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The article says they are delivering two Presidential planes, total cost paid by the gov’t 3.2 billion. Can someone explain why two these planes are more than

• fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  You bejewel a plane with the president’s name, then suddenly there’s a new president! Your fixed-price contract just got a lot more expensive.
• slimsag 5y ago
  The F-22 program was $11.6 billion, F-35 $1.7 trillion, Boeing recently got a contract to manufacture 100 more AH-64E attack helicopters at $3.4 billion. We spend a lot on the military, including air force 1, and spend very little on science like JWT.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • hericium 5y ago
    > We spend a lot on the military, including air force 1, and spend very little on science like JWT. Silly humans. Don't even have anyone to fight but themselves.
    • jborichevskiy 5y ago
      Maybe if our telescopes were better we could find more civilizations to fight!
  • rjzzleep 5y ago
    The joke is that F-35 is a considered a failed fighter jet project. But as a money laundering machine with no end in sight, the F-35 is a HUGELY successful endeavour. The USA had a strong hand in blocking domestic aviation projects in countries that lost WWII. I'm happy to see that a lot of countries are now slowly reaching viability of more diverse more or less modern jetliners. I wonder what disruption this will bring to the aviation market. It's clear that the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus is not a feasible approach to affordable aviation. It will be even more important given that the EU wants to block more and more Russian imports. Which means that a block on titanium would further increase Airbus pricing.
    • robonerd 5y ago
      > The USA had a strong hand in blocking domestic aviation projects in countries that lost WWII And in those who were on the winning side too.. Likely in large part due to pressure from America, Canada killed the Avro Arrow and bought American Voodoos instead.
    • mhh__ 5y ago
      As far as I can see the F-35 has actually ended up as a pretty good plane, most people massively against it (but in favour of having fighters) are either stuck in 2014 or living in a parallel universe where the (say) gripen is actually competitive. It's an expensive aircraft but everything is expensive now, even a new F-16 is as near as makes no difference the same cost (not including maintenance...)
      • pjc50 5y ago
        Ukraine has raised the question of what the right tradeoff is between numbers of fighters at $100m each vs small drone munitions such as the Switchblade 300 (~$5000, but single use). There has been remarkably little use of air power in that war compared to anti-tank weapons, artillery, and drones.
        • rjzzleep 5y ago
          Ukraine just called their Bayraktars useless, and all the stingers, switchblades, Javelins, NLAWs have not delivered on their promises. I have sent my friends and families videos of Javelins and Switchblade videos marvelling at how amazing these pieces of tech are. But given the numbers that have supposedly been pouring into Ukraine and what is realistically happening it seems more like an unrealistic sales video than actual performance. So you might want to rethink that. By all measures the war in Ukraine is fought with Artillery + reconnaissance drones right now. And the one with the better recon and artillery seems to be winning. To your cost tradeoff. It actually seems more like the real tradeoff is cheap armour that your factory can churn out at a realistic pace, while being an uncomfortable powderkeg vs. really expensive equipment that you're too worried to use, because for every one that you use the other side can build 6.
  • daemoens 5y ago
    The 1.7 trillion figure is for the projected cost of the program till at least 2070. Less than half that has been spent so far.
• Victerius 5y ago
  The exact details are classified, but, if the current aircraft are anything to go by: Military-grade sensors, telecommunications equipment (the current aircraft have 87 telephones and 19 televisions each), additional exit points, a completely remade interior, including the President's private quarters, a kitchen, storage equipment, cold storage equipment to store enough food to serve hundreds of people (or a few dozen people for several days, there was an article about a $20M fridge a few years back), anti-nuclear shielding, reinforced glass, separate quarters for guests, senior staff, Secret Service and security personnel, a medical annex, which includes a fold-out operating table, emergency medical supplies, and a well-stocked pharmacy, the president's executive suite, a conference room, modified engines. Air Force One does not have a fighter escort most of the time.
  • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Is it possibly over-engineered?
    • clintonb 5y ago
      It's definitely over-engineered, which is the point. The plane needs to be ready for multiple situations.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • MobiusHorizons 5y ago
      I would describe it more as made-to-order / custom rather than over-engineered. Over-engineered would suggest that the complexity of the engineering is unwarranted by the requirements. I think in this case, the issue is just that the requirements are very high, and since the requirements come from the customer, they simply must be met.
      • meetups323 5y ago
        If you consider the military the end customer, sure. But take a step back and the military is the just the defense vendor for the People. If the People don't need their president to be supplied with all that tech, then the military has over-engineered their solution to the People's "our president should be able to move places relatively quickly and relatively safely" problem.
