New White House Helipad for New Marine One

President Trump’s new Qatari-gifted interim, or bridge, Air Force One has been in the news recently due to questions about its security and defensive capabilities. However, on a more positive but related note, Trump is now building a new, first-ever, helipad at the White House for the new, fully mission-capable Marine One helicopter, and building it fast.

And yes, as I will explain below, the president needs it.

Trump has previously said there is “no harder zoning thing to get” than a helipad, but has added that still, “I always was lucky, I always got helipads. Other people don’t. Very hard to get. The hardest thing to get is a helipad, OK?”

In this case, it was a lot easier as the White House has said that “operational upgrades to the White House grounds, such as the helipad installation, do not require commission reviews.”

Currently under construction on the White House South Lawn, what is expected to be a stunning 100-foot round black granite helipad, etched with the presidential seal, is needed to accommodate the impressive Sikorsky-built VH-92A Patriot helicopter, which will serve as the new Marine One.

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More recently Trump made a dramatic entrance to the FIFA World Cup Final in New Jersey aboard the new Marine One after a flyover of the MetLife Stadium.

Work on the helipad started last month, shortly after a makeshift stadium built to host an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight significantly damaged the South Lawn.

Dana White, the UFC president, had set aside $700,000 to repair the lawn after the June 14 event. But Trump instead decided to take advantage of the existing damage to the lawn to forge ahead immediately with the helipad he had long wanted.

He is also apparently in a rush to complete the pad before the upcoming state visit by China’s Xi Jinping in September. Trump always has deadlines for key events.

The helipad marks a major change to the traditional image of presidents departing from the White House lawn, where prior Marine One variants have historically landed directly on the grass, using small portable aluminum pads for the wheels.

However, the new birds’ engines and downward facing exhausts has limited their use over concerns about damaging and burning the lawn.

The president and his entourage will now be able to walk on a paved walkway directly to the pad from the White House without stepping on wet or muddy grass. This is an issue Trump also highlighted with regard to the -- now paved -- grassy area of the Rose Garden.

The VH-92A Patriot made its first presidential flight in 2024, carrying Joe Biden. Although the aircraft has entered service with the Marine Corps’ HMX-1 presidential lift helicopter squadron, older helicopters in its fleet have continued to be used for most White House operations because of those South Lawn concerns.

While some critics are already bashing the new helipad as another Trump vanity project or folly, it really is the only way to make good use of the very expensive and very capable new Marine One helicopter. It will also allow the Marines to finally retire the 45-year-old helicopters still being used.

For those TDS-infected Democrat critics pouncing on the cost to the taxpayer, Trump announced that the $5-6 million landing pad would be funded by Lockheed, which now owns Sikorsky Aircraft, in part because the company reportedly didn’t properly disclose or explain the potential engine exhaust problem to the Marines before initial testing in 2018 uncovered the problem.

A Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said the company has already donated the funds for the helipad to the National Park Service.

The Marine One fleet is currently made up of three Sikorsky helicopter types: the older VH-3D Sea King, introduced in the late 1970s; the VH-60N White Hawk, a variant of the ubiquitous Blackhawk, introduced in the late 1980s; and the newer VH-92A Patriot.

The VH-92A was developed to replace the ageing VH-3D and VH-60N aircraft with a more modern platform offering greater capacity, improved communications, and increased mission capability.

The new Marine One’s interior features a highly secure, much more modern and elegant soundproofed cabin that seats up to 14 passengers, complete with plush leather seating, and a private lavatory. It also has military-grade encrypted communication, ballistic armor, anti-missile defense systems and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) shielding.

It is also the first presidential first helicopter equipped with SpaceX Starshield satellite communications.

To ensure maximum security, Marine One always flies in a formation of up to five identical helicopters, with the President on board only one of them, with the others serving as decoys. And now it will be able to land regularly on its own pad on the South Lawn of the White House, wet, muddy, or dry.

Paul Crespo, a well known conservative commentator, and President of the Center for American Defense Studies, brings decades of experience and insight to the issues that most threaten America – at home and abroad.

As a Marine Corps combat arms officer, he served aboard ships with a Marine Expeditionary Unit — Special Operations Capable (MEU-SOC) in the Pacific, and jumped from helicopters and airplanes.

He was also an intelligence officer and military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at U.S. embassies in the Persian Gulf, Balkans and Latin America.

A graduate of Georgetown, London and Cambridge universities, he ran for congress, taught university political science courses, wrote editorials for a major newspaper and co-hosted his own radio show.

He has also been a private military and security contractor overseas in Africa and Latin America — and still dabbles in it, when called. But he now also brings all that knowledge and expertise to you.