rocket science) adaptation of existing equipment which Boeing still needed 10's of billions of dollars over more a decade to build a launch platform that will effectively be outdated around the same time as it's first (non-test) mission. Meanwhile SpaceX ... well their *total* funding is less than half of what's already gone into SLS. Naysayers can nay-say but they still have two active, reliable, i

      • Good example would be the James Webb Space Telescope. It was a cost-plus contract and had years of delays and cost overruns but nothing like that had ever been done before.

      • SpaceX is also over-budget and overdue on NASA contracts.

        The problem is the way we look at these contracts, which is a modern evolution.
        They're designed to come in over-budget and over-due. They're designed to be extended based on feedback during the development process.

    • Re:So, Trump was right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @03:56PM (#63954137) Journal

      Every government contract should protect the taxpayer like this one does.

      There should be more protection than has been the case in the long history of cost-plus contracts, but fixed-price may be going a little too far. Taxpayers are getting a great deal this time, but if fixed-price contracts become generally required, the result may be increased costs, not decreased.

      Anyone who has ever done contracting work knows that fixed-price contracts are risky. The risk comes from three sources, each with its own mitigation, and those mitigations add costs.

      1. Bidding costs. Fixed price bids require intensive investment into detailing the proposed solution and all known cost factors. This is hard work, time-consuming and expensive... and it's work that you won't get paid for if you don't win the bid. So if fixed-price contracting is the norm, you have to build the cost of all of the bids you make into the ones that you win.

      2. Unknowns. No matter how thorough your bid process, unless the job is a cookie cutter one there are going to be various issues and challenges that you simply don't know about until you get into building the solution. The only way to mitigate these risks is to pad the price. The bigger the job, the riskier it is to the company, or the more unknowns you suspect there may be, the more you have to pad the price. Then you pad it some more.

      3. Changes. Even if you can fully manage the above problems, customers always come up with things they want to change as you get into the project. Their requirements may change. As they see things coming together they'll realize that some of their requirements were incorrectly stated, or just not what they really wanted. They'll get new ideas that they hadn't considered before. Every change incurs cost, to figure out what the impact of the change is, to do the new work, and to do any necessary rework. This is all true whether the bid is fixed-price or not... but for fixed-price contracts it's crucial to manage these costs and get them all added to the bottom line. The way you do that is by imposing a strict change control process and those processes can add a shocking amount of overhead. (When I worked for IBM Global Services, I think change management was where we made all of our money on fixed-price contracts -- nickel and dime for everything, multiple times.)

      When you add up the costs of all of these, the result is guaranteed to be a total bill that's far higher than a time and materials contract worked in good faith. In specific cases where the contractor screws up badly the customer wins with fixed prices, and in general if the customer isn't sure they can trust the contractor to work efficiently and in good faith, fixed price contracts provide the customer with assurance that they can get their project done for the planned price (modulo changes). But if you can trust the contractor you're basically always better off with time & materials style contracts, not fixed price.

    • Not coincidentally, he was also the first to own a failed airline that never made a profit, and he never purchased a single plane from a manufacturer.
      Cost-plus contracts have been in existence since the first world war in the defense industry.
      We didn't get wicked cool shit out of skunkworks with fixed-fee contracts.

      Ultimately, you're talking out of your ass.

  • Did they check the seat pocket and overhead bin, that's where my jacket was that one time.

  • Good! Payback for FCS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:50PM (#63953667)

    That's a return to the treasury of the award fee Boeing "earned" on Army Future Combat Systems, where the government spent $22b and delivered -nothing- from the program.

    Of course, Donald Trump convinced Boeing to sign the Firm Fixed Price contract. So Boeing has no one to blame except for the executive who signed that contract.

    (disclosure: I worked on FCS on the government side. The government was not without blame, but ultimately the "Lead System Integrator" failed to integrate.)

    • Yeah, Boeing failed to find a source for the element Unobtainium required to make a tank that had the survivability of an M1 Abrams but a weight low enough to transport using a helicopter sling. The Pentagon's conception behind FCS seemed to be "if we spend enough money we are sure to get our science fiction imaginings realized".

