31 Amazing Features of AIR FORCE ONE

You might remember how roughly 3 weeks ago, the Qatari royal family was offering this suspiciously nice gift of a brand new $400 million airplane that would be used as the new Air Force One jet. It was an interesting situation. Most media outlets, of course, were up in arms about the possibility of a conflict of interest. However, I myself, I was more interested in the conversion process. How do you take an airplane like this from the Middle East, convert it into a jet that'll literally be used by the president of the United States? Also, at that time, the US government came out and said that even if they were to accept this airplane, it would take billions of dollars, billions with a B and it would take several years to convert that jet into an Air Force One airplane. Now, that really piqued my interest and it sent me and my researcher down this rabbit hole into the capabilities of Air Force One. What makes an Air Force One jet an Air Force One jet? And while many of the features of these airplanes are understandably classified, many others are not, such as the fact that one model of the Air Force One has a shield in place that actually blocks nuclear EMP attacks. And so today, let me break down for you all that we know, at least all that we publicly know about Air Force One. So to start with, we need to address some terminology. There's no single airplane that's called Air Force One. In fact, Air Force One is not a single airplane. Instead, Air Force One is a call sign meant to designate any plane that happens to carry the president. It's the generic call sign that everyone knows about. There are also, I should mention, code names that nobody knows about. For instance, very famously on 911 during the terrorist attacks, the White House received a threat saying that quote, "Angel was next." And during that time, Angel was the classified code name for the Air Force One jet carrying George W. Bush. Now, fortunately, that thread turned out to be empty, but it did reveal to us the secret name that they were using at that time. Also, just as an a bit of an aside, besides Air Force One, there are many other ones that the president travels by. There's the Marine One helicopter. There's ground force one, which are these black armored buses. There's Cadillac one, also known as the beast. And there's even a rail force one, which was the train that took Joe Biden over into Kiev, Ukraine. It seems to be the basic naming convention for any mode of transportation that the president uses. Something something one. Now getting back to Air Force One specifically, it typically consists of two planes. This is what the public typically thinks of. They are both Boeing made 747-200B class jets. Their tail numbers are 28,000 and 29,000 and usually one of them is under maintenance while the other one is active flying the president around. They also, I should mention, go by the special designator VC-25A, which I'll use sometimes interchangeably in this video. These two Boeing jets, they have been in service since the year 1990, transporting every president from George HW Bush all the way up to President Trump second term. Now, looking at these specs for the planes, they are as follows. They're both six stories high and 250 ft in length. They have a max takeoff weight of 833,000 lb. They can fly higher than almost any other aircraft with a max altitude of 45,000 ft. And they're also slightly faster than the civilian version of that same plane, the presidential planes have a top speed of 630 miles an hour. Also, it's worth mentioning that unlike the civilian versions of that plane, these presidential Boeings, they've actually been modified to be capable of midair refueling, giving them at least in theory unlimited flight time. Although I also mentioned that that particular modification, even though it was very expensive, has never actually been utilized while the president's on board because the whole mid-air refueling process is just deemed to be too risky to be used in a peace time environment. So, it's really reserved for serious situations. Then, in terms of who's actually behind the wheel, Air Force One is operated by the Presidential Airlift Group. That is a highly selective unit within the US Air Force based at the joint base Andrews right outside of Washington DC. And when the planes are actively in flight, they're piloted by two pilots, a navigator as well as an engineer. Now, moving into the interior, there's a reason that Air Force One is sometimes referred to as the flying white house. It is big, it's spacious, and it has quite a few amenities. Nobody is sitting in coach squeezed between two people on either side in Air Force One. To start with, both of these planes have 4,000 square ft of floor space spread out across three separate decks. The upper deck is the telecommunications level. It acts as basically a mobile command center. The lower deck is the cargo hold and then the middle deck is where the president and his staff actually operate. And then looking more granularly at that middle deck, you have the following. At the front of the plane is the president's personal space, which includes his office as well as his bedroom. If you need a visual cue for where that is if you happen to be on board, there's literally stars in the carpet which mark the areas that are the president's personal space. Then just outside of that are the quarters for the secret service agents who are on board. Then comes the situation room with a large rectangle table in the middle as well as a television screen on the wall. And then after that are the passenger quarters which can accommodate upwards of 70 people. And they include many amenities. They include work areas uh a conference and a dining room, two kitchens as well as a designated media area. And speaking of media, I said earlier that nobody's sitting in coach squeezed between