A new report says that the “free, very expensive” jet that Donald Trump is expected to accept as a gift from Qatar’s royal family will require billions of dollars of investment and retrofitting to make it into a makeshift Air Force One.
The renovations are such that they would be impossible to complete before 2028.
The administration set off legal and ethical alarms over its plan to accept the $400 million Boeing 747-8 for use as the presidential aircraft. At the same time, a pair of Boeing VC-25 B planes are being completed to stringent military standards in the US. Neither is expected to be completed until 2027.
The president hailed Qatar's “great gesture” and said that only a “stupid person” would not have accepted the gift.
However, the so-called free plane will carry hefty costs from a raft of upgrades, which range from ensuring secure communications to electromagnetic shielding.
The plane is currently being held in San Antonio, Texas. It is unclear if any retrofitting has already taken place.
Current and former U.S. officials told the Washington Postthat retrofitting the newer plane to Air Force One requirements will take years of work and cost billions of dollars.
Completing the task before Trump leaves office in January 2028 would be “impossible,” according to the newspaper.
Inside the split-deck Qatari jet, the same base model as the two VC-25Bs under modification by Boeing, there are two full bathrooms, nine lavatories, a master bedroom and a guest bedroom, multiple lounges, and a private office.
Meanwhile, the current planes are fitted with state-of-the-art defensive countermeasures, in-flight refueling capability, and secure communications equipment.
A private contractor would likely have to rip the plane apart before it was fit for use, including adding secure communications and classified upgrades.
“This isn’t really a gift,” Connecticut Representative Joe Courtney, a top Democrat on the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, told Politico.
“You’d basically have to tear the plane down to the studs and rebuild it to meet all the survivability, security, and communications requirements of Air Force One. It’s a massive undertaking — and an unfunded one at that.”
Maintenance and operation costs of presidential planes are also an expensive affair.
According to a 2021 internal Pentagon estimate, each VC-25B costs more than $2.5 billion, with an additional $7.7 billion in projected long-term operations and support costs over 30 years.
A White House official told the Post it was premature to place a timeframe on how long the upgrades to the Qatari plane might take.
The Qatari Defense Ministry is in talks with the White House about transferring the jet to the Pentagon, which would oversee its retrofitting.
The White House official said that Qatar offered to “donate a plane to the Department of Defense,” but Trump would not accept it this week during his stop in the country, along with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as he embarks on his first major foreign trip of his second term.
The plane is expected to be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation in 2029. A source told CNN that Trump intends to use the plane as a private citizen, something that the president denies.
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