Marine One upgrades raise questions for Obama

NY Times:

President Obama has slammed high-flying executives traveling in cushy jets at a time of economic turmoil. But soon he will have to decide whether to proceed with some of the priciest aircraft in the world — a new fleet of 28 Marine One helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One.

A six-year-old project to build state-of-the-art presidential helicopters has bogged down in a contracting quagmire that will challenge Mr. Obama’s desire to rein in military contracting expenses. The price tag has nearly doubled, production has fallen years behind schedule and much of the program has been frozen until the new administration figures out what to do about it.

The choice confronting Mr. Obama encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship.

Equipped to deflect missile attacks and capable of waging war from the air, the new VH-71 helicopters would fly farther, faster and more safely than the current decades-old craft. But each improvement pushes up the cost. The program’s original $6.1 billion contract has ballooned to $11.2 billion, and the Pentagon notified Congress last month that it was so far over budget that the law required a review. The Obama administration now must determine if the project is essential to national security and if there are alternatives that would cost less.

For Mr. Obama, the program is one more inheritance from the Bush administration, which began the effort after the Sept. 11 attacks generated concern about whether presidential helicopters from the 1970s were up to the challenge of terrorist threats. President George W. Bush spent Sept. 11 aboard Air Force One, reinforcing the need for up-to-date communications and security for a president at all times.

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For a guy who just wasted a hundred times the cost of this equipment that actually has a function, it is hard to understand why he would not go forward with the program. If it makes him feel better he can call it a stimulus. He should approve the program and get off his moral preening exercise. That may be hard for Obama since he uses moral preening to sell outrageous elements of the stimulus program while at the same time cutting back on national security which is job one.