Author Topic: White House helicopter fleet: Yet another huge boondoggle  (Read 663 times)

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Offline richb

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White House helicopter fleet: Yet another huge boondoggle
« on: April 24, 2014, 05:55:30 PM »
The federal government wants to replace the current White House helicopter fleet.   There are currently 19, yes 19 copters in the White House fleet.   They are intended for use by the president, vice president and cabinet members.   

They intend on INCREASING the number to 21.   

They have wasted $3.2 billion on the last FAILED replacement project that produced not one new copter.   How do you fail at buying helicopters?   Well the federal government can fail at it.

http://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-helicopter-fleet

Some thoughts.

1.  Why does the White House need what are basically custom made copters?  Why can't a off the shelf copter do the job?   Yeah,  there are some security concerns,  but there is no need for custom made machines. 

2.   Why do we need 19 soon to be 21 copters?   Frankly cabinet members shouldn't have access,  and the VP access could be cut back.    I think 5-7 would be  more then enough. 

3.  How the blankey-blank do you spend 3.2 billion dollars and have absolutely nothing to show for it?   Why are people being paid for work they aren't doing?  Wish we could figure a way to make politicians personally responsible for stupid wasting of our tax dollars.   

4.  Frankly,  what is wrong with the current fleet?   The only change I would do it to reduce the size of the fleet to a more manageable size,  with a max of 7.   

Online benb61

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Re: White House helicopter fleet: Yet another huge boondoggle
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2014, 06:18:22 PM »
Some possible answers;

1.  These "custom" copters have some electrical components that are not on the standard production run of that model copter, such as command and control electronics, threat detection devices, executive components, etc.  Then those components need to be hardened against EMP and other electrical interference threats and even electrical harnesses for those components need to be designed.  Additional safety features to ensure the survival of the CiC in event of attack, etc.

2.  No idea on that, I agree that 5-9 would be more appropriate.  Whenever the Pres flies from the WH to Langley to AF1 they send 2 additional copters as decoys.  Then there are the machines that may be down for maintenance.  A smaller fleet is definitely cheaper.

3.  They spent 3.2 billion dollars to pay the 3-4 companies that were proposing vehicles (this is typical for military/government RFP's).  The proposal effort is very costly and no airframer would bid if they had to pay the cost of the proposal all on their own. Then there is the challenges to the procurement.  One manufacturer thinks that the bids were unfairly competed and that leads to investigations and possible rebids.  Some senator thinks that the manufacturer in his state was unfairly treated and pushes for an investigation of the bid process.  A lot of that money is bureaucracy run amok. Because of challenges to the bid process the gov decided to cancel all bids for another time hence no vehicles.

4.  The current fleet has been out of production for many years (maybe as much as 30 years) and spare parts are rather expensive, the vehicles are of older technology and need constant upkeep, while newer tech is more easily maintained (at least for a while).  Old copters don't look cool (can't have emperor obamy riding around in a crappy chopper now can we).
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Offline Libertas

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Re: White House helicopter fleet: Yet another huge boondoggle
« Reply #2 on: April 25, 2014, 06:44:27 AM »
Good rundown Ben, about all I can add to that fine list is some speculation...perhaps Obama needs to run more shell games to keep people safe...after all his best accomplishments as POTUS all have one thing in common...pissing people off.
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