At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this week, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) questioned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about the plane gifted from Qatar.
00:00Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. Thank you Mr. Secretary for being here today. I wanted to build on some of the questions that Senator Schatz was asking just to try to build a fact predicate for some of the tough spending decisions we're going to have to make here.
00:20Just to confirm, I heard you say with respect to the gift of the plane from Qatar that we do not yet have a signed MOU with the government of Qatar, is that right?
00:35Correct, we're in the process of working through that.
00:38And did you also say we don't have a signed contract with the company that is going to do the work? Or did you say that we have a contract, you're just not willing to disclose the terms?
00:49The terms should not be disclosed of anything related to an aircraft of this type.
00:54So in 2018, when the contract was signed with Boeing to do the upgrades or the new contracts for Air Force One, the terms of that contract were disclosed, they were made public.
01:08In fact, it was the Trump administration that issued a press release giving the total as $3.9 billion.
01:16Are you saying this time around, even after you sign the contract, you're not going to make public any of the terms of the contract?
01:23I wasn't involved in that previous administration decision, but we're happy to take a look.
01:28The Air Force testified before the House that that contract would likely deliver the new Air Force Ones by the 2028 timeframe.
01:41It doesn't stand to reason that you will be able to retrofit the plane from Qatar much sooner than 2028.
01:52So I'm trying to understand what the gap is that we're trying to fill.
01:58If this contract ends up being a half a billion dollars and the gap only ends up being six months, that doesn't sound like a wise investment for this committee to make.
02:08Senator, I would defer to the expertise of the Air Force as far as timing of modifications and when that would happen.
02:14But there's also been delay after delay after delay on the Boeing side.
02:18So I don't know that a firm fixed date yet, unfortunately, can be counted on.
02:24So obviously the underlying question here is what is going to happen to the plane at the end of Trump's presidency.
02:32The president said on May 12th that this plane would be transferred to his presidential library at the end of his term.
02:42Is that your understanding of what is going to happen to this plane?
02:46The president said that that's my understanding, although I would look at what comes out in the MOU.
02:52But why would we ask the American taxpayer to spend upwards of a billion dollars on a plane that would then only be used for a handful of months and then transferred directly to the president?
03:04That doesn't sound like a wise use of taxpayer dollars.
03:07A lot of the capabilities, as you know, Senator, of that particular platform are and should remain classified.
03:15So there are reasons why you might modify, even for a short period of time, an aircraft to ensure the safety and security of the president of the United States.
03:24But when do you believe that those upgrades would be made?
03:27How long would the president have it before it got transferred to his personal possession?
03:32That would be a determination of the Air Force that would take take hold of it and make those modifications within whatever time window they believe gets it to the place where it need to be.
03:41Yeah, I think this is extraordinary, Mr. Chairman.
03:44We're talking about a pretty massive investment of appropriations dollars into a plane that the secretary is saying is currently planned to be transferred personally to the president.
03:57There's a there's a lot of other pending needs that we need to fund. This would seem to be low on the list.
