President Trump was so frustrated with the Boeing Company’s delays in producing new versions of Air Force One that he accepted a new Boeing 747 from the Qataris to serve as that aircraft.
Boeing failed to perform on a 2018 contract that was supposed to produce two new Air Force Ones by 2024. Its failure to do so has reportedly cost the company about $2.5 billion in losses. Boeing blames subcontractors for the delays but it was and is their responsibility to deliver the aircraft on time. They have failed.
[T]he president and Congress aren’t doing any of the things needed to rebuild our Air Force. Maybe the Air Force One mess will wake them up.
The Qataris — as proven by their constant support of the Hamas terrorist group — aren’t our friends. This means that a lot of the equipment on the aircraft they give the U.S. — not to Trump because that would have violated the Constitution’s “emoluments” clause — will have to be replaced.
The fact is that every computer — including those that run the navigation systems and pretty much everything else on the aircraft — will have to be replaced because the risk is too high that some virus could have been implanted to cause a malfunction at a critical time. The same goes for all the communication equipment.
And let’s not forget that there are defensive systems built into every Air Force One. They range from autonomous defenses against rocket attacks, which can blind the sensors on rockets with laser fire, to the chaff and flares you see in every Top Gun movie. These systems may or may not be up to U.S. standards but whatever they are, the U.S. Air Force is duty-bound to substitute the ones they have confidence in.
That means that the donated Qatari aircraft won’t be ready for at least a year. Especially if the Air Force relies on Boeing to do the work. (Reportedly, L3Harris is to do the work, not Boeing.)
So what has happened? Have all of our aeronautical engineers suddenly lost their skills? Have the companies that employ them forgotten how to build a new aircraft?
The P-51, one of the most effective fighters of World War Two, went from contract signing to first flight in less than 150 days. Today, as represented by the terribly unreliable F-35, it takes at least twenty years to build a new fighter.
The Air Force admitted in 2023 that the F-35 was unreliable, with only 51 percent mission availability. That means if you want 25 aircraft to fly a mission, a commander needs to order 50 to fly it because the rest will be in the repair shop, unable to fly. And we’re well on the way to buying 2,400 of them. Our allies are also buying F-35s at a considerable rate.
Boeing Is Not the Only Problem
So what the hell is the problem? The diagnosis reveals three facts.
First, there is too little competition in the aerospace industry. Only two companies — Boeing and Lockheed — are capable of building aircraft. Where once there were McDonnell Douglas, Grumman to compete with them — North American and others having been bought or bankrupted since World War Two — now only two American companies remain. Yes, there are several small aircraft manufacturers but they can’t deal with large and complex aircraft like Air Force One and fighters.
When Boeing won the competition for the contract to build a new “Next Generation Air Defense” aircraft — our sixth-generation fighter — the Pentagon must have groaned in frustration. But Lockheed, as the F-35 proves, is little or no better. And, with regard to Air Force One, Lockheed gave up on large passenger aircraft when it lost hundreds of millions on the L-1011 back in the 1970s.
The second problem is our over-regulated and over-managed acquisition system. It has so many reviews, audits, and other management tools built into it that it compels delay. One answer to this problem is to make time a limitation. Most new systems are developed under “cost-plus” contracts in which the contractor is paid its costs and rewards are built into the contract for a variety of variables. If the contractors were given contracts that were cost-plus but had price penalties for delays or lack of aircraft performance, the contractors would have to respond.
The third problem is the culture of our aerospace companies and government acquisition workforce. The companies are complacent in their time-consuming delays as is the overwhelmingly large acquisition workforce. If DOGE wants a fat, easy target the acquisition workforce needs to be severely reduced.
As I’ve written elsewhere, our Air Force is the only indispensable force. No mission — no war small or large — can be fought without participation of one or more elements of the Air Force. Nor can we deliver aid in hurricane or earthquake disasters without the Air Force. No other part of our armed services can say the same.
How to Fix It
So where do we go from here? It’s not at all clear because no one is even attempting to solve these enormous problems.
We have to incent the contractors to do their work in time and penalize them for delays and lack of aircraft performance. Setting reasonable timelines for production of new aircraft is one of the keys.
We have to rationalize the acquisition workforce and the system it works under. Both have grown unmanageable. The Federal Acquisition Regulation should be scrapped and a new system which doesn’t impose so many useless reviews and studies should be imposed.
And we have to end the congressional practice of “pass through” budgeting which lets Congress pretend to adequately fund the Air Force but passes through the Air Force billions of its budget to other Defense agencies.
There is a lot to do but the president and Congress aren’t doing any of the things needed to rebuild our Air Force. Maybe the Air Force One mess will wake them up.
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