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Inside Trump’s New Air Force One · The Infographics Show Podcast

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Beyond Infographics. I'm your host, and today
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: we are doing exactly what we promise we are. We're
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: taking this massive stack of complex reports, procurement contracts, all
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: these technical specs, and we're turning them into clear, usable insights.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: And today that signal is coming from about thirty five thousand.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Feet exactly before we take off. Yes, the pun is
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: very much intended. I do have a quick favorite to ask,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: if you're getting value out of this show, if you
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: like how we unpack these huge topics, please just take
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: two seconds and rate the show five stars.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It really does help.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: It helps other people find us, keeps the lights on. Okay,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: let's get into it.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture something, and you know what
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about. It is maybe the most enduring image
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: of American power. Oh yeah, it's not the White House lawn,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: it's not the Capitol Dome. That specific moment, the wave,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the President walking up those stairs, turns to the top
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: waves and then steps inside that massive blue and white
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Boeing seven forty.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Seven, the flying White House. It's absolutely iconic, no question right.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate backdrop. It just screens stability, power, continuity,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It's Tuesday, January twenty, twenty twenty six,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and if you look just past that photo op, past
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: the polished aluminum in the seal, you find a program
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: that is, quite frankly, in a state of absolute chaos.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Chaos is a strong word, but looking at the documents
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: we have today, it's not wrong. I mean, it's not inaccurate.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a fleet in a huge transition.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: You've got an aging legend that is struggling to stay
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: in the air, a replacement program that is years behind schedule,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and a really controversial interim solution.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: A solution that involves foreign gifts, and I kid you
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: not nuclear missile funding.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: It's a wild story.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Is exactly our mission for this episode. You can unpack
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the reality of presidential airlift in twenty twenty six. And folks,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: we aren't just talking about a plane, no, not at all.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a four billion dollar plus struggle. It
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: involves bankrupt Russian airlines, gifts from the Qatari government, shortages
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of mechanics, and a paint.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Job, a paint job that sparked a political war.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It did, And we're going to answer a question that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: sounds like a joke, but is actually deadly serious.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Why is the United States Air Force buying used planes
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: from Luftanza.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Just to scavenge for parts? That part absolutely blew my
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: mind when I read it.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: It's pretty incredible.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So let's start with the basics, the status quo. We
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: see the president flying around today in twenty twenty six,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: what is he actually flying in? Right, Because despite all
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: the headlines about new jets, it is not a new plane,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: is it.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: No, it is not. The workhorses. The planes doing all
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: the heavy lifting right now are still the VC twenty
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: five a's. You'll know them by their tail numbers twenty
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: nine thousand. And to understand the problem, you just have
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to look at the calendar.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: When did they come online?
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: These planes entered service in nineteen ninety.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety, so we're talking to George H. W. Bush
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: administration exactly.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: The Berlin Wall had just come down. The Internet as
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: we know it didn't exist.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: So these airframes are over thirty five years old.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: They are, and they're based on the Boeing seven forty
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: seven two hundred B platform. Now, to put that in perspective,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: the commercial aviation world moved on from the two hundred
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: b a long, long time.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Ago, so these are basically classics.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Most major airlines retired this model decades ago. If you
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: see a seven four seven two hundred flying today, it's
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: usually a cargo hauller somewhere, not a flagship carrier.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So it's like trying to run a modern Fortune five
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: hundred company, or you know, the most powerful military in
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: history out of a nineteen ninety's office building where the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: wiring hasn't been updated.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It's actually worse than that. It's like trying to run
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: that company using a mainframe computer from nineteen ninety. But
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: the company that made the replacement parts went out of
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: business twenty years ago. Ah, this is what we call
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: part art's obsolescence.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Parts obsolescence. Break that down for us, because I assume
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Boeing still exists, so can't they just make the parts
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: they can?
