where the leader of the Free World moves all things grind to a halt to allow safe passage or at least that's the plan and in the bustling ecosystem that surrounds the highest executive of the United States of America making sure presidential travel goes to plan is amongst the highest responsibilities a person could be charged with in this Ultra important role protecting the VIPs and VIPs success or failure can have staggering implications and the penalty for failure in the worst case scenario is nothing short of the demise of the most powerful person on Earth so today
on Mega projects we're going to dive into all the Planes Trains and Automobiles that enable America's highest office to function we'll be peering behind the curtains just how this whole system works and we'll take a close look at the real life Stakes of success or failure in a precise and careful dance that just can't go wrong when it comes to presidential trans sport no single car helicopter or ship could ever come close to the reputation of Air Force One the centerpiece of America's presidential Fleet Air Force 1 is widely regarded as the gold standard of
Transport that any national leader could hope to match before we can understand the aircraft that is Air Force One though we've got to understand what Air Force One actually is it's not an aircraft it's a designation it's common Pence across all spheres of the US military referring to any and all aircraft if president and thus the military's commander-in-chief is on board for example if the president were to take a flight on a US Army Blackhawk helicopter then that helicopter is now designated Army one if the president applies on a coast guard HC 144 to watch
a search and rescue mission in action then that's Coast Guard one if the president would strap into a Space Capsule and take a voyage to low earth orbit then that capsule will be called space force one if the president is flying civilian for whatever reason that craft is designated executive one and even if the president is taking a flight in an Air Force aircraft that isn't one of the iconic 747 so tied to the Air Force One designation then whatever aircraft the president is in will assume that title no matter the aircraft the message is
the same all operations all aircraft all flight control centers and whatever else all defer immediately to the president then there are the two planes we most commonly think of as Air Force One a player of extensively modified and customized Boeing 7472 200b aircraft designated with the US Air Force as the vc25a clocking in at a maximum takeoff weight of £833 th000 or roughly 378 metric tons and powered by four General Electric CF6 series turbofan engines generating some very impressive thrust the two aircraft are each served by Crews of 26 a flight crew including a pilot
co-pilot flight engineer a navigator and other elements including a cabin crew an onboard maintenance team than more stretching just a hair under 232 ft with a Wings span of 19 6 ft the BC 25A is able to hit Top speeds of 630 mph 1,4 km/ hour at its cruising altitude of 35,000 ft a cruising speeds it can fly for a range of 7,800 Mi if need be without refueling and it can fly to service ceiling of up to 4,100 Ft that's 13,700 M inside the aircraft the layout walks a fine line between utilitarianism and presidential
Elegance with all the trappings that fit a major world leader crammed and tucked away into every conceivable configuration equipped with two main decks the vc25a are constructed in a way that reserves essential functions to the uppermost floor and pushes most storage capacity into the aircraft's underbelly the main floor is meant nearly completely to facilitate presidential duties with 4,000 square ft set up for the benefit of the high executive on board is an Executive Suite for the president including two couches with the option to convert into beds alongside a private lavatory and shower a vanity a
double sink and a side office for work after the terror attacks of 9/11 the office was equipped with the requisite technology to allow the president to address America from the onboard office also on board the aircraft is a conference room with a 50-in plasma screen an additional 18 televisions office areas featuring some 87 telephones and a medical Annex with a foldout operating table and a fully stocked Pharmacy as well as a treadmill a pair of onor gys can feed up to 100 people simultaneously while senior staff security personnel and special guests get their own quarters
in a rare touch for a passenger aircraft the 747s include their own fold down stairs at the front and KN plus a fully self-contained baggage loading mechanism news media tis at the back of the plane and free movement around the aircraft is governed by a strict policy wherever a person is assigned within the plane they move anywhere rearward of that point as they please but they may not travel further toward the forward section than wherever they've been assigned outside the aircraft a good deal more happens outside the view of the president and other passengers Air
Force 1 is generally followed by a con itself carrying the president's helicopter the requisite vehicles to support the presidential motorgate additional personnel and a range of other equipment that Air Force One canot hold by itself in keeping with the plane's exceptionally high value as a strategic Target for American adversaries it's fitted out with a long list of known defensive measures including anti-missile counter measures radar jamming counter measures and both flares and chaff to throw missiles off its tail it's shielded against a nuclear electromagnetic pulse it's set up to act as a mobile military command center
