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US Air Force to spend $1.5 billion retro-fitting gifted Qatari plane for Trump use.
(www.abc.net.au)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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I wonder how many better planes could be built for that price.
You are missing the point. They are using these defence contracts to funnel themselves money.
Well considering the current contract for the two 747s Boeing is currently converting for the government is a fixed cost contract that's already paid for technically infinite I guess?
The Air Force awarded Boeing a $3.9 billion contract in 2018 for two new Air Force One planes, updated VC-25B models based on the newer 747-8I. Delivery originally was slated for 2024 but currently they are looking at 2027.
I guess not quite 1, but at least it isn't decades old. Though, who knows, government projects like this have a habit of ballooning in cost.
That was a fixed price contract for the new planes. Boeing will have to eat any cost overruns. Their CEO has Already been complaining about it.
The days of cost plus contracting with companies like Boeing are essentially gone luckily. Now that the practice is decently well known by the public, it can't just be hidden as a cost of private sector business anymore like they used to claim.
A decently large reason for that is SpaceX's dramatically cheaper space launch costs, even with iterative design principles resulting in a lot of "waste" designs and products being destroyed or never used. Their contracts were fixed prices through NASA commercial programs so they never received contracts cost plus the way companies like Boeing did, so they actually optimized to minimize their costs. They proved in the real world that cost plus wasn't necessary for those contracts at all, and Boeing has been one of the worst hit by that.
I meant the updating of the Qatari plane could balloon to equal the cost of one of the newer planes.
Oh possibly. Not sure the government has even signed those contracts yet at this point.
The one surprising thing is that the Qatari jet is actually a 747-8 model like the two new contracted planes. So I suppose it could technically be outfitted as a new Air Force One, then only one of the new airframes finished and outfitted, and then gut this to finish the second new airframe, leaving a gutted 747-8 for Trump.
But we know that's not what will happen.