How the New, Qatar-Gifted Air Force One Is Different From the Old Ones

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On the Fourth of July this year, President Trump is planning some kind of flight formation over Washington, D.C. led by Air Force One, which I guess might pass for excitement if you live in Washington, D.C. But this being the big 250th birthday bash for America, this will be the new Air Force One, which was just unveiled on Friday.

In some of his oft-quoted remarks about this plane, Trump has said, “This is considered the world’s most luxurious plane.” And he’s claimed that part of the rationale for speeding this long-stalled project along was that other countries’ heads of state “have a plane that’s much newer and much better.”

So how exactly is this plane “better”? Alternatively, is this plane, in fact, worser?

This is going to be an article about a plane, its features, and its attributes. But this plane—the one supposedly gifted to the U.S. military from the nation of Qatar—happens to be a touchy topic, so at the start let me try to dispense with the biggest difference between this one and the old one, the controversy:

This plane is controversial, but the issue may be (relatively) short-lived

Experts have laid out the case many times that the means by which this plane changed hands from Qatar to the U.S. was unconstitutional because it allegedly violates the emoluments clause. Experts also seem to expect that, either way, there will never be an attempt to litigate this or punish Trump. The counterargument the president has offered is essentially that the Pentagon can accept a gifted plane from Qatar without dirtying the president’s hands. And It appears from CNN’s reporting that the plane was less an unsolicited gift, and more like Trump essentially saying, “Could I pretty please have your plane as a free gift?” Whether or not you find all of this okay probably depends on whether or not you agree with this president generally.

But whatever your feelings are about his methods, this is happening in large part because of the mess surrounding Boeing’s Air Force One upgrade program—the switchover from the old VC-25A to the theoretically new VC-25B. The basic contours of the VC-25B program became public in Barack Obama’s first term, and even back then, aviation bloggers mocked up what the new Air Force One should look like.

Those mockups were basically right. The VC-25B would be, as predicted, the military-ready version of the Boeing 747-8 (the 747-8i, to be precise), but Boeing has been astonishingly slow in modifying and delivering 747-8is. These delays, as well as cost bloat, had been frustrating Trump since the early days of his first term. In 2018, he renegotiated the nation’s Air Force One deal with Boeing, with delivery scheduled for 2024, and the price quoted at $3.9 billion. At the start of Trump 2.0, there was still no new Air Force One. Meanwhile Qatar happened to be in possession of a 747-8i modified for transporting dignitaries, and the rest is history.

In its own statement about this Air Force One “bridge program” the Air Force claims the current, planes require such prolonged maintenance that an “interim capability became an absolute imperative,” and that it it expects delivery of Boeing’s VC-25Bs in 2028. In other words, the president plans to use this modified, Qatar-gifted plane as Air Force One for about two years.

The new Air Force One can’t refuel in midair

As explained in a lengthy post by Luke Diaz of the aviation blog Simple Flying, the soon-to-be-retired Air Force One planes have the capability to refuel in midair. When you assume the U.S. President is the person holding the world together in the event of some kind of apocalyptic scenario, it’s comforting to be able to keep this person in the sky indefinitely so as not to expose them to ground-level attacks or hazards.

In practice, Diaz says, midair refueling is a pain, and makes pilots sick to their stomachs. The only time a president was even rumored to have been on Air Force One when it refueled in midair was on an exceptionally long and secretive 2003 trip to Iraq by George W. Bush.

But this isn’t a unique limitation of the Qatar-gifted plane. The decision to eschew midair refueling came all the way back in 2017, and will apply to the other Air Force One planes when they’re delivered.

The new, Qatar-gifted Air Force One may have downgraded defensive capabilities

The planes designated as Air Force One have classified defense systems, but the basics are publicly known—particularly the defensive tools bolted right onto the outside of the plane. You can’t photograph, say, the plane’s shielding from electromagnetic pulses caused by nuclear detonations, but anyone with knowledge of the relevant hardware can surmise that the old Air Force One planes have jammers for incoming missiles, and countermeasures for disrupting missile guidance.

The defense blog the War Zone has been keeping an eye on what can be discerned about the new Air Force One’s defenses, but they haven’t seen much. “At the very least, this aircraft will have to feature some kind of DIRCM setup to repel shoulder-fired heat-seeking missiles, and modular units are available that can be attached in a canoe to the bottom of the aircraft,” they wrote in April. Then last month after this new plane was photographed taking test flights, they wrote, “We still don’t see any evidence of the aircraft being modified with defensive countermeasures.”

Simple Flying also seems confident that the new plane isn’t shielded against electromagnetic pulses, and that it lacks certain missile countermeasures.

The new Air Force One still has the same luxurious interior as when it was a Qatari possession

When the plane initially changed hands, aviation bloggers gawked at old photos of what it (presumably) looked like inside, and seemingly grieved that it would all have to be stripped and made more austere. AeroTime wrote that “One of the biggest jobs here will be the installation of a hardened, multi-layered communications system, which is not exactly plug-and-play,” adding that, “Such installations require shielded cabling to be routed through the fuselage, dedicated server racks, data centers, and encryption modules, as well as custom antenna arrays on the fuselage and tail.”

It’s not clear how much of that actually happened. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that renovations focused on “top-secret communications gear that would enable the commander in chief to run the country from the skies.” However, the actual changes involved in making that happen were reportedly minimal. Changes that will be visible include translating the exit signs from Arabic to English, and switching out “contemporary artwork.” The Qatari royal family’s leather chairs and couches (presumably the ones visible in this photo, which also features “contemporary artwork”) reportedly stayed.

Air Force General Dale White told the Journal, “By and large, the airplane that we’re getting is in the same condition from an interior perspective.”