• tablespoon 5y ago
  > Can someone explain why two these planes are more than a third of the total cost of the James Web Telescope? Because they're complicated and custom, just like that telescope?
• Glyptodon 5y ago
  Because the theory that the president is easily replaceable is not widely accepted despite a bench of more than a hundred million backups.
  • MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    The American president lives like a Roman emperor surrounded by his Praetorian guard. It seems kinda sad for a democracy.
    • smackeyacky 5y ago
      Perhaps if Americans could stop shooting at them, the security could be relaxed a little.
• HWR_14 5y ago
  > total cost paid by the gov’t 3.2 billion. The sticker on just the two planes, without modifications, would be $0.8 billion. So it's a $1.2 billion increase per plane. > Don’t they fly with fighter jet escorts Not usually > What exactly do they need This is classified (or more secret than that). But you can imagine it needs to be resilient to atmospheric nuclear blasts, have the ability to support tons of communication gear, internal security, radar jamming/chaff systems, infrared suppression, support for press operations. There are rumors about things like onboard surgery suites.
  • bmitc 5y ago
    > But you can imagine it needs to be resilient to atmospheric nuclear blasts, have the ability to support tons of communication gear, internal security, radar jamming/chaff systems, infrared suppression, support for press operations. There are rumors about things like onboard surgery suites. Why?
    • Thorrez 5y ago
      They might be useful to help the president in case of an emergency.
      • pjc50 5y ago
        Following Abraham Lincoln's "I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it is not easy to replace a hundred and ten horses", an alternative would be to accept a higher risk of losing the President and having to failover to the hot spare, in the weird and unlikely circumstances that the AF1 measures would actually help. Thereby saving a few billion dollars. Zelensky seems to be doing OK in a helmet and flak jacket. I did check whether he has a presidential plane - the previous president was a notorious big spender - and the answer appears to be a leasing co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Air_Enterprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_Air_Enterprise based at Boryspil airport southeast of Kyiv. "Temporarily closed" on google maps.
        • Thorrez 5y ago
• WalterBright 5y ago
  The Presidential limo is also terrifyingly expensive.
• _ph_ 5y ago
  Some years back, the plane the German air force uses to transport politicians broke, and Angela Merkel was scheduled to take part in a conference in South America. So they just booked for her and her immediate staff business class tickets on a commercial plane going there :) There was an interview with a German who sat in the next row from her and even had a small chat.
  • fransje26 5y ago
    A plane maintained by Lufthansa. That was really good advertising for the dependable, reliable, made-in-Germany. And to add insult to injury, she needed to fly with Iberia to get there on time..
    • TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
      > made-in-Germany Are Lufthansa planes made in Germany?
• sidewndr46 5y ago
  Air Force one has never mounted offensive weapons. The danger of having offensive weapons on the plane is too great. It does likely have countermeasures of some kind, but obviously I have no idea what kind.
• rnk 5y ago
  Those planes also have to be designed to survive EMP, they have special communication equipment to be used talk to the military, I think they might have the ability to have a really long and antenna they have a special low frequency communication system for submarines under the water, hey can do something like put a long wire out behind the airplane. They have some way to eject the president and an emergency ;-) they have anti-missile systems.
• djyaz1200 5y ago
  Can someone explain why two these planes are more than a third of the total cost of the James Web Telescope? The same general reason, they are very complicated and need to work perfectly for many years with a lot of challenging constraints. First off they need 2 of them to create coin flip risk for attackers. Then they need to be adapted for mid air refueling so that they can stay airborne indefinitely in the event of nuclear war. Speaking of Nukes all the systems need to be hardened against EMP. The climate control system is probably equipped to filter out any biological or chemical agents. All or parts of the aircraft are probably armored to mitigate small arms fire. The planes keep a Nasa Apollo capsule in their belly so that the president can jettison from the plane in the event that is necessary, that's probably a pain in the a* to install. The whole aircraft is probably setup to mitigate surveillance attacks with things like windows that deliberate vibrate to thwart laser based audio eavesdropping. Then each plane needs to host a few dozen staff and reporters who accompany the president. Then also the 747's travel with cargo planes and/or Ospreys also made by boeing to transport the armored limos and/or helicopters. All or some of those support aircraft might be included in the price. Probably a bunch of other classified stuff I haven't thought of. Still outrageous but I can kinda see why it adds up to billions.