An Explanation of the Insane Marine One Contract

WSJ provides a fine example of our tax dollars at work: the Navy says the current old-school Marine One is perfectly safe. But still, in the post-9/11 world, the President needs a nuke-proof chopper with all the communications capabilities of Air Force One. They've retrofitted the current models with some of it, but it reduces capacity from 16 passengers to 10. The solution for the President's 11 minute hops between the White House and Andrews AFB: a $6.1 billion untested nearly white sheet design that might be done in another 8 years.

If you're keeping score at home, with a planned fleet of 23 choppers, that's $270 million for each 14 passenger bird — about the same as the list price on a brand new 365 passenger 777-300ER — and more than the government paid in the 90s for each Air Force One.

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Quote:

Copter Contract Gives Lockheed Choppy Ride

Added Features Slow New Presidential Fleet; Planning for Birds

By JONATHAN KARP and SCOT J. PALTROW
July 24, 2007; Page A1

OWEGO, N.Y. -- The official presidential helicopter, Marine One, makes the journey from the White House lawn to nearby Andrews Air Force base in just 11 minutes. Does the president need state-of-the-art videoconferencing, broadband access and other high-tech gear to be at his disposal for such short hops?

That question is at the center of a fight that has boiled into view in recent months over the design and construction of a new fleet of Marine One helicopters. A Navy program to replace today's aging fleet of presidential choppers was accelerated after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with the White House arguing that extra communications, electronics and security gear, such as the latest antimissile defenses, are necessary to protect the president during an age of terrorism.

But adding all the bells and whistles has added cost and complication to the prestigious $6.1 billion contract that Lockheed Martin Corp. landed in 2005. Lockheed's bid beat out Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., the United Technologies Corp. unit that had made every Marine One since the early 1960s. Yet early delays in the helicopter program eventually gave Lockheed, the nation's biggest defense company, a black eye that cost it a much larger chopper contract.

As soon as Lockheed won the contract, it was besieged with government requests to add features that would turn the new helicopters into the hovering equivalent of Air Force One, the presidential jumbo jet. That means taking a plush executive aircraft and outfitting it with much more electronics and communications gear that offer features from telephone handsets at each seat to bolstered defenses against a nuclear blast. More...