and it can receive aerial fueling meaning that in the event of a crisis or even just an extra long flight it can stay in the air for far longer than the span of half a day or so that it would take to burn through its normal range and those are just the extent of Air Force One's known capabilities it's almost certainly got a whole lot more under the hood but the true scope of what it can do is veiled underneath layer upon layer of classified protection whatever those capabilities are they're likely to be rather comprehensive
for all the protective measures on board Air Force One it typically does not fly with any fighter escort and perhaps the aircraft's most important feature of all is its redundancy every element of the two vc25a are built to be resilient if they should fail from a specialized navigator on the flight team filling a role the pilots more than able to take over if need be to a mechanical team sitting ready to Service Parts that rarely fail but could lead to catastrophe if they were ever compromised even the presence of two planes rather than one is
a redundancy in itself one of the aircraft can always be serviced while the other is kept on standby for flight the aircraft are overseen by over a thousand person team at the 89th airlift Wing based at Andrew's Air Force Base in Maryland who also handle airlifting duties for the vice president members of the presidential cabinet foreign dignitaries and other very high priority VIPs and when in flight Air Force One is trailed by another plane that can take over its duties in the event of anything from inconvenience to catastrophe the US maintains a small Fleet of
Boeing 757s fitted out to do the job of its large account apart and designates one as a follow plane anytime Air Force One flies purchased with a minimal pay betrayal and hidden in secrecy they're different than the 4 757s that the US does publicly use to service the vice president and other high-ranking officials these shadowy counterparts are believed to have the hardware on board to connect the president with America's nuclear Arsenal and they're known to have a similar but scaled down interior fitting mimicking that of the typical Air Force One planes the vc25a was never
meant to Lost forever though and already its replacement is very near to arrival slated for introduction in 2027 and 2028 respectively the US Air Force has sourced two replacement aircraft presidential flight pair of late model Boeing 7478 aircraft to be designated the vc25b these aircraft are a bit larger than their predecessors with a range improved by nearly a th000 miles and they're comparable in just about every other aspect of performance while emitting significantly less CO2 although the process of getting them into service has been well not completely smooth they're expected to take over in the
next couple of years and they'll likely carry onboard updates bringing Air Force One fully into the 21st century but Air Force 1 isn't the only airworthy tool in the president's transport toolbag to find the other we've got to take a closer look at those Transport Aircraft that we mentioned flying behind Air Force One at all times with all the hardware the president and Company could ask for among that Hardware will be at least one in a series of helicopters designated Marine 1 like Air Force One Marine 1 is a naming convention for any Marine Core
aircraft carrying the president around but typically it refers to one of two sorts of aircraft currently in the employ of marine helicopter Squadron one the night Haws the first helicopter for consideration is a vintage one by any standard first flown in 1959 the Sikorski sh3 seeking has been otherwise retired and replaced by the US military but the presidency apparently has a soft spot for the things flyable at a top speed of 166 mph or 267 km per hour a typical Sea King can fly at a range of 625 Mi or a hair over 1,000 km
up to a service ceiling of 14,700 Ft the other helicopter in question is the White Hawk modified and specially designated version of the Black Hawk that provides a newer faster higher sealing alternative orbe it with reduced range at this time a fleet of over a dozen combined sea Kings and White Hawks work to handle both the president and other highlevel American Executives despite being a somewhat lower Tech set of aircraft than Air Force One the fleet of potential Marin one helicopters are the president's preferred method of covering short distances given its logistical ease and relative
safety when compared to a motorcade sometimes it's the way the president gets to and from Air Force One other times Air Force One will bring the president to a state a region or another country and it'll be up to Marine One to do all the other fing about during a trip inside it's fitted with basic conference tables wood paneling and seats for a handful of presidential guests in terms of security it's often flown in Disguise despite its distinctive pain job rather than blending into the background Marine One typically flies alongside up to four other aircraft