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: But the commercial supply chain for the seven four seven
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: two hundred has for all intents and purposes, vanished gone.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: You can't just go to a catalog and order a
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: replacement actuator or a specific hydraulic panel. When something breaks
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: on these planes, it's a crisis. You often have to
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: custom manufacture the part from scratch or you have to
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: scour bone yards aircraft graveyards to find a scrapped plane
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: that might have a salvageable component.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: So every time something breaks it isn't just a repair,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it's a whole procurement saga.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: It becomes exponentially expensive to keep them airworthy. The maintenance
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: costs are just skyrocketing.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: You're paying for custom engineering for stuff that used to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: be off the shelf.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Precisely, and remember these aren't just any planes. They're highly specialized.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Right. Let's talk about the specs for a second, just
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: to set the stage, because even though they are old,
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: they are still incredible machines.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely. The VC twenty five A has four thousand
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: square feet of floor space.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: That's a house.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: It has two galleys that can feed one hundred people
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: at a single sitting. It's got a medical suite that
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: doubles as an operating room anating room, and crucially, it
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: has aerial refueling capability. So theoretically it can stay airborne indefinitely.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: The only limit is the oil in the engines and
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: how long the crew can stay awake. Pretty much, but
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: theoretically doesn't help when the plane itself is suffering from
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: you know, geriatric issues. I imagine the reliability rates are a
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: real concern.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: They are a huge concern for the Secret Service. In
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: the Air Force, they have to keep backup planes ready,
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: and the maintenance intervals.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: The time on the ground versus in the air.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Right, they're getting longer and longer. The Air Force knew
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: this was coming. They knew the seven forty seven to
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: two hundred was aging out.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: So they started a replacement program years ago.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: They did. This is the VC twenty five B.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Program, the VC twenty five B, and this is the
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: move to the newer owing seven forty seven DASH eight Intercontinental,
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the final most modern version of the seven forty seven.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Correct, It's longer, it's more fuel efficient, has longer range
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: than the old two hundred series. It's got the raked wingtips,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the jagged engine cowlings. It's a beautiful modern aircraft.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And here's where it gets really, really interesting, because when
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I was reading through the source material on the DC
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: twenty five B, I just assumed. I assumed these were
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: brand new planes built from scratch, specifically for the president. Yeah,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: you know, custom ordered, fresh off the line, and Everett.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: You would think so, right, I mean, for the leader
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: of the free world. But that is not what happened.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: These are what you might call franken planes freakin planes.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, unpack that for me. We're talking about used parts
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: or something not.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Used parts, but redirected airframes. These two seven forty seven
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Dash eight airframes. They were not originally built for the
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Air Force.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Who are they for?
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: They were built for a Russian airline called Transero.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Wait, a Russian airline trans.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: Erro ordered them. Boeing built them, and then trans Aro
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: went bankrupt in twenty fifteen before they could take delivery.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: So these massive, brand new jumbo jets were just what sitting.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Somewhere in the Mohave desert in storage, baking in the sun. Essentially,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: they were preserved, of course, wrapped up and monitored, but
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: they were sitting there without an owner. And the Air
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Force saw an opportunity.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: An opportunity to save some money, a huge opportunity.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: They were under immense pressure to lower the cost of
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: the program. President Trump, early in his first term, had
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: famously tweeted about the cost being out of control.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I remember that.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So the Air Force negotiated a deal with Boeing to
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: buy these two white tail aircraft planes that had been
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: built but not delivered.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: So the future symbol of American democracy was originally destined
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: for a bankrupt Russian carrier.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: The irony is not lost on many observers all bet
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: But to be fair, the airframe itself, the seven four
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: to seven Dash eight, is a magnificent machine, no matter
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: who ordered it. The problem wasn't that airframe.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: It's the conversion.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: The problem is the conversion. You cannot just take a
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: commercial airliner, slap a code of pain on it and
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: call it air Force one.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: And the timeline on this has slipped dramatically. I remember
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: reading reports years ago that said we would have these
