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A look inside the next 'Air Force One'

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Garfield

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Interesting. The 8 series on the video seems a gulf state style fit out rather than USAF-1. The high tech defensive add-ons and counter measures will probably never be published on media sites or such videos. Never mind 'offensive' defence systems. They got good air milage and flight cycles out of Reagan's two ageing original 747s.

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cant see why they didn't get a custom A380 . :P

 

LOL - It's un-American to buy foreign products :) Its a good thing they didn't have an A380 when they made the movie AF1, Harrison ford would have had a heart attack running up and down THREE deck levels.

 

I remember well disembarking from a 747-200 in Kennedy about 30 years ago and a BA Concord was standing at the adjacent gate. An american gentleman also disembarking from Club class, growled at his party of friends "How dare the British have the best plane in the world, it's just plain darn wrong we don't have something bigger and faster than that darn stick insect." There was much polite if not just very slightly smug laughter from the British passengers alighting the aircraft as they heard this. The French involvement in supersonic air transport was never mentioned by anybody.

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LOL - It's un-American to buy foreign products :)

 

Indeed, it was that sentiment which contributed towards the scrapping of plans to replace the current 'Marine One' Sikorsky fleet with Merlins (that, and some technical issues), even though they had already been built. http://gizmodo.com/the-13-billion-presidential-helicopters-we-scrapped-an-978480541

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Just look at the KC-X programme - the A330 was selected, then unselected and a 40 year ago basic airframe that is now out of commerical production (and was finished completely) in the form of the 767 selected. Nothing, but nothing, was going to prevent Air Force One being a 747-8

 

Looks like a general video rather than a dedicated Air Force One

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indeed, I worked on military projects when I lived in the states in the 80s , its a form of welfare and " regional grants" in reality . a lot of the construction plants are in poor states , often in the south

 

There are few examples of the US military buying foreign - the only one that I can think of off-hand, the AV-8, is theirs now, in effect, the UK doesn't even have any Harriers left flying.

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There are few examples of the US military buying foreign - the only one that I can think of off-hand, the AV-8, is theirs now, in effect, the UK doesn't even have any Harriers left flying.

 

Canberras, too... although built by Martin.

Edited by Garfield
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Oh, and the USAAF operated a few squadrons of Spitfires in the UK and the Mediterranean during WWII...

 

600 of them, apparently, as a result of the disappointing performance of the Airacobra, until the Mustang came on line.

 

A similar situation to what drove them to the Spads the first time round....

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it's OK if it is built in America

 

When I had a proper job, we had a licence-building arrangement in Macon, Georgia, for just that reason - they wouldn't buy the stuff unless they could pretend it was what they like to call "native". We had endless trouble with the stuff they assembled and once, in a meeting about it with my extremely humourless boss, he declared that "These Americans - they're just a bunch of cowboys!" Everybody started laughing and he just couldn't see why. So I said, "Actually, John, some of them are Indians", and he thought I was being racist about immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. It was like working in a mental hospital.

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When I had a proper job, we had a licence-building arrangement in Macon, Georgia, for just that reason - they wouldn't buy the stuff unless they could pretend it was what they like to call "native". We had endless trouble with the stuff they assembled and once, in a meeting about it with my extremely humourless boss, he declared that "These Americans - they're just a bunch of cowboys!" Everybody started laughing and he just couldn't see why. So I said, "Actually, John, some of them are Indians", and he thought I was being racist about immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. It was like working in a mental hospital.

 

Its nearly 60 years since Eiesenhower warned about the defence industry taking over. The United States foot dragging over the Pacific Trade Agreement is an excellent example of how their approach to trade and protecting American corporates has not really changed much since the 19th Century

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