Boeing CEO will cut Air Force One cost after pressure from Trump

Presidential aircraft replacement program is managed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Aerospace giant Boeing will simplify and streamline requirements to cut “substantial cost” on the next Air Force One, the company’s chief executive said Tuesday after a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump.

“We have made some great progress on simplifying requirements for Air Force One, streamlining the process, streamlining certifications by using commercial practices, all of that is going to provide a better airplane at a lower cost,” Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenberg told reporters Tuesday.

Trump has targeted two Boeing 747-8 jumbo jets slated to be the next presidential jetliner to replace the current fleet as too costly. The president-elect declared the program had a price tag of more than $4 billion and demanded it be canceled in a Tweet last month. Since then, he has met with Muilenberg on ways to reduce costs.

The presidential aircraft replacement program is managed and has a workforce of about 100 employees at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Thus far, Air Force officials say a $169 million contract for designing the presidential jet was reached. The service branch planned to budgeted about $2.7 billion on development and testing of the jet through 2021. Final costs were not yet determined for the planes set to join the fleet in 2024.

The White House had urgently pushed for an Air Force One replacement for two Boeing 747-200 aircraft, known as VC-25s in the Air Force, that were aging and becoming harder to maintain, Kevin W. Buckley, program executive officer of mobility programs said in an interview last fall with the Dayton Daily News.

“The real challenge and the challenge that is forcing us to buy newer aircraft for the president is to overcome the fact there are heroics going on every day to keep the current aircraft flying, and it’s becoming way too expensive and way too difficult to do that,” he said then.

An Air Force representative was not at the meeting Tuesday between Trump and Boeing’s chief executive at Trump Tower in New York City. Air Force officials did discuss plans for the next generation presidential airlifter with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month, however.

As of Tuesday, the Air Force had not received new requirements for the replacement Air Force One jetliner, said Capt. Michael S. Hertzog, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon.

Boeing must “modify everything” to meet regulations when a commercial jetliner like the Boeing 747 is transformed for a military mission such as Air Force One, a senior aviation analyst said.

“Air Force One is a unique aircraft with special performance requirements,” Loren B. Thompson, a Virginia-based Lexington Institute senior aviation analyst and industry consultant, said in an email Tuesday. “What President-elect Trump is saying is let’s distinguish between requirements that are really necessary and those that just push up the price.

“If Trump applies the same reasoning to other military programs, the government could save billions of dollars during his presidency,” Thompson added.

Richard Aboulafia, a senior aviation analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, questioned the usefulness of Trump’s tactics. He said he assumed Tuesday’s meeting was “theater.”

“These sorts of programs are all extremely complicated in terms of requirements, definitions and trade-offs,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “The idea that a president-elect and maybe a couple of transition team members could accomplish anything meaningful in an hour-long meeting is bizarre.”

The plan to build replacement presidential jumbo jets was a years-long development program with “incredibly complicated systems on board,” he said.

Neither Boeing nor the Air Force have indicated what might be reduced to cut costs.

Trump “probably has an idea that Air Force One is a little like his personal business jet so that you use a different supplier to get a cheaper grade of gold on the faucet rather than different electronic warfare suites,” Aboulafia said. “It’s really not like that at all.”

Muilenberg told reporters he spoke with Trump about Air Force One and fighter jets at Tuesday’s session, saying “great progress” was reached.

“Together we are working to streamline requirements, and to streamline the process and applying commercial best practices,” Muilenberg said, according to a transcript of his remarks. “That is going to lead to substantial cost reduction. This is something we are working on together, and I appreciate the teamwork approach on this. I think this is the right way to do business.”

EARLIER STORY: Air Force Museum aims to add latest Air Force One to its presidential fleet

Trump also has criticized the cost of the Lockheed Martin-assembled F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive weapons program in history at $379 billion, and asked Boeing to come up with an F/A-18 Super Hornet with the same capabilities.

Critics of the idea have said the fifth-generation F-35, despite its technical woes and schedule delays, has more sensor, data management and stealth capability than the earlier generation Super Hornet.

Lockheed Martin CEO Marilyn Hewson has met with Trump and reportedly pledged in December to aggressively drive down the cost of the F-35.

Wright-Patterson, the acquisition center of the Air Force, has an F-35 Division program office.

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