“The security implications of accepting a private plane from a foreign nation as #AirForceOne & the resulting ethical concerns a gift of that sizes creates were already significant.”But it was more worrisome, Shaheen said, that “this administration is diverting funds from the nuclear modernization budget to finance costly renovations to this plane.”
In doing so, she said, “we’re weakening our credibility to fund a vanity project for President #Trump.”

Only at the #Pentagon could someone reprogram $934 million & expect no one to notice. The coffers were refilled with the passage of the budget reconciliation bill several weeks ago, #budget officials say.

“The more we learn about this deal, the more disturbing it becomes,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, who serves on the #ArmedServices Cmte.

When asked last week, the #AirForce said it simply could not discuss the cost — or anything else about the plane — because it’s classified.

(For collectors of such bureaucratic evasions, yes, the Air Force is willing to discuss the cost of building a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles, but not the cost of renovating #Trump’s aircraft.)

“We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,” he said.

If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers & #AirForce experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of #Congress express concern that #Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane.

In testimony before #Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the #AirForce secretary, said that he thought the cost of the #AirForceOne renovations would be *manageable*. “I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,” he said. “But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we’d have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,” before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. “So it wouldn’t be anywhere near that.”

But the #Pentagon doesn’t want to part with a third of the #nuclear “triad,” & the silos & their command posts are big employers in the rural West.

They serve another function in the second #Trump admin. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed.

The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 #Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities & communications built to withstand both #nuclear & #cyber attack. By the time #Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81%, to $140 billion & climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America’s nuclear deterrent.

It was those delays that led #Trump to look for a *gift*.

#AirForce officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of #Qatar’s #AirForceOne with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the #Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington’s long-running effort to rebuild America’s aging, leaky, ground-launched #nuclear missile system.

Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Trump’s government dealings & business ties with #Qatar, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But #Trump said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.

“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump said in May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person & say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

…#Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the #Qatar gift — improved with the latest communications & in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential *library* after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.

[So basically Americans are footing the bill for Trump’s“free” private plane]

But even by Washington standards, where “black budgets” are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites & lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of #Trump’s pet project are inventive.

Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the #Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.