from the same Marine unit with the one holding the president not distinguished in any way those decoys plus a constant shifting around in the helicopter's flight order is usually enough to provide Peace of Minds and all helicopters of the group are equipped with anti-missile counter measures like flares and chaff when it's time to be transported around the helicopters are more than capable of being staffed into a C7 Globe master or a C5 Galaxy showing up wherever the president is headed and waiting on standby in the event that they should be needed like Air Force 1
the Aging Marine One fleet has found itself up for replacement in this case duties will eventually be taken over by a specially developed military variant of the sori s92 designated the VH 92 Patriot capable of flight at speeds of 190 mes per hour it's 306 km per hour with a 620 M range and a surface ceiling of 14,000 ft the base s92 is capable of flying 14 passengers alongside a crew of four and by and large it's an improvement on both aircraft that the Marine One Fleet currently employs but unfortunately the program is way over
budget and way behind schedule expected to procure a total of 23 helicopters when it was agreed on back in 2015 the program hasn't yet put a single Chopper into presidential Serv as nearly a decade later and problems from Communications equipment issues to dangerous exhaust and fuel Leakes to concerns that the helicopters rotors would burn the grass of the White House lawn have all come up now unfortunately for all our fellow train nerds out there it's far less common to find an American president riding the rails today than it used to be back in the day
presidents with names like Lincoln and Roosevelt were treated to bespoke rail cars as the height of luxury roughly equivalent of the value that a massive private jet holds for today's presidents with no nuclear launch codes to worry about no devastating EMP bursts on the horizon and not so much to worry about in so far as what would have to imagine would be called train interceptors not really a thing presidential trains were mostly used to conduct Whistle Stop tours Across America during campaign season these days between busy and sometimes under reped Rail lines a lack of
adequate route protection for Journeys hundreds of miles long and the unfortunate reality the trains in America aren't much of a thing anymore having a presidential rail car would probably be a bit much but that doesn't mean that there's not anything close what the presidency does have access to is a private Railway car owned by a man in Florida named Jack Hur while it's not officially designated a piece of government property the rail car has been a fixture for American presidents and presidential candidates and it's gained a reputation as the train car that a president would
use if they intended to do so the rail car named the Georgia 300 has carried George HW Bush Bill Clinton Barack Obama and presidential candidate John Kerry each of whom used it as part of their campaign duties by all accounts the rail car is quite nice to be inside of a Pullman car dating to the year 1930 it's got a rear observation deck plus an interior dining room a lounge master bedroom two extra bedrooms the resident's traveling companions two shower equipped bathrooms a second lounge a kitchen and quarters for an onboard crew all stuffed into
just the single car it's able to be slapped onto the back of most amra trains and could travel on most track in the US when it travels with the president on board it's subject to all the same following entourages as Air Force One would be albeit with a significantly modified Secret Service protocol to keep the track safe especially at Road Crossings whether it too is equipped with anti-missile flares and shaff we suppose we don't technically know but we wouldn't recommend getting your hopes up and thanks to some particularly recent history there's one more informal addition
to the list of presidential trains that bears discussion and that would be rail force one an informly nicknamed train used by President Joe Biden during an ultra secret trip to Kev in Ukraine during the Eastern European nations war with Russia during this trip Biden joined Ukrainian President Vladimir zalinsky for a 400m train ride Eastward from the Polish border getting into Kiev making quick tour and getting the hell out before most of the world realized he was there it was a rare instance of an American president traveling into areas where the us or Allied Nations had
not secured the airspace meaning that Air Force One as well as the president's usual Entourage could not follow behind whether rail force one got any cover from overhead it's impossible to say but at least on board the train Biden was known to be in a state of significantly lowered security relative to anything an American president would get in a normal situation according to photos taken by an accompanying photographer the accommodations were quite nice including at the very least a pretty nice looking conference room and finally we come to the Beast the armored up tank-like limousine
that American Presidents rely on to get from place to place although presidential road vehicles Trace their lineage to William Howard Taft's favorite steam car from which you would spout a column of the staff to hide himself from the Press when need be the newest iteration of the Beast are two models produced for the most recent few presidents one introduced in 200 1 and one in 2009 and the latest introduced in 2018 each of those cars are operated by the Secret Service and referred to properly as Cadillac one well with somewhere around 10 limousines in each
