retiring Presidential Fleet

Clayton Ashley wrote:
Again, the thought is that the military would be glad to hand off
this mission to a dedicated team.

Clayton, you're right the the money is a small amount compared to the
federal budget, but you may be being optimistic about the cost of
such an operation.

The maintenance on an older aircraft like the H-3 is in the ballpark
of 30 MMH/FH, and the dollar cost a few thousand dollars per flight
hour. So the total cost would approach a cool million per aircraft
per year if, as Dave S said, you want to keep the aircrews reasonably
proficient at this kind of work.

I figure there are a lot of much less worthy, more expensive programs
run by public money, but my cynical side tells me there are probably
much better and cheaper ideas killed off.