It will cost about $400 million to convert a luxury jet from Qatar into an Air Force One, the Air Force’s top civilian leader said today—a price tag far lower than previous estimates.
The Pentagon recently accepted a Boeing 747 from the Qatari government to use as a presidential jet for President Trump, a proposition that current and former Air Force officials have said could cost more than $1 billion, since it needs to be stripped to check for bugs then loaded with encrypted communications, defensive capabilities, and other classified systems.
But the Air Force “believes” it will cost “less than $400 million to retrofit that aircraft,” service secretary Troy Meink said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday. Meink said the exact cost and details are classified.
Trump’s search for an interim Air Force One stems from major delays with Boeing’s effort to build two new VC-25Bs. Trump struck a $3.9 billion deal for those jets during his first term. And based on that deal, some lawmakers argue the retrofit has to cost more than a billion.
“Based on the experience of the 2018 planes, we know that the contract for retrofit was $3.9 billion,” said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn. “Again, some of that was the purchase of the planes from Boeing, roughly about $800 million. But again, just do the math, it was about $3 billion for retrofit. There’s been cost overruns. They had to strip those planes that were built for another purpose down to the studs, and you said, there’s been issues. Just using that and extrapolating from that it’s clear that this new, third plane is going to cost well over a billion dollars.”
But former defense officials have pointed out that Trump can waive those security requirements if he wants.
Meink maintained that the retrofit will cost much less than $1 billion, and that many of the costs associated with retrofitting the jet, like spare parts, would have been incurred eventually down the line.
The administration has reportedly tapped L3Harris to modify the Qatari jet, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Air Force said in May the service is preparing to award a contract for the modification but “details related to the contract are classified.”
Meanwhile, the service is working with Boeing to speed up the delivery of the two VC-25s. Boeing has said it can push up delivery to 2027 if some program requirements are relaxed—a timeline Meink couldn’t confirm.
“Is it going to get back into [20]27? I couldn’t guarantee that but we are doing whatever we can to pull it back,” he said.
Space Force budget woes
Lawmakers also expressed concern over the future of the Space Force after the White House released a “skinny budget” on Friday that cut funding for the service—even as the service says they need more funding to build out new missions like “space superiority” and build out the Golden Dome missile-defense project.
When asked about the cut by Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., Meink declined to answer and said the final 2026 budget hasn’t been released.
“But what we know right now is the Space Force budget is going to get cut. You have no theory for how Golden Dome is going to work but we’re doing it because China is increasing in space and you plan to cut the space budget? That doesn’t sound like a good plan,” Moulton said.
After the hearing, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told reporters that the service does need to grow, but that he hasn’t seen the final budget numbers yet.
Initial White House budget documents requested $26.3 billion for the service, about 13 percent less in real terms than the $29.4 billion requested by the Biden administration for 2025. The administration is betting on the yet-to-be-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” to fund space priorities and Golden Dome in 2026—a move experts warn is just a one-off investment rather than sustained investment.
