Originally Posted by
Brillo
With regard to the A380 being a nonstarter, setting aside the not insignificant political issue of the President's plane being American made, are clearance problems.
Every person that works on that production line has to be cleared to an insane level. The American companies that deal with the presidential helos/planes struggle with this. There's no conceivable way a foreign company, much less one that builds pieces of their plane in multiple different countries, could ever get through the hurdles to get all the required personnel cleared.
They don't have to be cleared to an insane level but they would need background checks and a clearance for some jobs. It would be very hard for a foreign company to keep control of that overseas, although it could be done on US shores. But setting up a CONUS production facility for three airplanes would not make economic sense, to put it very mildly.
All US defense contractors struggle with clearance issues, because many (most?) tech workers in America are not US citizens and are thus ineligible for a clearance.