The two VC-25A aircraft currently serving as Air Force One were delivered in 1990. They have carried nine presidents. They have flown to war zones, peace summits, and at least one state funeral where the weather was genuinely terrible. By the time their replacements enter service, the originals will be approaching fifty years old.
In commercial aviation, a fifty-year-old airframe would be in a museum. For the most secure aircraft on earth, it is simply the timeline, because the replacement program has been an uninterrupted lesson in how government procurement works when you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist yet.
The Deal That Made Sense at the Time
In 2018, the Air Force awarded Boeing a contract worth approximately $3.9 billion to build two new presidential aircraft — the VC-25B, based on the 747-8 airframe. The aircraft were pre-existing: two 747-8s originally built for a Russian airline that went bankrupt before taking delivery. Starting with finished airframes seemed efficient. Economical, even.
It has not been economical.
Boeing’s defense division has encountered, to use the technical term, difficulties. Electrical systems. Interior outfitting. The specialized communications and defensive systems that have to be retrofitted into an aircraft not originally designed to carry the nuclear launch codes. Multiple delivery deadlines came and went. The cost increased. New deadlines arrived and began aging visibly.
The aircraft are not expected to enter service until the late 2020s at the earliest, which means the VC-25As — now old enough to draw Social Security in some interpretations — will keep flying in the interim. They receive extraordinary maintenance to remain airworthy. The maintenance budget is not publicly available, which is itself a form of information.
What the New Plane Is Supposed to Do
The VC-25B is based on a larger airframe, which means more interior space, which means the flying White House will have slightly more room to be a flying White House. The communications suite will be substantially upgraded — the current architecture was designed before modern cyber threats existed, back when “hacking Air Force One” was a plot element in a Tom Clancy novel rather than something a nation-state might actually attempt.
The defensive countermeasures package is classified, which is a sentence we have to write while knowing it conveys basically no information. What can be said: the threat environment has changed considerably since 1990, and any competent designer would account for adversaries who have spent the intervening decades developing new and interesting ways to make things go wrong.
The Livery Debate Nobody Asked For
There is an actual ongoing debate about what the new Air Force One should look like. The current iconic blue-and-white livery was designed in the 1960s by Raymond Loewy — the same man who designed the Lucky Strike logo and the Studebaker Avanti — and it has been the face of American presidential power for sixty years.
At various points, proposals emerged to change it. Different shades of blue were floated. Dark schemes were considered. Someone in the design process apparently thought about this seriously, which says something about the depth of detail involved in building a flying command post.
The current plan appears to favor a version of the classic look. Raymond Loewy, wherever he is, presumably has opinions about the execution.
So When Does the President Get a New Plane?
The honest answer is that nobody knows for certain, which is an unusual thing to say about a program that has received billions of dollars and years of national attention. Government procurement timelines, as a general rule, slip further rather than recover. The VC-25As, for their part, keep flying.
Somewhere in a Boeing facility in San Antonio, two aircraft are slowly becoming the most capable flying command posts ever built. They will carry presidents for the next half-century. When the first one finally enters service — whenever that turns out to be — someone, somewhere, will step aboard and say the three words that started this whole thing.
Some traditions survive every budget overrun.
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