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.