      • Re:Good! Payback for FCS (Score:4, Insightful)

        by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @04:40PM (#63954265)

        Uh, no. FCS did not have the kind of survivability requirements that the heavy force had. And that's one reason why it was cancelled, because the Army/DoD decided they would trade survivability for other characteristics (particularly strategic transportability.) Instead of the relatively small and portable FCS vehicles, we got the gigantic MRAPs. (If you've never stood next to an MRAP, you can't appreciate how large they are.) The government wrote the top level requirements and the government decided what kinds of threats the FCS vehicles would have to survive. They also required things like "transportable in C-130", and -that- was a "10 lbs of armor in a 5 lb aircraft" problem.

        The core piece of 'unobtainium' was a network that would transport gigbits of imagery over low bandwidth and unreliable radios. The fundamental concept was to 'trade information for armor', believing if you engaged the enemy well out of range of their weapons, you didn't need armor. Beyond that, Boeing had problems with supplier management, with system concepts/architecture/design, with premature contract award, and with integration. Boeing's system engineers also lacked understanding of the ground domain. I particularly remember a discussion where a Boeing guy was bragging about using AWACS tracking algorithms. "So, those algorithms track things that are moving, right?" "Yeah, and they do a great job." "But on the ground, we spend most of our time hiding, either waiting to move or waiting for an attack. Your trackers won't work well when either friendly or enemy forces aren't moving." "Uh, yeah, that could be a problem."

        My part of the program had a running list of system/system-of-system issues that required resolution before we could come up with the software to tie the various components together. Of that "dirty dozen" critical design/concept issues, Boeing resolved maybe 4 of them. Now some of them are probably still intractable, or at least very difficult. (QoS on tactical networks is one good example, particularly when you want to think about the quality of "information delivered over limited bandwidth" and not just priority routing of packets. A related issue is how the operational community will manage the tactical 'network of networks', given that data will always substantially exceed available bandwidth, and what kind of information is important changes with the tactical situation.)

    • By the way, the Boeing CEO who signed the Air Force 1 contract was also the Boeing PM on FCS, Dennis Muilenberg.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Of course, Donald Trump convinced Boeing to sign the Firm Fixed Price contract. So Boeing has no one to blame except for the executive who signed that contract.

      This.

      Trump didn't do anything, the mistake was with Denis Muilenburg, the CEO that signed the contract. It's not like Airbus would have accepted those terms or even bothered bidding. Trump is a terrible businessman but Muilenburg was far worse.

  • Best deal ever for the American taxpayer.

    • Nah, I think buying Alaska for $112m in today's dollars from Russia probably was a better deal. Even for the native people who were already there, ironically, considering the US government's track record with native peoples of the North American west.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        The Louisiana Purchase, for about three times that, might have been a better deal.

  • Gosh (Score:4, Informative)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:00PM (#63953699) Journal
    Between these cost overruns and Starliner's [google.com], how ever does Boeing manage to stay in business? I suppose $25billion/year in government contracts - many of them cost-plus - helps. I suppose they make planes, too, which people are happy to buy (another $25bn/yr or so).
  • So will they be done in two years or will they break the contract and back out?

  • Anyone else also share this thought? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@[ ]ata.net.eg ['ted' in gap]> on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:25PM (#63953819) Journal

    Why is anybody spending five billion dollars building these airplanes in the first place?

    • Does an aircraft carrier even cost that much?

      • A Ford class carrier is around $13B

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        $13 billion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      • You make an excellent comparison.

        On 10 September 2008, the U.S. Navy signed a $5.1 billion contract [wikipedia.org] with Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding in Newport News, Virginia, to design and construct the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford. Although final cost is about 12.68bn [wikipedia.org] each, bundled as a 3-pack.

        • The inflation calculator says the three pack should cost, 8 billion (2006) assuming the 3 billion R and D ran at the typical rate. 12.42bn total program cost/unit. Since the Ford is in the eastern med we will see its mission rate under stress shortly. I expect to see missions against syrian targets over the next few weeks.

          The effectiveness of 3 squadrons hitting targets for 72 hours will probably outstrip the entire ukraine effort when released to do a mission. So we will see 20-25 billi

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )
      What, in your mind, is an appropriate number? (I'm not asking to be snarky/clever/whatever. Genuinely curious.) I'd agree that $5b sounds high, but I've never been involved in building such a thing, so I have nothing to base that assessment on.