two people on Air Force One. And that is true, but only because the cabin in the back that's reserved for the press is two rows rather than three. So there's no middle row. But having said that, the rear cabin in the back of the plane, it really does look like a standard commercial airliner complete with overhead luggage storage. Also, aside from all these different creature comforts, the jet also takes the president's health quite seriously. The plane always has at least one doctor on board. It has its own medical operating room, and it has a plentiful supply of the president's blood type, as well as extra vaccinations of all different types in case of an emergency. Now, how much all this actually costs to operate is a bit of an unknown quantity. Although I've seen multiple media reports claim that it cost the US taxpayers roughly $180,000 per hour to operate Air Force One, which if you think about it, between all the staff salaries, the maintenance, and the jet fuel and everything else, that doesn't sound too far-fetched. Now, moving along, we have the security features. Air Force One is sometimes colloquially referred to as the flying fortress and has been said that it's safer to be up there in the air than it is to be on the ground just given the plethora of security features that have been installed on these airplanes. All right, just to pause here for a super quick moment. I'd like to introduce our sponsor and my own personal gold dealer, American Hartford Gold. Now, as soon as the latest round of tariffs hit, almost immediately, the stock market hit some serious waves. we could say it became super turbulent, very volatile. And of course, these conditions don't just affect Wall Street. 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When you call them and mention my name, Roman, for every 1 oz of gold that you purchase, you can get 1 ounce of free silver. And so take advantage of the special offer. Either call 866242-22352 or simply text Roman to 65532. That's again 866242352 or text Roman to 65532. I'll also throw their information. It'll be down in the description box below. Now, some of these features, as I mentioned earlier, are understandably classified, but some of them are known to the public. For instance, in terms of communications, each one of these presidential planes is retrofitted with advanced security and communication systems that separate them from the standard off-the-line Boeing 747s that you and I would fly on. They support satcom, UHF, VHF, and HF radio systems for redundancy. And that by the way stands for ultra high frequency, very high frequency, and high frequency. Each plane is equipped with secure encrypted communication systems which enable the president to stay connected with the Pentagon, the White House, as well as world leaders pretty much no matter what's happening around the world. And so that's the communication side. But then on the physical side, there are a lot of security features as well. For instance, there are fewer and smaller windows compared to commercial 747s that you and I fly on. This makes the presidential plane less vulnerable and the windows on the Air Force One are also all bulletproof. The fuselage and the wiring have been reinforced to resist explosives and ballistic impacts. And then if for some reason the presidential plane is actually actively under attack, they have multiple ways to deal with it. They've got flares which are able to divert heatseeking missiles. They have chaffs which are available against uh radar guided missiles. And chafts are basically thin strips of aluminum that get blasted out in order to confuse and disrupt radar systems. There's an infrared jammer to protect against infrared missiles. And then speaking of jamming, both planes employ radar jammers to prevent anyone from being able to breach the plane's communication systems and their controls. And then on top of all that, Air Force One maintains its own airspace, requiring other non-presidential planes to have three nautical miles of standoff. And then Air Force One operates with dual flight management systems as well as multiple power backups along with multiple backup satellite links to ensure that communication channels will remain open and command continuity will remain intact. Meaning essentially that if everything goes belly up, they've got multiple redundancies in place, at least for most systems. However, unlike what most people imagine, Air Force One doesn't actually typically fly alongside fighter jets. The only time that Air Force One is accompanied by fighter jets is when there's an active national emergency underway. But that isn't to say that Air Force One just flies alone. Instead, the VC-25A, those two planes I mentioned earlier, they're often accompanied by another plane, the C-17 Globaster, which carries on board the Marine Force One helicopter as well as the Presidential Motorc Cave, aka the Beast. And typically the C17, it flies out ahead of the Air Force One and it lands and gets everything ready ahead of the arrival of the president. Now, I alluded to it earlier, but the two VC-25As that we've been discussing so far are not the only planes under the Air Force One Arsenal. Separate from them is another Air Force One airplane called the E-4B Night Watch, although it's more commonly referred to as the Doomsday Plane. Now, there are four of these planes currently in service with at least one of them always ready to take flight at a moment's notice and the other ones in maintenance. The E-4B is a militarized Boeing 747-200 designated as the National Airborne Operations Center, otherwise known as the NAOC. The Pentagon loves their acronyms. Now, its purpose is to shelter the president and the top military brass in any heightened states of emergency or in case of a nuclear attack. Think of the VC25A as the luxury presidential airplane does designed for comfort and normal travel. Whereas