Homeland Security looks to buy a new $50M jet for secretary and Coast Guard officials

The Department of Homeland Security wants to spend about $50 million to buy a new long-range Gulfstream jet to replace an aging one used by Secretary Kristi Noem and top Coast Guard and DHS officials.

The request for funding, to come from the Coast Guard’s 2025 fiscal year budget, came up during a House appropriations subcommittee meeting on Wednesday. Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois said she was “horrified” to receive a “last-minute addition” to the service’s budget proposal for the jet, noting Noem has another Gulfstream to use.

“We should be investing in our national security and improving the lives of our Coasties — not wasting taxpayer dollars on luxury travel and political stunts,” Underwood, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations, said in a social media post. The Coast Guard is overseen by DHS.

The request for a new jet comes as President Donald Trump considers accepting a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar.

Adm. Kevin Lunday, the acting commandant, said the Coast Guard, like the other military services, operates two military “long-range command and control aircraft” and the one being replaced is more than 20 years old.

“Like a lot of the rest of our operational aviation fleet and our cutters and our boats and our shore facilities, it’s old and it’s approaching obsolescence and the end of its service life,” he said during the hearing. “The avionics are increasingly obsolete. The communications are increasingly unreliable, and it is in need of recapitalization like much of the fleet.”

Lunday, who became acting commandant on Jan. 21 after Trump, a Republican, fired Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan, said the jet is needed to provide the DHS secretary, deputy secretary, himself, the acting vice commandant and two area commanders with “secure, reliable, on-demand communications and movement to go forward.”

The current plane is also “outside the Gulfstream’s service life, and well beyond operational usage hours for a corporate aircraft,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a written statement, calling its replacement “a matter of safety.”

The agency did not immediately respond to questions about Noem’s use of the plane or other details about the agency’s request.

The Coast Guard received its other long-range command and control C-37B aircraft in 2022, saying at the time its mission was to “operate as a command and control platform anywhere in the world for the secretary of Homeland Security, the commandant of the Coast Guard, and other top DHS leadership.” That jet, which has a range of 5,000 nautical miles and can carry 12 people, is based at Coast Guard Air Station Washington, D.C.