President Donald Trump said Monday that he’s building a granite helipad on the White House lawn, insisting that the landing area is needed to accommodate new, more powerful presidential choppers.
Confirmation of the project came as construction crews had already begun working on the helipad on the South Lawn, where the president had UFC build a temporary arena for a cage fight celebrating his 80th birthday. He said the project would be privately funded and estimated its cost at up to $6 million.
“It’s got the seal of the White House on it in granite, in carved granite,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s really a beautiful thing.”
The Republican president did not offer details on how long the work would take. It is the latest major construction project he has overseen in an effort to increasingly mold the White House in his own image.
The helipad will be able to handle new choppers, Trump says
Some of Trump’s major White House construction projects have relied on public money, even when the president initially suggested otherwise. Still, Trump said Sikorsky Aircraft, a subsidiary of defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin, would be paying for the helipad.
Asked about the cost of the project and a timeline for its completion, Lockheed Martin responded with a statement reading in part: “This specific contribution was made to the National Park Service” and “conducted in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
In 2024, Sikorsky completed a new fleet of helicopters for use as Marine One, and President Joe Biden took the first flight aboard a modern VH-92A Patriot helicopter on his way to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — the same day the military announced Sikorsky delivered the last of the 23 new aircraft.
A Sikorsky spokesperson said Monday that the new helicopters deliver “increased performance and reduced maintenance costs and time.”
But Trump said the newer aircraft were more powerful than Vietnam War-era choppers that long had been used as Marine One, and the modern ones were too potent to land on the White House lawn without damaging the grass.
“It’s not that the grass gets discolored — it gets ripped out,” the president said.
Indeed, the new helicopters have seen limited service because their exhaust vents aim heat downward, scorching the White House South Lawn.
The Marines and Sikorsky have spent years trying to find a solution to the problem, which has meant that the new helicopters haven’t been used at the White House. Trump recalled telling a group of gathered military generals that a White House helipad would solve those problems.
The president said Sikorsky was building the helipad and paying the “full cost” because they “felt a little bit guilty” that the new fleet of helicopters was too powerful to land at the White House.
Trump also said he told builders to “do a beauty” and suggested using granite rather than simply laying concrete and painting it white.
“You’re landing on granite, which is the strongest stone,” the president said, noting that the completed landing pad could also be used for other events, like outdoor White House news conferences. He added that the helipad will allow officials to “finally retire 45-year-old helicopters” that had been used as Marine One.
Trump’s other projects to remake the White House include tearing up part of the Rose Garden for a patio space reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and affixing partisan plaques to the wall of the colonnade for a Presidential Walk of Fame.
Trump also had crews redo the bathroom attached to the Lincoln Bedroom and renovate the Palm Room, place new flagpoles on the north and south lawns and demolish the entire East Wing for a sprawling ballroom.
Efforts to improve presidential helicopters go back decades
While the term “Marine One” is applied to a variety of helicopter models that transport presidents, the most iconic and longest serving helicopter to take on the mission is the specially modified VH-3D Sea King helicopter that first entered service in 1978.
In the early 2000s, President George W. Bush, a Republican, began an effort to modernize the helicopter fleet, but the program ran into cost overruns, leading it to be scrapped by President Barack Obama’s administration.
Obama, a Democrat, restarted the program, but new technical issues emerged, and it wasn’t until May 2014 that the military finally awarded Sikorsky a contract to build the next presidential helicopter — the VH-92A Patriot, which were the aircraft delivered in 2024.
A Marine Corps spokesman, Capt. Jacob M. Sugg, declined to comment on matters pertaining to the White House property. But he said the Marine One squadron currently consists of nine Sikorsky VH-3D Sea Kings that were first deployed in the 1970s, as well as six Sikorsky VH-60Ns deployed in the late 1980s and 10 of the newer VH-92A Patriots.
Trump says ‘a lot of love is being put into the White House’
Later Monday, Trump addressed a lunch in the Rose Garden patio space and detailed yet another White House construction project, this one to revamp the columns on the building’s north side.
Crews have erected scaffolding and Trump said, “We’ve taken about 150 years of paint off of the columns,” noting, “If you don’t strip the paint off, it gets worse and worse and worse.”
“A lot of love is being put into the White House,” Trump said.
He didn’t say who would be covering the cost of the column work.
