Presidential helicopters: Wasting waste

by Mark Silva

Which is worse?

Spending $13 billion on a new fleet of 28 presidential helicopters?

Or spending $555 million for early termination of a contract on which the Pentagon already has spent $3.2 billion, having already taken delivery of nine?

President Barack Obama, who allowed that he hadn't had much experience with a personal helicopter fleet before election, has said that the existing white-topped Marine One choppers that ferry the commander-in-chief from the South Lawn of the White to Andrews Air Force Base or to Camp David, and cart him from Air Force One to his meeting places both at home and abroad wherever he travels, are pretty nice. Why are there so many? They always travel in threes, in decoy formation.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has deemed the contract for replacements too costly and targeted it for some of the billions of dollars of cuts he proposes in a still-growing Defense budget.

But members of Congress - particularly those where the new Marine Ones were under construction - maintain that there is no point in stopping now.

The government already has spent $3.2 billion on the new VH-71 helicopters, the Associated Press' Kimberly Hefling reports, in a classic tale of why government waste is harder to toss than one might suspect.

Former President George W. Bush had "ordered up a replacement fleet when security concerns heightened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,'' Hefling notes. "Demands such as making the helicopters capable of withstanding a nuclear attack but gentle to the White House foliage helped put developing the aircraft six years behind schedule and doubled the estimated price tag for a fleet of 28 to $13 billion.''

Enter Obama, ready to concede that the ride he has now suits him fine.

After his Defense secretary, Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, redlined the helicopter in his proposed new 2010 budget, the military halted production at the Lockheed Martin helicopter plant in Owego, N.Y. The AP reports that the contractor for a termination letter on Monday.

"However, some members of Congress vow to keep the program going,'' Hefling reports. "They say it will cost $555 million in early termination fees to drop the program, on top of the money already spent.''

And, there is some agreement that the president's fleet of 19 1970s-era VH-3D and VH60-N helicopters needs to be replaced - although virtually every part of them already has been.

The Navy is developing plans for an alternative new fleet, while considering what to do with the nine already delivered, four of them test models.

New York lawmakers and others want to resume production at the plant in New York. "It doesn't make sense to me to not use those helicopters," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, (D-N.Y.), who replaced former Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has some experience in Marine One.
The New York delegation says 19 basic models, forgoing options such as eight-track cassette players, can be turned out for $6 billion -- the price originally budgeted.

"It would come ... into use so much faster and at so much less expense if it were just allowed to continue, rather than to cancel it and then start all over again, which is absolutely bizarre," said Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a Democrat in the district where the helicopters are made. "That is going to cost huge amounts of money. That is going to cost multibillions of dollars more than what this is going to cost by just continuing it."

Lawmakers from Connecticut, home to Sikorsky Aircraft, which built the existing fleet and lost in the bidding for the new one, are hopeful about a new competition.