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: by twenty twenty four.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Right then it was twenty twenty five, then it was
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty seven.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And now here we are in early twenty twenty six.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: The latest from the Air Force is pointing toward mid
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty eight for the first delivery. That's a massive delay.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Why, I mean, what is taking so long? If the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: planes were already built, why is it taking almost a
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: decade to retrofit them? Is it just government bureaucracy.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: It is easy to blame bureaucracy, but in this case
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: it comes down to three very specific, very real factors manpower,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: technical hurdles, and supply chain.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Let's start with manpower.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, this work is highly classified. You can't just hire
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: any mechanic off the.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Street because of the systems they're installing, the defense systems exactly.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Boeing struggled, and I mean really struggled to find mechanics
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: who had the right skills and could pass the rigorous
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: security clearances. What kind of clearance we talk, We're talking
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yankee White level for some of this stuff. You have
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: a limited pool of talent to begin with, and then
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: you filter out anyone who can't get a top secret clearance.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: The labor pool just dries up, dries up fast. That
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: makes sense. You don't want just anyone seeing the wiring
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: diagrams for the missile defense systems, which brings me to
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the next point. The reports mentioned something called wiring separation.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: This was the biggest technical hurdle and it's arguably the
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: main reason for all these delays.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: What is it so?
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Commercial planes have specific standards for how you bundle wire's power,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: data comms lines. They generally run together in these efficient
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: bundles to save weight in space.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Sure, that makes sense for you know, United.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Or delta, but military standards, especially for nuclear command and control,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: are far far stricter.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You can't have any interference.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Zero interference. You cannot have a power surge in a
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: cabin light affect a classified communication line. You need redundancy,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: you need physical separation.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So they couldn't just use the wiring that was already
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in the planes, yeah, the transaeral wiring.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: No, they basically had to gut the aircraft. Imagine buying
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: a fully finished luxury house and then realizing the electrical
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: code requires you to rip out every single wall, pull
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: out every wire, and run entirely new conduits in places
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that were never designed for them.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: That sounds like an absolute nightmare. It was.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: They completely underestimated the complexity of re engineering the internal
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: pathways of an existing aircraft versus building it that way
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: from scratch.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: And then there were structural issues too. I read about
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: something called superpanels.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, superpanels, it's an engineering term for these massive structural
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: sections of the fuselage. Remember a commercial seven hundred and
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: forty seven loads passengers from a jet bridge. The president
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: needs internal airstairs, those stairs that fold out from the
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: belly of the plane, right.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: So he doesn't have to rely on airport.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Equipment, and they need specialized baggage loaders. So you are
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: cutting new, large holes in the side of the plane.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: You're cutting holes in a pressurized tube that flies at
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: six hundred.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Miles per hour precisely, and to do that safely, you
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: can't just cut a hole. You have to replace entire
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: sections of the skin with these reinforced super.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Panels and manufacturing those for a plane that was already
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: built and fitting them.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: It requires immense engineering precision, and it all costs.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Money, which brings me to a number I saw in
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the reports that made my jaw drop. Boeing is losing
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: money on this deal, a.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: Lot of money, over two billion dollars.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: How does a defense contractor lose two billion dollars on
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: a government contract. I thought the story was always the
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: other way around.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: This is the fixed price contract trap. Back when the
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: deal was negotiated in twenty eighteen, there was that huge
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: push to control costs, right.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: The Trump administration was very vocal.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So Boeing, maybe feeling the pressure or maybe just being
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: over confident, they agreed to a firm, fixed price contract.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: They quoted a number, and they shook hands on it.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Essentially the deal was about three point nine billion dollars initially.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: The government is now paying about four point three billion,
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: but that's the ceiling if it ends up costing six
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: billion to build. Boeing needs the difference, Owing needs the difference.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And because of the wiring, the pandemic, the supply chain
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: for the superpanels, the manpower struggles, the cost just ballooned.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Boeing is on the hook for every single penny of
