sexta-feira, 23 de maio de 2025

U.S. Formally Accepts Luxury Jet From Qatar for Trump

 



U.S. Formally Accepts Luxury Jet From Qatar for Trump

 

The Air Force has been asked to figure out a way to upgrade it so it can be put into use as a new Air Force One for the president.

 

Eric Lipton Eric Schmitt

By Eric Lipton and Eric Schmitt

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/us/politics/qatar-plane-trump-air-force-one.html?searchResultPosition=4

May 21, 2025

 

The United States has accepted a 747 jetliner as a gift from the government of Qatar, and the Air Force has been asked to figure out a way to rapidly upgrade it so it can be put into use as a new Air Force One for President Trump, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

 

“The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement. “The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

 

The plane, which industry executives estimated is worth about $200 million, will require extensive work before it can be considered secure enough to carry Mr. Trump, Pentagon officials have acknowledged in recent days.

 

“Any civilian aircraft will take significant modifications to do so,” Troy Meink, the Air Force secretary, said on Tuesday during Senate testimony. “Based on the secretary’s direction, we are postured and we’re off looking at that right now, what it’s going to take for that particular aircraft.”

 

Mr. Trump also confirmed the gift on Wednesday.

 

“They’re giving the United States Air Force a jet, and it’s a great thing,” he said at the White House.

 

The plan has drawn concern from members of Congress, who worry that Mr. Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane, such as missile defense systems or even systems to protect the plane from the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear blast.

 

“If President Trump insists on converting this plane to a hardened Air Force One before 2029, I worry about the pressures you may be under to cut corners on operational security,” Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, said as Mr. Meink was testifying.

 

The Pentagon has not given an estimate of when the work on the Qatari plane might be done, even though Mr. Trump and the White House have made clear the president wants it soon, perhaps even by the end of the year.

 

“We will make sure that we do what’s necessary to ensure security of the aircraft,” Mr. Meink said at the Senate hearing. “I will be quite clear and discuss that with the secretary up to the president if necessary if we feel there’s any threats that we are unable to address.”

 

The gift also has drawn questions from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, who worry that Qatar may be trying to improperly influence Mr. Trump, or that the plane itself might have listening devices.

 

Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, publicly said on Monday for the first time that his government had approved turning over the plane as a gift, rejecting the idea of it being an attempt to influence the president.

 

Sheikh Mohammed said he did not know why people thought of the gift as a bribe or “something that Qatar wants to buy and influence with this administration. I don’t see any, honestly, a valid reason for that.”

 

He added: “We are a country that would like to have strong partnership and strong friendship, and anything that we provide to any country, it’s provided out of respect for this partnership and it’s a two-way relationship. It’s mutually beneficial for Qatar and for the United States.”

 

The new plane will be the third being retrofitted for use as Air Force One, replacing two planes that have been in use for 35 years and have had maintenance problems.

 

But maintaining the staff and equipment for three planes is extraordinarily expensive, an estimated $135 million a year for each plane, according to the Pentagon. And it could cost $1 billion or more to retrofit the Qatari plane to get it ready for use as Air Force One, a process that former Air Force officials said could take longer than finishing the job Boeing is already doing to deliver the replacements for the current two planes.

 

The first of the Boeing planes is scheduled to be delivered in 2027, Air Force officials recently said.

 

It remains unclear where the money will come from to retrofit the Qatari plane or to maintain and operate it, once it is completed. Congress typically reviews and approves spending on any new major Pentagon programs. But Mr. Trump has already shown a willingness to spend federal dollars as his administration wants, often without consulting Congress.

 

The Senate majority leader, John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said this month that Congress would be asking questions about any possible use of the Qatari plane as Air Force One.

 

“If and when it’s no longer a hypothetical, I can assure you there will be plenty of scrutiny of whatever that arrangement might look like,” Mr. Thune said.

 

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, tried and failed on Wednesday to pass a bill in the Senate that would ban the use of a foreign jet as Air Force One. “This is about ensuring our national security, and about not wasting taxpayer dollars on an utterly senseless deal,” Mr. Schumer said, calling the deal “the largest foreign bribe in modern history.”

 

The measure, which stood no chance of passing by unanimous consent in a chamber controlled by Republicans, marked a clear rebuke of the Defense Department’s move to accept the plane from the Qatari government. Senator Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, blocked the bill.

 

The Qatari plane had its first flight in 2012, and then it was renovated with a luxury interior for members of the royal family in Qatar. But the government there has been trying to sell the plane for about five years.

 

One airline broker told The New York Times that he had a hard time finding a buyer, as 747 jets, which are no longer being manufactured, are expensive to operate. Even heads of state are increasingly using two-engine jet planes, unlike the 747, which has four engines, the broker said.

 

Marc J. Foulkrod, the chief executive officer of Avjet Global Sales, which tried to help Qatar sell the plane, said the United States would be better off working with Boeing to accelerate its work on the $3.9 billion contract to deliver the two 747 jets it has already been working on for five years.

 

“I’ve done completions on big airplanes, and there’s always ways to accelerate the program,” Mr. Foulkrod said in an interview. “That’s a better dollar value than trying to take an airplane from somebody else.”

 

The Qatari plane, flight records show, has been in San Antonio since early last month at an airplane maintenance facility. Trump administration officials have said they are considering hiring L3Harris, a military contractor, to handle the retrofit, but no formal contract has been disclosed publicly, at least so far.

 

In a statement on Wednesday, the Air Force said it was preparing “to award a contract to modify a Boeing 747 aircraft for executive airlift. Details related to the contract are classified.”

 

Congress has not yet taken any formal vote to accept the plane as a gift from Qatar. The Constitution requires that Congress sign off on any large gift to the president. Mr. Trump has said the gift is to the U.S. government, not to him as president.

 

Mr. Trump’s comments about the plane on Wednesday came during a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.

 

“I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Mr. Ramaphosa told Mr. Trump.

 

Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.

 

Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.

 

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.

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