Trump wants a luxury aircraft gifted by Qatar’s royal family to be his new Air Force One. Beyond the legal and ethical questions, there are a host of security concerns.
Air Force One is a call sign for any US Air Force aircraft the president flies on, but it most commonly refers to the well-known light blue and white plane used for presidential transport. The aircraft is custom-built to operate as a secure, self-sufficient flying command center if need be. Using a plane gifted by a foreign country to fill this role would demand significant work to deliver the necessary capabilities and mitigate potential security risks.
Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior CIA operations officer who served multiple Middle East tours, said that there are standards that the US Air Force, Department of Defense, and Secret Service are required to uphold to move the president securely.
“It’s going to cost an exorbitant amount of money to get that up to standard with a plane gifted by a foreign government,” he told Business Insider.
Trump said on Sunday evening in a Truth Social post that the Defense Department will receive a 747 “free of charge” to temporarily replace his aging Air Force One. He said the US would take possession of it in what he described as “a very public and transparent transaction.”
The specially configured version of Boeing’s 747-200B built to transport the president of the United States is a highly recognizable aircraft with its iconic livery that has become synonymous with the Air Force One call sign. It is fitted with secure communications equipment and can refuel mid-flight.
AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
The plane is also equipped with electronic warfare capabilities and missile countermeasures.
The Air Force has operated two of these militarized 747s, which the service designates as VC-25A, for 35 years. The tail numbers are 28000 and 29000. A new aircraft, the VC-25B, is set to replace these planes and has been in development since 2015. However, the program has faced a number of issues that have forced its start date to be pushed back from 2024 to 2027 at the soonest.
On Monday, Trump told reporters he was “very disappointed that it has taken Boeing so long to build a new Air Force One.”
ABC News, which first reported Sunday on the gift, said that Trump would use the Qatari-donated 747 (which has an estimated price tag of $400 million) as the new Air Force One until just before he leaves office in 2029.
Asked Monday whether Qatar had asked for anything in exchange for the luxury 747, Trump said the US has provided the Gulf country with lots of security over the years. He described the gift as “a great gesture” and said he “would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer.”
“I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane,” he said.
The president said that the US has kept Qatar — and its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — secure and will continue to do so. “If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now. And I think this was just a gesture of good faith,” he added. The US military operates out of several key bases in these three countries.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
In response to further questions at the press conference, Trump said that he does not plan to use the 747 after he leaves office and that the plane would go directly to his presidential library foundation.
Beyond raising questions about the legality of accepting an expensive gift from another country, the Qatar 747 news quickly triggered criticism from some US lawmakers and stoked concerns about the potential security concerns of receiving such an important asset from a foreign state.
Connecticut’s Rep. Joe Courtney, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Air Force One, said that “retrofitting a plane from Qatar would create huge costs & a security nightmare that would impede the work underway to deliver the actual AF1 by 2027.”
Boeing, the US aerospace giant, reportedly built the 747 as a private jet for Qatar’s royal family, which acquired the aircraft in 2012. It is significantly larger than the 757-200 “Trump Force One” that the president and his organization have been using as a personal plane.
Once the Qatari 747 is eventually received by the Air Force, it will be modified and essentially militarized by the Pentagon to meet the requirements of transporting a president — a high-stakes job that is unlikely to be cheap.
“The idea of getting it from a foreign government, you literally would have to tear it apart piece by piece,” said Polymeropoulos, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He said acquiring this 747 isn’t cost-effective because it will be expensive for the government and military to retrofit the aircraft to bring the plane up to the necessary standards.
“I suppose you can, but basically, you’re building a whole new plane,” he said.
Nathan Howard/REUTERS
BI asked the White House about addressing the security concerns and whether these surfaced during discussions of the aircraft’s transfer. The administration pointed to Trump’s remarks from the press conference earlier on Monday.
Qatar has stressed that a decision to transfer the aircraft is not final. A Pentagon spokesperson referred BI to the White House for questions about Air Force One procurement.
Joseph LaSorsa, a former Secret Service agent who protected several presidents during his 20-year-long career, identified multiple potential concerns with acquiring the 747.
LaSorsa, president and CEO of J.A. LaSorsa & Associates, told BI that these possible risks include sabotage to the 747’s mechanical or operational features, tracking of the aircraft, and any surveillance through audio or video recording devices. He stressed that the American government will thoroughly examine the entire plane in a process that could take up to a year or longer.
“They’re going to do their due diligence, if they do, in fact, use it,” he said, but that’s time and money.
