You know, a lot of countries you've heard of don't spend that much on their ENTIRE military.
He really DOES think he is KING!
That is nearly 1 Billion per helicopter.
Sorry, but that is not justifiable for any president.
“..his private fleet...2022”.
Take that as a warning folks.
This is absolutely insane to spend this kind of money on this.
This has to be yet another big payoff to, and/or ripoff by, some political comrades of the administration. Unless those copters are made entirely out of gold?
One of the versions of this helo had a kitchen on board. Yes. A kitchen.
we’d be better off spending 20 billion shipping this jackwad to the moon.
of course i have a 50 cent solution too.
Of course, we need to borrow more from China, don’t we? China needs to buy more of USA.
It’s about time they replaced those junky old choppers.
I’m guessing the new ones will have wider doors.
O.K.- I don’t have time right now to research this mc caskill wench but I’ll bet if somebody checks we will find out that she has stolen WAY more that what the NG has spent.
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National Guard NASCAR sponsorship examined by Congress:
The National Guard spent $26.5 million to sponsor NASCAR racing in 2012 to bolster its marketing and recruitment but failed to sign up a single new soldier to its ranks, according to data provided to USA Today. Even though the Guard spent $88 million as a NASCAR sponsor from 2011 to 2013, it is unclear how many new recruits, if any, signed up because of it, according to documents. The Guard on Wednesday would not confirm the figures on prospects and recruits developed through its NASCAR sponsorship.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who will hold a hearing on the recruitment program Thursday, assailed the Guard for “wasting a bunch of money on a very expensive sports sponsorship.” The Guard received 24,800 recruiting prospects from the program in 2012, documents show. In those cases, potential recruits indicated the NASCAR affiliation prompted them to seek more information about joining. Of that group, only 20 met the Guard’s qualifications for entry into the service, and not one of them joined. In 2013, the number of prospects associated with NASCAR dropped to 7,500, according to briefing materials for the Senate subcommittee on Financial and Contracting Oversight led by McCaskill.
The National Guard needs 1 million leads to meet its annual recruiting goal of 50,000 soldiers. The NASCAR initiative, along with the $38 million spent on an IndyCar racing sponsorship, over the same period, will be the target of the hearing led by McCaskill.
Rick Breitenfeldt, a National Guard spokesman, said 90% of Army National Guard soldiers who enlisted or re-enlisted from 2007 to 2013 indicated that they had been exposed to information about the service through NASCAR-related recruiting and retention materials. Sponsoring NASCAR and driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. puts the Guard’s name in front of 77 million fans, he said.(USA Today)(5-7-2014)
Regardless of who is president, the amount of money we spend on them is outrageous.
Code name ‘Golfcart?’
Get him one of these and call it good:
They will not be ready by the time Obama leaves the White House, but President Palin will put them to good use.
Well I am not going to bash Bozo on this one. This is the same program that Bush proposed to award to the British and Obama abandoned 5 years ago.
Yes it is still ridiculously expensive. And that is because the requirements are ridiculous, or at least extreme. And it might be that they should be met.
The helicopter is required to have insane range, have nuclear/EMP survivability, provide secure national emergency communication, and be able to land on The White House lawn.
The helicopters they have meet only the last of these.
A stock S71 has good range and can land at The White House, but will be fried by EMP and does not have the communications channel.
Once you add enough stuff you can’t use a stock airframe, the weights change, the loads change, new structural analyses are required, and airframe redesign thus required, and new NC programs and tooling are then required.It It really does wind up being a whole new helicopter. And so it costs a lot of money.
When an Iranian EMP goes off on the east coast it might be better to have President Gowdy fly rather then walk to Andrews.
$20b is insane, aren’t helicopters cost around $10m/ea