the doomsday plane is the military version whose primary purpose is just security and continuity of government. Its function is to ensure military and nuclear command continuity. Basically in the event of a true national emergency, it's the E-4b that becomes the strategic command center of the United States. Now, because of the sensitive nature of its mission, we don't have detailed floor p plans of the E-4B. They're just not made publicly available. However, we do know about some of the security features that it possesses, and those security features are incredible. On top of all the security features that we already mentioned for the two presidential Boeing planes, the Doomsday plane also comes with an EMP shield. Now, an EMP attack is an acronym which stands for electromagnetic pulse attack, and it's one of the most deadly threats facing America. The way that it would work is that an adversary would explode a nuclear weapon in the stratosphere above the United States. And that type of an explosion, it wouldn't directly kill anybody, but instead it would the entirety of our electrical grid. The massive wave of electromagnetic energy would work kind of like a super powerful radio wave going across the entirety of the nation and it would hit anything with electric components like phones, computers, cars, calculators, elevators, and it would fry the circuits and make them stop working. But apparently it wouldn't work against the doomsday plane because the plane has been retrofitted with the affforementioned EMP shield giving the plane something akin to like a force field which protects it from the electromagnetic pulse. And it does this in four ways at least four ways that we know about. Firstly, the outside of the plane has a special coating. The outer skin of the aircraft, it's treated with a special material that helps to dissipate electromagnetic energy safely around it. Furthermore, besides the outer coating, many of the interior parts of the plane have a Faraday cage design. Now, some of you may know what a Faraday bag is. It's basically it's an aluminum looking bag that you can put your phone into and once you put it in and close it, the phone can be tracked by satellites or by cell phone towers. It basically cuts off all communication between the phone inside the bag and the outside world. And the doomsday plane basically does that same thing for all the internal components. Many parts of the plane, especially around the critical electronics, are built like a Faraday cage, which blocks electromagnetic energy from being able to get in. You can think of it like a metal box that surrounds the critical components of the aircraft. If an EMP does hit, the electrical energy travels around the outside of the components without being able to reach the inside of them, at least in theory. On top of that, the wires and circuits in the plane are wrapped in materials that absorb or reflect electromagnetic energy so that the systems can keep working even during an EMP blast. And then lastly, something that we already mentioned earlier is the redundancy built into these systems of the entire plane. Because even with all these protective measures, an EMP blast, especially if it's done nearby, might still be able to knock out all the critical components, which is why the E-4b Nightwatch has backup electronics for their backup electronics as well as their communication gear. And some of them are hardened and kept offline if necessary. And so in theory, if an EMP blast goes off, they put in as much security features as possible to make the airplane as resilient as possible. And again, just as I mentioned earlier, what I'm relaying to you is just what we as the public know. The actual technology being used as well as its effectiveness is unknown. Also, besides this EMP shield, I guess you would call it, according to the publicly available information, the doomsday plane also has a nuclear and thermal shield in place to help protect the president and everyone on board from an actual nuclear attack, as long as the epicenter of that attack is not too close to the plane. And so all that might help to explain why converting that Qatar airplane that was already worth $400 million by itself is estimated to cost billions of dollars and roughly 2 years. You can just imagine the kind of engineering work that's involved in converting a luxury airliner to this fortress that can withstand EMP attacks, flying in midair, able to refuel mid-flight, having top-of-the-line communications in place, as well as a top-of-the-line medical center, redundancies for their redundancies for their redundancies, as well as secret things that we're not even allowed to know about. In fact, for all we know, Air Force One might have a secret warp drive that can travel to a different dimension. But perhaps that is a topic for a separate episode. If you'd like to know more about this um EMP blast shield that's aboard the Doomsday plane, I'll throw that as well as the links to all my other research for this episode. It'll be down in the description box below if you want to dig deeper into the weeds. And also, if you happen to know anything about this plane uh that I failed to mention or that I mentioned and that is incorrect, especially if you happen to be in the Air Force, leave it down in the comment section below. I would love to know, as well as I'm sure everyone watching this video would love to know more about it. And also, if you would like this content to reach more people, smash that like button so the YouTube algorithm will pick it up and share it with more people. And also, if you appreciate content like this personally, smash that subscribe button if you haven't already. That way, you can get our videos delivered to your newsfeed every time we publish them. And then until next time, I'm your host Roman from the Epit Times. Stay informed. Most importantly, stay free. [Music]