    • Re:Anyone else also share this thought? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @04:37PM (#63954259) Homepage Journal

      Because they're just about the most specialized planes in the world. There are two other planes in a similar class, both based on the 747-200. They are the the E-4 National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP, pronounced "kneecap") and the VC-25A (current Air Force One). The 747-200 worked well because its analog architecture was already somewhat resistant to EMP and needed only limited hardening. The inflation-adjusted prices for those are about $1.65 billion and $900 million each, and those prices do not include some very expensive upgrades that have happened periodically. The E-4 is significantly more capable from a military perspective as it's more for the actual generals handling a lot more detail, but both have communications and computer systems meant to aid in running a global war.

      The 747-800 that the VC-25B (what Boeing is working on) is based on is almost entirely digital. All that wiring has to be protected against EMP, and that alone is probably several hundred million dollars. Getting to all that basically means disassembling the plane and rebuilding it, making Trump's decision to buy two undelivered models at a slight discount rather than have a ground-up new build a possible reason for increased costs. All the computers have to be protected, plus there are additional systems meant to protect it from combat damage. There has long been speculation about air defenses, but at a minimum, the fuel tanks will likely get self-sealing bladders to limit fragment damage, additional emergency fuel lines may be run, and the hydraulics systems will be made more durable and reliable. An aerial refueling system has to be present, and the plane needs additional reserve supplies (e.g., oil) to maintain flight for at least 2-3 days, maybe longer. It gets a modern surgical suite, and that may mean X-ray machines and other systems that have to be protected and from which the plane has to be protected. Then there are the hundreds of millions of dollars of electronics to go in to allow a president to communicate with the military. Almost all of this is bespoke, so there just isn't a way to amortize most of the costs.

      And all of that has to be done by personnel who at a minimum hold Top Secret if not Top Secret/SCI clearances, making them much more expensive workers. The work has to be done at a facility that can securely handle such work, which will not be the main factory floor. In this case, it's Port San Antonio, located at the former Kelly AFB in San Antonio, Texas. Operating those facilities is not cheap, as they have armed guards, sensors, barriers, and all the other fun things to limit movement.

      The Air Force has been talking for over a decade about replacing the E-4 because it is very badly in need of replacement (crews reportedly are conducting a lot of training "flights" on the ground to limit further hours on the airframes) but dithered in part because of costs and fears of cannibalizing programs like the F-35. They finally got that project moving (for now called the Survivable Airborne Operations Center), and it's currently budgeted for more than $8 billion over the next five years. No one realistically thinks the program will be that cheap or be delivered by 2029, and the E-4 fleet may need to fly into the early- to mid-2030s, by which time the airframes will be nearly 50 years old.

      • Re:Anyone else also share this thought? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday October 26, 2023 @02:42AM (#63955021)

        I honestly wonder why America doesn't just agree that there's a succession line for the president and stop pretending that the world would collapse if he goes down. It has become a borderline joke for the entire rest of the world. I still remember the G7 summit in Australia. Obama parking half his military at the local airport, two ospreys in the local park, and drove around with two motorcades and a body double to get to the secure area (not a dig at Obama, he just happened to be the president at the time). Merkel on the other hand said fuck this I'm going clubbing, and went out to a nightclub several km from the secure zone and was taking selfies and drinking with the locals.

        Is the POTUS of the USA important? Fuck yes. But that is a position, not a person. One gets killed, another literally takes their place which makes this insane military dance ... well ... insane. The USA spends an insane amount of money protecting the person in that position compared to any other country, including countries where the risk to said person is far higher, and we all know the USA has actual succession plans (after all Trump's campaign told us all we were voting for Karmala as POTUS right?)

        • It's a symbolic thing I guess?

          It'd be like if someone bumped off the monarch in the UK. It's not like it would be a problem: we've done it before more than once, there's plenty of spares and we can always get an import model if need be (we've done so before).

          But I think it's the symbolic nature that makes it so important to protect the symbol.

          • It'd be like if someone bumped off the monarch in the UK.

