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In short, we ship the face of our country around in an old plane initially designed for freight, in vehicles that aren’t well designed for today’s world, and surround him with guards that appear unable to do their jobs.

What if we rethought that?

Fixing The Image Of The Presidency

New Air Force One:  The President doesn’t like to travel with press and is connected electronically all the time to his support staff so why does he need a big freight carrier to travel in?  Wouldn’t a smaller, faster plane be easier to defend, be far less wasteful in terms of time and be a better showcase for the US Aerospace Industry?   Create a contest between Lockheed and Boeing to see who could best build an Air Force One for the next 30 years rather than the current plan to deploy another 747 which wasn’t really great for the last 30.   Make the plane a showcase for what the US can do in terms of communications, speed, and even defensive technology.   Make it something people want to go see rather than something they’d prefer not to fly in themselves (planes from the 747’s time had inherent safety problems that generally were never fixed).   I’d also suggest it had a really cool built in boarding ramp so no President was ever again stranded looking embarrassed and helpless on a runway.   So, maybe, something a tad more like this.   If you go fast, you don’t need a ton of room in the thing.

The US has a lot of really cool military vehicles, the JLTV, which is the replacement for the Hummer, is decidedly badass.   It is designed to be armored, won’t get stuck over speed bumps, turns sharper, and can be equipped with a variety of weapon load outs depending on mission.   Much like they now take and heavily modify a Cadillac or Lincoln, you could start with one of these and using skills often showcased at SEMA build the most badass Presidential Delivery vehicle every made.  People wouldn’t ignore this puppy they’d get the hell out of the way and, once again, it would be a showcase of what the US can do, not a showcase of what the US once did poorly.

Finally, you could dress the Secret Service in the kind of tech currently under development for the US Military.  Heads up displays behind bullet resistant face shields and helmets, exosuits (these can be pretty cool), heads up displays, and much more advanced communications packages.  They basically could become walking tanks and who is going to mess with a guy that is always surround with walking tanks?

Wrapping Up:  It Isn’t In Our Best Interest To Have The President Look Weak

Regardless of who sits in the Presidential chair it isn’t in the country’s best interest to have the President look week or use technology that is decades out of date.  We can and do build better, faster, more secure planes and cars, we can better equip the Secret Service so they too become technology, both civilian and military, showcases and we can make the US President look more like someone you’d be stupid to mess with rather than someone that looks like a pushover.  So why don’t we do it?