line at a bare minimum we assume you can guess the part that comes next Cadillac 1 or the Beast is a Monica used to refer to whatever nightmare of a motor vehicle the president is riding in at a given moment despite some significant differences between the older and newer Beast cast some things remain the same heavily armored and out fitted with thick doors a nonon impenetrable chassis and inches of bulletproof glass the cars are believed to have their own internal Air Supply assigned to specific parts of the vehicle so that if say the driver were
compromised with the gas attack the passengers inside could remain safe from the same toxin fitted with run flat tires that can drive away even after being popped the cars are understood to be exceptionally heavy and almost certainly feature Underside armor to guard against mines and improvised explosive devices even in its older iterations the Beast was an impressive piece of Machinery resilient to attack and able to fulfill any Duty you could ask of it but the newer Generations well they take personal protection to another level the 2009 iteration of the Beast got its first use in
service to her president by giving Barack Obama his first driver as a presidents on January the 20th 2009 the Beast drove Obama down Pennsylvania Avenue from the side of his inauguration to the side of his ensuing parade a custombuilt Cadillac that version of the Beast wasn't based on any existing model from the manufacturer fitted with the kinds of Wheels you'll typically see on heavyduty trucks it was estimated to weigh anywhere from1 15,000 to £20,000 that's 6,800 to 99,100 kg with a relatively low top speed of just 60 MPH but all that added weights was for
a very good reason in addition to its 5-in thick glass and it semetic sealed wmd resistant interior it carried a night vision Optical display a cannon to deploy tear gas onboard reserves of oxygen an armored fuel tank to guard against explosion and at the very least some shotguns alongside suspected rocket propelled grenades specifically train see Service agents rode with the president at all times and one would always be equipped with the materials and devices to diagnose and fix just about any problem that the Beast might encounter during a drive also on board were an encrypted
satellite phone and a video system by which the president could conference in with the Situation Room the Pentagon overseas embassies or a range of other us entities all the while its interior was finally manicured and behind its bomb resistant 8in thick doors the president and any chosen ridealong buddies could enjoy a smooth drive at the height of luxury said one former presidential driver about what it felt like for Obama to drive inside quoting here I think he will be surprised about how when he's in the limo it's a cocoon the everyday noises will be gone
and he will be totally isolated in this protective envelope at the same time I think he will be surprised that the communication capabilities how the phones the satellites the internet everything is at his fingertips the price tag of each of Obama's dozen such cars by the way over a million dollars and as impressive as that version of the Beast was it was just the beginning the current presidential line of vehicles went into service in 2018 clocking in at a similar weight and a somewhat higher price tag than their predecessor it includes all the bells and
whistles of the prior vehicle plus a bit extra including extra supplies of blood in the same blood type as the president and additional defensive measures like canisters enabling it to create smoke screens and oil slicks on the road its armor is enhanced constructed from a combination of aluminium steel and ceramic while its exterior walls have been beefed up to a thickness of 8 in it even features electrified door handles that can be activated to deliver potent electric shocks to people trying to force their way in its doors clog in at about the same weight as
the doors of a Boeing 757 and as would be both remiss not to mention and truthfully just sort of love saying these are just the capabilities that we know about yes even the latest edition of the Beast isn't the only machine responsible for presidential road travel we've also got to talk about a far lesser known device the fleet of black armored buses referred to as Ground Force One these are a new addition to the presidential Arsenal as of 2011 replacing an older policy to Charter and retrofit rented buses as needed for things like campaign doors
the new Ground Force One buses are specially designed featuring 505 ft of space inside and equipped with exterior police star blue and red lights it's outfitted with all sorts of communications technology and is expected to include the hermetically sealed interior the fire suppression systems the Presidential blood supply and probably the onboard arsenal of the Beast as well but by all accounts it's otherwise is quite unremarkable generally speaking it's not pulled out too often but when it is it's yet another vital tool in getting the president from point A to point B just as important as
the vehicles themselves are the presidential motorcade a precise and very very complete procession of vehicles that lead and follow the president's car wherever it may go presidential motor Gades are a bit like say lobsters and they tend to grow and grow the older they get and the modern presidential mate is a hell of an organism it starts with the police escort local or state cops driving ahead of the motor Cade's intended route and shutting it down so that whether it's a single Lane back street or a 12 Lane freeway the motorcade has it all to
