Obama and the Citi Groups Yugo Aircraft

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama has slammed high-flying executives traveling in cushy jets at a time of economic turmoil. But soon he will have to decide whether to proceed with some of the priciest aircraft in the world — a new fleet of 28 Marine One helicopters that will each cost more than the last Air Force One.

A six-year-old project to build state-of-the-art presidential helicopters has bogged down in a contracting quagmire that will challenge Obama's desire to rein in military contracting expenses. The price tag has nearly doubled, production has fallen years behind schedule and much of the program has been frozen until the new administration figures out what to do about it.

The choice confronting Obama encapsulates the tension between two imperatives of his nascent presidency, the need to meet the continuing threats of an age of terrorism and the demand for austerity in a period of economic hardship.

Equipped to deflect missile attacks and capable of waging war from the air, the new VH-71 helicopters would fly farther, faster and more safely than the current decades-old craft. But each improvement pushes up the cost. The program's original $6.1 billion contract has ballooned to $11.2 billion, and the Pentagon notified Congress last month that it was so far over budget that the law required a review. The Obama administration now must determine if the project is essential to national security and if there are alternatives that would cost less.

For Obama, the program is one more inheritance from the Bush administration, which began the effort after the Sept. 11 attacks generated concern about whether presidential helicopters from the 1970s were up to the challenge of terrorist threats. President George W. Bush spent Sept. 11 aboard Air Force One, reinforcing the need for up-to-date communications and security for a president at all times.

"If the office of the presidency is vulnerable, then the country is vulnerable," said Representative Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, a Democrat and a retired navy vice admiral. "However, the nation is crying for accountability, from Wall Street to Congress to Iraq."

Asked about it in last year's campaign, Obama promised to "take a close look" at the program, adding that it was "a lot of money, even in Washington." The White House had no comment last week, but Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Defense Secretary Robert Gates was rethinking the VH-71 and other projects that were "having execution problems."

"We're prepared to make some hard choices," Morrell said.

At stake is the future of the iconic white-topped helicopters that take off from the South Lawn of the White House. Those helicopters have become a symbol of presidential power, etched in the public mind, perhaps most indelibly on the day President Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 and flashed a double-V salute before retreating aboard one of the choppers to begin his long exile.

Presidents have had helicopters at their disposal since 1957, when Dwight Eisenhower grew irritated at how long it took in a crisis to get from a New England vacation to an airport. The current fleet of 19 aircraft includes 11 Sikorsky VH-3D Sea Kings and 8 VH-60N Black Hawks, some of which have been flying presidents for up to 35 years.

When a president is aboard one of the helicopters it goes by the radio call sign Marine One. The helicopters typically ferry a president from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base or Camp David, usually accompanied by one or two helicopters carrying staff members and serving as decoys. Helicopters are also sometimes airlifted to the president's stops around the world for shorter-range flights.

Andrew Card Jr., Bush's White House chief of staff, grew exasperated in 2002 by helicopter mechanical problems and instigated the development of an ultramodern replacement. The Pentagon awarded a contract in 2005 to Lockheed Martin, even though it had never built helicopters, reasoning that a three-engine model produced by its British-Italian partner, called the EH-101, provided a useful foundation.

In doing so, the Pentagon bypassed Sikorsky Aircraft, the contractor since the Eisenhower era. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, where Sikorsky is based, said she believed the Bush administration wanted to reward Britain and Italy for support in Iraq. "I think this was a way of saying, 'We understand what you did for us; now we're trying to do something for you,' " she said.

The Bush administration denied that. But as the White House tried to effectively replicate Air Force One in helicopter form, it soon became clear that modifying the EH-101 was much more complicated than anticipated. The new armored 64-foot-long presidential helicopter had to carry 14 passengers and thousands of pounds of secure communications equipment and be able to jam seeking devices, fend off missiles and resist some of the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear blast.

The VH-71 project was divided into two increments, a quick first batch of five new helicopters with the same or better equipment as the current fleet, to be followed by 23 much more sophisticated craft that would ultimately take over flying the president, the vice president and the defense secretary, among others.

Lockheed has made progress on the first increment, having built four test models and three of the helicopters that will eventually be used. Those aircraft are supposed to be delivered by the end of 2010. But the Pentagon issued a stop-work order at the end of 2007 on the second increment as costs continued to rocket upward. Divided by 28 helicopters, the overall cost works out to $400 million per aircraft, roughly the same as the $410 million that the government paid in 1990 for the latest two Air Force One jetliners plus a hangar.

"What you had here was a collision between the urgency of the White House and the rules of the navy's acquisition," said Loren Thompson, the head of the Lexington Institute, a research organization that provides advice to Lockheed and other defense contractors. "The White House wanted to field a helicopter much faster, and the navy wanted to make sure it met all of the rules for a safe helicopter.

"It doesn't sound irreconcilable," he continued, "but in the end, it caused a lot of cost growth."

The notice to Congress last month means the program must now be recertified by Gates to proceed. DeLauro and other members of the Connecticut delegation wrote the navy last week asking it to consider reopening the bidding on the contract or turning part of it over to Sikorsky. Critics said Obama should pull the plug. "The VH-71 is a waste of time, money and resources," said Lieutenant Colonel Gene Boyer, a retired army pilot who flew three presidents, including Nixon on the flight after his resignation.

Sestak said the project underscored the larger failure to accurately assess the cost of military projects in advance and urged Obama to tackle the problem.

"If he puts the right accountability system in there — not monitoring but enforcement — then I think he can say rightly that the fleet is not for Obama, it is for the presidency," Sestak said.