“We believe the actual retrofit of that aircraft is probably less than $400 million,” he said.

If so, that would be a bargain. But engineers & #AirForce experts who have been through similar projects have their doubts that it can be accomplished for anything like that price. Members of #Congress express concern that #Trump will pressure the Air Force to do the work so fast that sufficient security measures are not built into the plane.

In testimony before #Congress in June, Troy E. Meink, the #AirForce secretary, said that he thought the cost of the #AirForceOne renovations would be *manageable*. “I think there has been a number thrown around on the order of $1 billion,” he said. “But a lot of those costs associated with that are costs that we’d have experienced anyway, we will just experience them early,” before Boeing delivers its two Air Force Ones. “So it wouldn’t be anywhere near that.”

But the #Pentagon doesn’t want to part with a third of the #nuclear “triad,” & the silos & their command posts are big employers in the rural West.

They serve another function in the second #Trump admin. The modernization program has proved to be the perfect thing if you were determined to hide how much you are spending on an airplane, especially one equipped to order up a nuclear strike, if needed.

The project was first sold to Congress as a $77.7 billion program to replace all 400 #Minuteman III missiles, complete with launch facilities & communications built to withstand both #nuclear & #cyber attack. By the time #Trump came back into office, that figure had ballooned by 81%, to $140 billion & climbing, all to reconstruct what nuclear strategists agree is the most vulnerable, impossible-to-hide element of America’s nuclear deterrent.

It was those delays that led #Trump to look for a *gift*.

#AirForce officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of #Qatar’s #AirForceOne with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the #Sentinel. That is named for the missile at the heart of Washington’s long-running effort to rebuild America’s aging, leaky, ground-launched #nuclear missile system.

Concerns over the many apparent conflicts of interests involved in the transaction, given Trump’s government dealings & business ties with #Qatar, have swirled since reports of the gift emerged this spring. But #Trump said he was unconcerned, casting the decision as a no-brainer for taxpayers.

“I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump said in May. “I mean, I could be a stupid person & say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’”

…#Trump’s plane probably won’t fly for long: It will take a year or two to get the work done, and then the #Qatar gift — improved with the latest communications & in-flight protective technology — will be transferred to the yet-to-be-created Trump presidential *library* after he leaves office in 2029, the president has said.

[So basically Americans are footing the bill for Trump’s“free” private plane]

In response to a Reuters request, #Aqua1Foundation last month provided an unsigned statement, saying: “At this stage, we are not disclosing additional information beyond what has been publicly shared.”

It added: “Aqua 1 is backed by a group of long-term, mission-aligned partners & led by #DaveLee & a global team with deep expertise in web3 & digital asset infrastructure.” Aqua 1 did not respond to a detailed set of questions….

Yet a review by Reuters of corporate registries, #Aqua1Foundation’s digital profile & other public information reveal almost nothing about the source of its capital or the person it named as its founding partner, #DaveLee.

Reuters could not find a way of contacting Lee directly. An Aqua 1 press release, which was published on Reuters.com as sponsored content, listed an email for a person named Dora Lee as a media contact.