Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player Open Navigation Menu --> Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Close Navigation Menu Home News Expand/collapse submenu for News National World Politics Business Health Science Climate Race Culture Expand/collapse submenu for Culture Books Movies Television Pop Culture Food Art & Design Performing Arts Life Kit Gaming Music Expand/collapse submenu for Music Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions Podcasts & Shows Expand/collapse submenu for Podcasts & Shows Daily Morning Edition Weekend Edition Saturday Weekend Edition Sunday All Things Considered Up First Here & Now NPR Politics Podcast Featured Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Fresh Air Wild Card with Rachel Martin It's Been a Minute Embedded Get NPR+ More Podcasts & Shows Search Newsletters NPR Shop Get NPR+ Tiny Desk New Music Friday All Songs Considered Music Features Live Sessions About NPR Diversity Support Careers Press Ethics New Air Force One going out of commission to get safety upgrades The new Air Force One is going out of commission to receive safety upgrades. What needs to be done and was it safe for President Trump to fly the plane to Turkey earlier this month? Politics New Air Force One going out of commission to get safety upgrades July 21, 20264:44 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Leila Fadel New Air Force One going out of commission to get safety upgrades Listen · 3:27 3:27 Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed "> <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/nx-s1-5901113/nx-s1-9856539" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript The new Air Force One is going out of commission to receive safety upgrades. What needs to be done and was it safe for President Trump to fly the plane to Turkey earlier this month? Sponsor Message Transcript
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The new Air Force One is out of commission. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported the Secret Service urged President Trump to leave a NATO summit in Turkey on an older version of Air Force One instead of the Boeing 747 donated by Qatar last year. The reporting said that was because of security concerns. Then Trump talked about the Qatari plane after coming home from the World Cup final on Sunday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It has a lot of capability. But as I understand it, in about a month or so, they're going to send it to have it be maxed out. So they're going to be sending it, and they'll have it be maxed out. It'll take about a month.
FADEL: Here to help us understand what might be happening to the plane is Dan Lamothe. He covers the U.S. military for The Washington Post. Good morning, and thanks for joining us.
DAN LAMOTHE: Yes, hello.
FADEL: So we heard the president talk about maxed out, maxing out the plane. What does that mean?
LAMOTHE: Yeah, so the old Air Force One has some of the same capabilities that you'd expect in jets you'd find in combat, missile warning sensors, kind of exquisite radars, flare dispensers, things that can help it if it were to be attacked. The new one - and it's been known really since the start, and this has been raised as a concern since really the Trump administration first announced that it would bring this plane on - wasn't built for that. So they sent it in. They gave it 400 million in upgrades. But it's always been very vague what upgrades it got, what upgrades it didn't get.
And clearly, now that they're kind of seeing some of the concerns come up, they've decided to add additional capabilities. What they're adding now versus what they added some months ago, that has remained unclear. There you start running into military capabilities and classification issues. And it's been vague. But clearly this plane did not have everything that the old Air Force One had.
FADEL: So the president admits this plane needs some upgrades, but then he bashes The New York Times for reporting about the concerns. I mean, why?
LAMOTHE: Yeah. I mean, I think you'd have to ask the president to that - to some degree. But really, I think what you're running into here is his concerns with the plane not standing up to scrutiny, really. This is a plane that everybody had questions about at the beginning. Wiring issues, communication issues and defensive capabilities was always something that people who study these issues said that this would be a concern. It has become a concern.
FADEL: How much risk would you say the president and his passengers faced on board the flight to Ankara for that NATO summit, given the Secret Service urged the president not to leave on that plane?
LAMOTHE: Yeah, I mean, I think there is some amount of risk here. I think given what we didn't know the plane had or didn't have, it's a little challenging to assess. Other world leaders all flew into the same summit. So I think that, you know, I think that's worth noting as well. But yeah, I mean, as this developed, and I think really what really may have changed the situation here - on July 7, as the president was in Turkey, they made the judgment call to start bombing Iran in a serious way again. That seems to maybe have had a factor on the risks here. You know, you kind of shifted the situation on the ground while you were much closer to Iran than you otherwise would've been.
FADEL: Dan Lamothe covers the military for The Washington Post. Thank you so much for your time.
LAMOTHE: Thank you. Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. Facebook Flipboard Email Read & Listen Home News Culture Music Podcasts & Shows Connect Newsletters Facebook Instagram Press Public Editor Corrections Transcripts Contact & Help About NPR Overview Diversity NPR Network Accessibility Ethics Finances Get Involved Support Public Radio Sponsor NPR NPR Careers NPR Shop NPR Extra Terms of Use Privacy Your Privacy Choices Text Only Sponsor Message Sponsor Message Become an NPR sponsor (function () { var loadPageJs = function () { (window.webpackJsonp=window.webpackJsonp||[]).push([[22],{310:function(e,n,o){o.p=NPR.serverVars.webpackPublicPath,Promise.all([o.e(1),o.e(2),o.e(3),o.e(4),o.e(80)]).then((e=>{o(15),o(769),o(155),o(176),o(93),o(447),o(254),o(128),o(130),o(754),o(175),o(755),o(255),o(78),o(773)}).bind(null,o)).catch(o.oe)},782:function(e,n,o){e.exports=o(310)}},[[782,0]]]); }; if (document.readyState === 'complete') { loadPageJs(); } else { window.addEventListener('load', function load() { window.removeEventListener('load', load, false); loadPageJs(); }); } })();