My Christmas Present to Barack Obama

by philg

Despite the fact that President Obama did not accept my offer to pay for his Aunt Zeituni‘s transportation out of crummy Massachusetts taxpayer-funded housing to a beautiful spacious vacant and already-secured Obama family house in Chicago, I would like to make an offer of a Christmas present: unlimited helicopter transportation for him and his family, at no cost to him or the U.S. taxpayer, through the end of his reign.

Background: the U.S. military has spent the last 10 years or so trying to buy some replacement helicopters for presidential transport. They settled on a huge $30 million Eurocopter with three screaming jet engines that put out a big welcome mat for a cheap heat-seeking missile, such as the Stingers that U.S. tax dollars purchased for the Taliban during the 1980s. By the time our military and Lockheed Martin added some anti-missile defenses and some U.S. manufacturing, the cost of each 14-passenger helicopter went up to about $400 million, far in excess of what airlines pay for the 853-passenger Airbus A-380. The program was shut down, in theory, but recently Congress authorized a $100 million gift to Lockheed Martin to keep the program alive (source). Does the U.S. really need to spend $15 billion on a handful of helicopters that will be used mostly for 10-minute hops? And should we buy helicopters that are so heavy that it will require several C-5 cargo planes to get them to foreign destinations (the president of the U.S. always travels with his own helicopters rather than borrowing local ones)?

Running the existing helicopter fleet is not cheap. There are literally 800 pilots, mechanics, and administrators, all paid federal salaries and pensions that are more than double their private-sector counterparts (source). Jet fuel is purchased in prodigious quantities.

I happen to own two nearly brand-new four-seat Robinson R44 helicopters. Powered by efficient Lycoming piston engines, these burn less fuel in a 130 mph cruise than each Eurocopter engine would burn at idle. Currently we use these for flight training at East Coast Aero Club, but in the interest of sparing the taxpayer from further ruin, I would be willing to move them down to Washington, D.C. I will also move myself down and one or two additional instructor-pilots from East Coast Aero Club. All of us have more than 1000 hours of helicopter experience. All are U.S. citizens and one of us is an Army veteran (given the recent tragedy in Texas involving a continuously promoted and decorated Army officer, it may be necessary to clarify that, to the best of our knowledge, he was not simultaneously serving in the U.S. Army and waging jihad on behalf of Al-Qaeda).

Here are some advantages of the Robinson:

  • low fuel burn and high efficiency means that very little waste heat is generated and the infrared signature would not be sufficient for a heat-seeking missile, all of which are designed to shoot down fire-breathing jets
  • small physical size means that it will be harder to hit with rifle fire than a monster Eurocopter or Sikorsky
  • small size and 1400 lb. empty weight means that it can be transported to presidential travel destinations in a much smaller and more fuel-efficient cargo plane (one Robinson is no heavier than four average visitors to Epcot)
  • high efficiency results in a range of about 350 miles on one tank of gas (the current Marine One helicopters have a range of only 100 miles (source))

I will pay all costs associated with presidential helicopter transport. I have already bought the helicopters. I will buy the fuel. I will pay the pilots (not being federal employees, they earn $25 per flight hour and receive no benefits or pension). I will pay Adam, Rob, and Sam to perform the 100-hour inspections and other maintenance (about $25 per flight hour). I will pay pilot hotel and meal expenses when President Obama is relaxing on Martha’s Vineyard or Hawaii. That’s my Christmas present to the Obama family and to the U.S. taxpayer.

Should Barack Obama accept this offer, I believe that the savings to the taxpayer will be in excess of $1 billion per year, reflecting cost savings from shutting down the 800-employee Marine One division and from not having to keep shoveling $100 bills into Lockheed Martin’s fireplace.

5 thoughts on “My Christmas Present to Barack Obama”

  1. Phil, top of the line IR-guided man portable SAMs such as the more recent FIM-92 Stinger variants, and better Russian and European equivalents (the least likely to be in the hands of terrorists) would probably find a R44 interesting enough at 2km. They look for the wavelengths of airframe heating, (leading edges of rotor blades, warm metal – rotor pylon, swashplate, and engine exhaust/manifold etc.) All that and the most recent seeker technology is infrared-imaging, with CCDs like in our digital cameras, and the software designed to recognize silhouettes. (face tracking, except for airplanes)

    Much of these developments are being driven by the projected need to counter small UAVs, fixed or rotary winged.

  2. Peter: Thanks for the update. I hope that there aren’t too many of the fancy new surface-to-air missiles in the northwest suburbs of Boston! If the technology of these new missiles is so great, I’m not sure how any new presidential helicopter is going to evade them. And I don’t see how an invulnerable helicopter ensures the safety of the president. He sometimes drives in a car, which is a fairly slow and easy target. He sometimes gives parties at the White House, to which, apparently, clever strangers are able to gain access. If we wanted to spend $15 billion in taxpayer funds to improve presidential security, it seems unlikely that an analysis would show that the few minutes he spends in helicopters are the best place to spend it.

    The main point of my posting, which is somewhat tongue in cheek (though I am willing to go through with the donation of services if they are accepted), is to show that a $1 billion/year government program can be accomplished at a price affordable to an individual citizen if executed with standard civilian standards of efficiency.

  3. Hello,

    I’ve heard that, due to the snow in Denmark and in the rest of northern europe at that time, Barack Obama could not used his helicopters from Copenhagen conference center to the airport, he was “forced” to use “beautiful” limos.

  5. Phil, at the risk of being off topic: it’s kind of a Cat/Mouse game on the missles vs countermeasures. The latest super-expensive jamming technology, is basically a low/medium intensity laser. A passive IR sensitive CCD imaging system split between multiple sensors is mounted on the protected aircraft. This is constantly monitoring 360 degrees around the aircraft looking for a launch/boost flare and hot airframe body of an incoming missle. When a missle is detected, it swivels the aforementioned laser onto the target (mounted in a small turret no bigger than a basketball) , and effectively blinds the incoming missle.

    The blinding mechanism can be through flaring the missle’s optics, cooking/burning the missle’s CCD/sensors/mirrors, or high frequency pulses trying to induce ruinous oscillations in the missle’s guidance system.

    On Topic:
    The entire VIP Presidential helicopter aquisition program is decidedly a farce, but unfortunately about standard for any mil-defense program these days.

    There are undoubtedly several reasonably off the shelf / or existing military production solutions that could’ve been adapted and brought in for half of what has been spent so far with no copters at all delivered. Even the cheapest reasonable solutions would probably have less than a 5% risk difference from most expensive. 😛

    Actually the R44 idea is kind of fun. For the cost of a few of those monster copters, literally fly 10 R44s at once on different routes.

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