Donald Trump’s plan to build two new helipads has revealed his luxury Marine One choppers cost $215 million each—more than 10 times the price of the old fleet.
The 79-year-old, who has spent his second term gleefully refashioning the Executive Mansion, wants new permanent landing pads built at both the White House and his Mar-a-Lago resort to accommodate the supersized new Sikorsky VH-92A Patriot.
Each VH-92A Patriot comes in at a hefty $215 million, according to a 2019 Government Accountability Office report, with the Marine Corps splashing out close to $5 billion in total for a fleet of 23.
That makes the gleaming new Sikorsky model more than 10 times pricier than the decades-old VH-3D Sea King it is replacing, which costs around $20 million. The Sea King, which has shuttled every U.S. president since Gerald Ford, settles onto portable aluminum discs rolled out across the grass.
Built by Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky division, the heavily militarized VH-92A can lift 6,200 pounds more than the older Sea King, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. It also comes packed with infrared anti-missile countermeasures and is designed to withstand the electromagnetic pulse of a nuclear blast, according to military aviation outlet The War Zone.
But there’s a snag. The Patriot is so powerful its rotors and exhaust scorch the White House grass—an issue first flagged in 2018 and which Sikorsky has spent years failing to solve, the Beast reported earlier on Monday.
Hence the helipads. Trump—a former real estate mogul who has personally pored over every renovation detail—has been looking over the design of a permanent landing pad for the White House South Lawn with his associates, the Journal reported.
And the construction crews aren’t stopping in D.C. In Florida, Mar-a-Lago has already coughed up roughly $7,746 for a permit to install a 60-foot helipad on the west lawn of the club, the Palm Beach Daily News reported. The work will be carried out by West Palm Beach-based Moroney Construction LLC and was designed by REG Architects.
Only there’s another issue in Florida. The U.S. Secret Service has separately asked the Palm Beach Town Council to allow the Mar-a-Lago pad to remain in place even after Trump leaves the White House, citing a “significant threat assessment” against the president and his family, WPTV reported. Council members tabled that request on April 14.
Not everyone is on board with the White House plans. Retired Marine Corps Colonel Ray L’Heureux, who flew on the presidential aircraft before retiring in 2011, told the Washington Post on Sunday that a permanent pad on the South Lawn would be “stupid from an aesthetic standpoint.” He called the area “historic” and the “back yard of the White House.”
The Marine Corps told the Post that its Marine One squadron is “appropriately resourced to fly all required missions.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Beast: “President Trump has continued to make improvements at the White House and all around D.C. to benefit future presidents and Americans.”