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: that overrun. Wow, it is extremely rare to see a
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: defense contractor take a bath like that. It just underscores
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: how unbelievably complex this conversion turned out to be.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: So let's recap where we are. We have the old
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: VC twenty five a's basically falling apart. We have the
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: new VC twenty five b's delayed until twenty twenty eight,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and they're costing Boeing a fortune. This brings us to
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: section three, and this is where the story takes a
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: turn that feels like it's ripped from a political thriller.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: The interim solution.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: The Katari gift exactly.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: So, President Trump, now in his second term here in
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, was understandably frustrated by all these delays.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: He wants his new plane, and then a solution just
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: sort of appears from the Middle East.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating development. The Qatari government, specifically the Amir Flight,
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: which serves the royal family. They had a Boeing seven
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: forty seven Tosh eight, a vip jet barely used I read,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: practically brand new, and they offered it to the United
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: States as a gift.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: A gift free of charge, as the President put it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: But as we all know, in defense procurement, nothing is
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: ever truly free.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: I would hope not.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: While the airframe itself didn't cost the taxpayer anything up front,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: you can't just put a president on a foreign government's
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: jet without you know.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Checking it out first. The security implications alone, I mean bugs,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: tracking devices, You have to assume the worst exactly.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: It requires a massive retrofit. The Air Force has to
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: sweep it, install secure communications, everything up to US standards.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: The cost for this free plane's retrofit is estimated at
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: roughly four hundred million dollars.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Four hundred million dollars that is not pocket change. Where
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: did that money come from? The Pentagon budget is usually
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: allocated years in advance.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: This is the detail that really jumped out at me.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: In the congressional testimony, the Air Force Secretary Troy mink
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: He admitted they had to reprogram.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Funds, meaning they took it from another program.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: They moved money from the Sentinel ICBM program to fund
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: this retrofit.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Wait, wait, wait, let me stop you there. The Sentinel
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: program as in the replacement for our ground based nuclear missiles,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the minute Man replacement.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: That is the one the strategic nuclear deterrent.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: So they took money from our nuclear missile upgrade program
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to pay for a paint job and new radios on
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a vip jet.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Well it's a bit more than a paint job, but yes,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: and the Sentinel program is already facing its own cost
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: overruns and delays, which just makes this even more controversial.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: That seems incredibly risky.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: It has sparked a lot of fierce debate about priorities.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Critics are saying it's prioritizing comfort over actual military capability.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Supporters argue the president needs reliable transport to command those weapons,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: so it's all part of the deterrent.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I can see both sides, But wow, that's a bold
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: accounting move. So what's the plan for this Katari jet
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: is it the new Air Force one.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: It's being framed as an interim solution. It likely won't
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: have the full suite of capabilities of the VC twenty
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: five B, so.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: No EMP hardening, probably not the full medical suite.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Probably not. It's a stop gap. The idea is to
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: take pressure off the aging VC twenty five as, give
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: them a break so they don't have to fly every
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: single mission. It's a luxury overflow valve, so.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: It's a luxury jet being turned into a command center,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: whereas the VC twenty five B is a command center
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: built inside a jet.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect way to put it.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, so we have the Russian order planes being rebuilt,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: we have the Katari Gift being retrofitted with nuclear missile money,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and then there's more. Just when I thought this story
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: couldn't get any more complicated, I saw a report from
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: late twenty twenty five or buying two more seven four
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: five as to ADS three four from Laflanza.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is the scavenging strategy, and this really drives
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: home how desperate the situation is.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Desperate, Why desperate?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Think about it? Boeing ended production of the seven, forty
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: seven and twenty twenty three, the final one rolled off
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: the line.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: The line is closed.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: The line is closed, the tooling is being packed away.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: There are no more new seven forts Avens coming ever.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Right. The Queen of this Guy's is officially.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Retired, but the Air Force committed to the seven forty
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: seven APSE platform for emission the VC twenty five B