itself with zero risk of attack or accident from other traffic then more police lead the way driving inform formation followed by the meat of the fallons heavy sport utility vehicles under the command of the secret service inside are not just a mindboggling number of Agents with big guns and nice suits but essential presidential staff cars fitted to provide electronic counter measures a counter assault team that could Shield the president and organize an escape in the event of an attack a HazMat team press Vans at least one accompanying ambulance and at times even more of them
if the president is traveling in the Beast then there won't be just one of The Cadillacs on the road instead there will be two or even three making it so that even if a person with bad intentions lined up their shot at the president just right they've got at best a 50/50 shot of even selecting the right car with the complexity of organizing such an operation it's not hard to understand the reality we noted earlier that typically the Secret Service would just use Marine one if they can but their job often Isn't So straightforward and
when it isn't the motorcade answers the call and finally there's one last element to touch on when it comes to the president's Motor Vehicles the way it ends its time in service every true Beast has to have a fitting demise and these ones are no different and they end in what we can only describe as a secret service agent Best Day Ever when the same organization that operates the Beast attempts to destroy it by any means necessary with small arm fire sometimes heavier fire and all the explosives their hearts could desire the Secret Service sets
to work testing the limits of the Beast for one final time in the process they leave it a burned out wreck and ensure that the secret Technologies and layers of armor it held within its 8in walls are lost to history [Music] forever yet even with such an exhaustive list of luxurious Fortress planes and nonon indestructible limousines there's a whole other level to presidential travel that little to do with physical Hardware behind the scenes the act of getting an American president someplace is akin to the act of moving a mountain both in terms of the amount
of heavy lifting that has to be done and the sheer Manpower required to pull it off the key players involved with that process are known as the presidential Advanced team and it's their job to work weeks days or mere hours ahead of a president to ensure that everything that could topple into the path of America's commander-in-chief is already dealt with by the time the presidential boots hit the ground rather than just one team the presidential Advanced team is an anel with various smaller teams preparing for individual trips individual location visits broad scope Logistics and more
if a president or today say a one-week trip across five European cities then it's on the advanced team to send a small army of personnel to each of those cities potentially even weeks in advance in order to get every single element just right this includes everything from protocols for high level meetings and interactions to minute-by-minute scheduling and travel itineraries to Personnel assignments to making sure that after the president gets back to the hotel room after a long day of doing presidential things the right flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream is waiting in the freezer
alongside the White House team are the military and security factors that permeate every element of a presidential trip this includes scoping out and locking down potential travel routes planning for each vehicle in a motor Cate providing training or materials to local police to get them ready and anticipating things like large crowds hostile or adversarial locals and much more presidential travel is typically planned to function as a sort of closed vessel anything the president might need on a trip that can't be picked up locally is going to be prepackaged and included on the accompanying cargo planes
or trucks rather than waiting for the president to need or want that thing that isn't there cultural religious and political local sensitivities play a big part as well not just in ensuring that a president is well trained enough to not embarrass the United States by giving a CTO when a handshake is more appropriate but ensuring that the president's Journey doesn't put American America's highest executive in a place that would royally piss off a local population and make violence more likely every presidential Quirk Oddity preference annoying little tendency and possible whim must be accounted for and
every plan must be laid out not only with the requisite contingencies and backup plans but with the expectation that with a wave of the hands and a hairbrained idea America's commander-in-chief has the authority to throw all of those plans straight out the window and to some extent that final note is the best way to express America's presidential travel system in a nutshell it's highly unpredictable it's incredibly complex it requires the best aircraft vehicles and security teams that the US government can buy and even then it might still not be enough it's a system like any
other prone to failure and with constant and critical vulnerabilities lurking just below the surface but that just makes it all the more important that at the end of the day the system works flawlessly America and the president who holds its highest office simply cannot abide anything less [Music] [Music]
