Homeland Security eyes new $50M jet for Noem, Coast Guard officials

The Division of Homeland Safety needs to spend about $50 million to purchase a brand new long-range Gulfstream jet to switch an growing older one utilized by Secretary Kristi Noem and high Coast Guard and DHS officers.

The request for funding, to come back from the Coast Guard’s 2025 fiscal 12 months funds, got here up throughout a Home appropriations subcommittee assembly on Wednesday. Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois mentioned she was “horrified” to obtain a “last-minute addition” to the service’s funds proposal for the jet, noting Noem has one other Gulfstream to make use of.

“We needs to be investing in our nationwide safety and bettering the lives of our Coasties — not losing taxpayer {dollars} on luxurious journey and political stunts,” Underwood, the rating member of the Homeland Safety Subcommittee on Appropriations, mentioned in a social media submit. The Coast Guard is overseen by DHS.

The request for a brand new jet comes as President Donald Trump considers accepting a luxurious Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a present from the ruling household of Qatar.

Adm. Kevin Lunday, the performing commandant, mentioned the Coast Guard, like the opposite navy companies, operates two navy “long-range command and management plane” and the one being changed is greater than 20 years previous.

“Like numerous the remainder of our operational aviation fleet and our cutters and our boats and our shore services, it’s previous and it’s approaching obsolescence and the top of its service life,” he mentioned in the course of the listening to. “The avionics are more and more out of date. The communications are more and more unreliable, and it’s in want of recapitalization like a lot of the fleet.”

Lunday, who grew to become performing commandant on Jan. 21 after Trump, a Republican, fired Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, mentioned the jet is required to supply the DHS secretary, deputy secretary, himself, the performing vice commandant and two space commanders with “safe, dependable, on-demand communications and motion to go ahead.”

The present airplane can be “outdoors the Gulfstream’s service life, and nicely past operational utilization hours for a company plane,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin mentioned in a written assertion, calling its substitute “a matter of security.”

The company didn’t instantly reply to questions on Noem’s use of the airplane or different particulars concerning the company’s request.

The Coast Guard obtained its different long-range command and management C-37B plane in 2022, saying on the time its mission was to “function as a command and management platform anyplace on this planet for the secretary of Homeland Safety, the commandant of the Coast Guard, and different high DHS management.” That jet, which has a variety of 5,000 nautical miles and may carry 12 individuals, is predicated at Coast Guard Air Station Washington, D.C.