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: program that's supposed to last until the twenty fifties.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see the problem. Now.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: If you need a spare wing panel or a specific
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: landing gear strut or a cockpit display in ten or
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: fifteen years, you might not be able to get it
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: from Boeing. They are making them, and the supply chain
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: for the seven four to seven DASH eight isn't as
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: robust as say a seven thirty seven, where there are
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: thousands of them.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: Flying, So they're buying whole airplanes just to strip them
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: for parts.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Essentially, the Air Force bought two used seven four to
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: seven DASH from Luftanza. These planes are not for the
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: President to fly in.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: They're just for spares and training.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: They'll likely be parked in a hangar, and when the
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: VC to twenty five B needs a part that doesn't
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: exist anymore, mechanics will walk over to the Luftanza hangar,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: pull it off that plane and install it on Air
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Force one.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: That is just incredible. They are cannibalizing commercial jets to
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: keep the Flying White House viable before it even enters service.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: It's a logistical hedge. It's smart in a way, but
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: it's also a sign of how limited their options have become.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: It's like buying a donor car for your vintage restoration project,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: except the project is a four billion dollar command center.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And if you enjoy this kind of analysis, just a
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: quick reminder to please rate the show five stars. It
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: really helps us keep digging into stories like this. It does. Okay,
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: let's shift gears to something. Everyone has an opinion on
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the look. The paint job.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes, the Battle of the Blue.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: This was a huge controversy for a while.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: And it's not just paint. It's branding. It's the visual
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: identity of the United States.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: We all know the classic look, the Robin's egg blue,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: the white, that beautiful gold stripe. It's iconic.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Designed by Raymond Lowe and Jacqueline Kennedy back in the sixties.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: It's timeless. It projects a sort of calm, aristocratic power.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But as we know, President Trump wanted to change. He
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: proposed a red, white and blue livery. He thought the
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: classic blue was too baby blue.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: He wanted something that looked stronger.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: But then the Biden deministration before twenty twenty five, they
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: finalized a return to the classic look. But the reports
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I read say it isn't exactly the same.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: No, it's not. And this is where the physics of
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: aviation crashes the party. What do you mean the Trump
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: proposal with the darker blue underbelly and the red stripe,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: it ran into a technical wall thermal issues.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Heat the color of the paint makes it too hot exactly.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: The Air Force conducted a rigorous thermal study and they
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: found that the darker paint scheme would absorb significantly more
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: heat from the sun when the plane was parked on
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: the tarmac, like.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: At a summit in Saudi Arabia or even just sitting
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: at Andrews in July precisely.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And that matters because of the delicate electronic components inside.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: It's not just about the air conditioning.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: No, the heat absorption would have raised the internal temperature
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: of the airframe skin enough that they would have had
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: to requalify, basically, retest and certify a whole bunch of
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: commercial components to ensure they wouldn't fail.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So it wasn't just aesthetics it was a real engineering problem.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: A darker paint job would have required adding more cooling
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: systems or replacing parts.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Which would have added weight, cost, and you guessed it,
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: more delays.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So physics basically dictated the color.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Palette to a huge extent. So the final decision was
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: a return to the classic scheme, but with tweaks. The
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: bleam is a bit deeper, a bit more modern, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: there's one major visual difference that aviation geeks will notice
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: immediately with that no polished metal belly.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Oh that's right. The current Air Force one has that
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: shiny mirror like aluminum. It looks incredible.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: It does. It's retro and beautiful. But the VC twenty
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: five B is a seven four seven dash eight. It
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: uses modern skin alloys composed aluminum mixes that you can't
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: polish like that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: You can get them mirror finish.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: The metal grain is different. It has to be painted
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: to protect it from corrosion, so the belly will be
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: a painted gray or silver, not that raw polished metal.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: It's a subtle change, but it really does mark the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: end of that vintage esthetic.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: It's the end of an era in more ways than one.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go beyond infographics here. We've talked about the delays,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the paint that costs. But what makes this plane actually special?