            Yes it would be. A good comparison. You should look at the protection the monarch actually gets and the comparative spend. Protective operations for the secret service cost 10x as much as the entire yearly royal grant budget, only a fraction of the latter actually goes into protecting the royal family, who don't remotely have the same procession, or hardware when they travel. Better still the former queen's travel vehicle was a gift, didn't even cost the Queen anything.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Pollux ( 102520 )

          I honestly wonder why America doesn't just agree that there's a succession line for the president and stop pretending that the world would collapse if he goes down.

          Thank you, that was exactly the point I was trying to make. Yes, a Boeing 747-800 list price in its final year was about $420 million, meaning US taxpayers / Boeing are spending an additional $2 billion to specialize this plane to make it as secure and protective as possible. But do we really have to "Secure the president at all costs?" If so,

        • What do you think the kingdoms GDP costs of the castles, forts and fortifications were back in say 1400? AF1 and the security of the entire DC is a rounding error in the US GDP. The entire DOD is eclipsed many times over by the welfare state for poor and powerless.

          If POUTUS gets knocked off the emotional reaction is expensive to the beltway first and the national economy is a big secondary consideration. Being the worlds superpower is not without a cost, and AF1 and a navy guarding every sea lan

        • Is the POTUS of the USA important? Fuck yes. But that is a position, not a person. One gets killed, another literally takes their place which makes this insane military dance ... well ... insane.

          Because getting the next person in line up to speed on everything they need to know takes time. Hell, every time a new president is sworn in, he's already had months of briefings and still won't be fully up to speed for a few more months.

          The Vice President is closest to that, and even that person doesn't get access

      • There was a reason to be airborne 30+ years ago. Now there is little reason to be airborne, a sat pass is made over every point on earth by a NRO asset every 8 to 12 hours.

        E4s are flying DC office tower basements and are fully mission capable on a alert slot next to a runway in any one the USAF bases in the American West and Europe. The APU(s) gets the wear, the engines and the wings do not. The command structure has two assumptions, that there is survivable radio communications functioning from
    • No one is spending five billion dollars to build two airplanes. The airplanes are ALREADY built, they were intended to be delivered to a Russian cargo airline but the deal fell through, so they were sold to the DOD instead. The value of those aircraft new was $418.4M each based on commercial list prices, but I'd hope that the DOD negotiated a better price on these slightly used aircraft. No, the five billion dollars is just to MODIFY two pre-existing, certified 747-8i commercial aircraft into VC-25B Air

      • No, the five billion dollars is just to MODIFY two pre-existing, certified 747-8i commercial aircraft into VC-25B Air Farce Ones.

        Modifying something can often be more expensive than building something from scratch. Simply saying "MODIFY" doesn't invalidate the cost.

  • You’d think they might have had a paragraph about why these planes are so expensive. I mean obviously it’s going to be *slightly* nicer than cattle class but billions of dollars?

  • I used to quote fixed price bids for software project. One thing I quickly learned, was that I'd better double whatever number of hours I thought it would take, because it would actually take all of those hors, and usually more. It seems Boeing neglected to factor in risks. Good for the US taxpayers!

    • Not really. There is undoubtably back-channel money going to support the program that Boeing doesn't declare as related to this program. Boeing has lost a lot of big defense projects in the last decade plus, and the government needs to keep them interested in defense work to ensure there are competitive companies out there.

      • I see, so your story is that Boeing is actually doing just fine, thank you very much, they just aren't showing us the secret stashes they're getting on the side. OK, got it.

  • Sorry for this minor nitpick, but given that any bland can use the Airforce one callsign when and only when The president is actuallu on board, anas the president ( last I checked), is only one person. How can myltiple planes have that callsign at once when this person is obviosly not i on board at least 2 of them? Or us Airforce one being used (incorrectly to reffere to the planes rhat will carry that callsign while carrying out it's nain mission ( ie being an airbon iffice etc for the orecident and reala
  • They need a bailout, or we might not get those new places. We don't want the President to use Zoom for all his meetings do we?

  • The 747 is obsolete. Maybe Ford should bid on new Edsel limousines for Biden.

  • And that the jets would fart unicorns. They did *not* agree to sell the government what they had that they knew worked, they sold them "you can have this, that, and the other, and here's a CGI video of what it will be like, *then*, after the contract was signed, tried to make it work.

    The same way PRI sold the City of Chicago a 911 system in the mid-nineties. (Why, yes, I was one of the people who came in years later to help make it work.)

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