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Why can't the president just fly on a standard airliner?
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: It comes down to survivability and command. This isn't just
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: a transport. It's a flying bunker. If the world ends,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: this plane is designed to keep flying. Let's talk self defense.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: The source material highlights the DIARCM.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: System DARECM directional infrared countermeasures.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Specifically the ANNAQ twenty four Nemesis system. Now, in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: old days, you drop flares to distract a heat seeping missile.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: It's a decoy strategy.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Right, We've all seen that in the movies.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: Dire CM is different. It's active.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: It uses laser lasers. Okay, now we're talking.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: It has sensors that can detect the exhaust plume of
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: an incoming missile, like a shoulder fired missile near an airport.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: The system instantly tracks, it, swivels a turret and fires
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: a beam of high intensity infrared laser energy directly into
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: the missile seeker head.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So it's like shining a laser pointer directly into someone's eye.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it. It lines the missile, the missile loses
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: its lock on the plane's heat signature and just spins
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: out of control. It happens in a split second. The
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: pilot doesn't even have to push a button.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: That is unbelievably cool and also terrifying that it's necessary.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: And you have the EMP hardening.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: The electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear bomb right.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: An EMP can fry any unshielded electronics instantly. Your phone,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: your car, a normal plane, they all just stop working.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Here you go dark.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: The VC twenty five B is shielded to withstand that.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: The entire fuselage acts like a Faraday cage. All those
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: wires we talked about earlier shielded. Even if the entire
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: power grown on the ground is destroyed, the president's command
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: center keeps humming along.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And speaking of the command centers, there was a specific
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: contract modification mentioned in the reports, an extra of fifteen
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: point five million dollars just for communications upgrades.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Right a recent addition, the requirement for connectivity has evolved
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: even since this program started. The president needs to be
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: able to address the nation via video authorize a strike,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: coordinate a disaster response. No buffering allows, zero buffering exactly.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: The bandwidth and encryption requirements are just massive. This isn't
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: just Wi Fi. This is military grade, redundant global connectivity
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: that works over the polls, over the ocean, even through
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: jamming environments.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: So bringing this all together, it's January twenty twenty six.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: We have the aging VC twenty five a's keeping the
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: schedule basically running on fumes and salvaged parts. We have
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the Katari jet coming online as a lux interim solution
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: paid for by nuclear Missile funds. We have Luftanza planes
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: being bought for parts. And we have the actual future
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the VC twenty five bees slowly coming together in text
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: for twenty twenty eight delivery.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: It's a unique moment in history. It truly is a
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: patchwork fleet. Yeah, and it reflects the broader challenges of
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: modern aerospace. Costs or sky high, timelines are incredibly long,
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: and replacing an icon is just so so difficult.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: It really does feel like the end of the seven
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: forty seven era, doesn't it.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: It is. The seven forty seven is the Queen of
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: the skies. It changed global trowel and these VC twenty
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: five bees will likely be the very last seven forty
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: sevens to ever serve in such a high profile.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Role, So when they eventually retire in the twenty fifties,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: that will be at the end of the jumbo jet,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the end of an age from the sacred cow of FDR,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: which was a C fifty four prop plane to the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Frankin plane of twenty twenty six. What a journey, and.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: It really raises an important question for you, the listener,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: to think about in a world of hypersonic missiles and
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: digital warfrill, is a massive four engine jumbo jet still
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: the right symbol of power or is it a relic
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: We're just trying desperately to keep alive because we can't
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: let go of the image.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: That is something to think about. Is this symble worth
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: four billion dollars and this logistical nightmare? We are going
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: to leave it there for today. Thank you for going
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: beyond infographics with us.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this analysis, please rate us five stars.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: It makes a huge difference. We'll catch you on the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: next one.