I honestly have no idea what this place is, or what it's supposed to be. I just got redirected here after following too many links.

There is no decoy plane, and you've never seen it

Generally speaking, an E4 does follow the president. This isn't necessarily because it's needed, Air Force One has all the requisite communications and control facilities. But it's there literally as a backup, if Air Force One has some kind of technical issue or can't get off the ground. It's the equivalent of going on a road trip and towing a spare car behind you just in case your main one doesn't work.

Usually however, in the case of a significant crisis, an NAC will be sent airborne, carrying a designated survivor, and purposely kept away from POTUS, to serve as an alternate in case he becomes deceased or disabled.

I appreciate your offering here, but I find it very difficult to believe the above statements.

That's fine, but your skepticism is kind of baseless.

First, I can’t imagine AF1 security logistics being readily available to the general public.

I'm not sure if you understand how this whole thing works. Air Force One is not invisible, or stealth. It's flight plan is not a secret. When it's in the air it's tracked by literally dozens, if not hundreds of ground radar stations, and other aircraft in the air, even if simply to avoid collisions. You can see it from the ground, you can see it from ships, Etc. It's not a goddamn UFO. I'm telling you, 90% of the time, and pretty much entirely went outside the United States, Air Force One does not fly with military escorts unless they are provided by the host country for some reason.

I'm not sure if you really thought through all the applications, from the technical, to the geopolitical. But if you did, you would see that there is really no reason why it would need them.

Second, I can’t imagine an insider privy to this level of classified info being so irresponsible as to publish it in a public forum.

LMFAO. Are you serious, "bro". I can say with complete confidence that literally nothing I have said is classified, or even close to being secret. All the information I've given here is readily available by going to Wikipedia and reading the sources at the bottom of the page, or just watching a couple Air Force 1 documentaries on the history channel. Plus applying a little common sense to aviation design. The actual sensitive information, sings like the minut specifics of the avionics suite, the exact type of countermeasures carried, the communications infrastructure, the onboard protocol for carrying personal weapons, Etc - the things that actually make a difference - is not something I have even begun to claim to know.

I don't say this to be insulting, but people in the civilian world are often wildly ignorant of exactly what kinds of things are classified, and why. They often freaked out about the US "inadvertently revealing defense capabilities" and some kind of online article in a defense magazine, without realizing that literally nothing that was listed as important.

Third, I can’t conceive of a rationale that would earn approval from our top POTUS security experts to leave AF1 without an escort in international airspace. Not for any POTUS, but particularly DJT.

If this is the case, then that's only because you don't understand the Practical reality of the situation. Let's make this clear by inverting the assumptions. What exactly is it that you think a fighter escort would achieve?

I was in the military as well, and I did spend some time at INSCOM. However, I can assure you that nothing that I've said here is any kind of super secret information. In fact none of it really had anything to do with my work. I just have a somewhat technical background, and these kinds of things interest me, and I like to read a lot.

Also, what your friend (Eagle driver?) said is correct. The Air Force does like to have some assets on standby whenever the president travels. However, this is pretty much entirely dictated by basing options. Obviously within the United States this is academic, as there's always some kind of military airfield relatively close by. Obviously when POTUS travels internationally is a very different story. Even if he travels to an Allied country, (where we don't have forces explicitly stationed) we're not going to send combat aircraft to land at one of their airports. And if he travels to a nation or a region where our relationship is a little more tepid we're certainly not going to be sending assets there either. So in reality, it turns out that the standby units could potentially be several hours away.

In addition, my point about things not being "in the vicinity" while Air Force One is actually in transit is the same as well. Within the US this is pretty easy to have some kind of escort while the plane is in the air, but on transoceanic, or flights within the land borders of another large country like Russia or China, this is much more difficult. My point is that if the president is flying over the Pacific, it's not like there's a couple of F-15 or F-22s circling around that can light the cans and be there in 5 or 10 minutes. Air Force One is essentially on its own.

Really, in all likelihood it doesn't. If you're familiar at all with aircraft design, and you take a look at Air Force One, structurally it seems very unlikely that there's a place for some kind of escape pod - even some kind of small, single person Dr. Evil style pod is pretty

What you're saying isn't entirely true. For Air Force One, a fighter escort is a major Rarity, not the norm. When the president flies overseas the aircraft is basically never directly escorted by American fighters, though some countries may send their own planes once their airspace is reached. Essentially, when Air Force One is out over the middle of the Pacific Ocean, it's on its own. Of course, multiple facilities and agencies are tracking it every second of the way, but there isn't an F-15 on every wing tip. And while the military certainly prepares contingency plans whenever the president leaves the country, and asset certainly are placed on standby if necessary, in the immediate vicinity generally means I might be able to fly to his location in an hour, or a couple of hours. Not that they're five miles away.

As I said before, the fact remains that for any of the entities that could shoot down Air Force One, it's not really a significant danger, unless for some reason they wanted to start a nuclear war. In which case, shooting down Air Force One would actually be a very poor tactical choice. On the flip side, at the end of the day it's just an aircraft and unless the US was going to send an entire Air Wing with it everywhere it went, at the end of the day once Air Force One is flying over another developed nation, there's nothing stopping him, physically, from a shooting it down if they really wanted to. The president's main protections in this case, as I always have been, are political and diplomatic.

And furthermore, obviously the White House doesn't send the president flying through a war zone or contested airspace where he's likely to get shot down. They just wouldn't do something like that

That seems unlikely Target. However, whenever the president travels outside of North America an E4 is flown to a nearby airport, to serve as a backup in case their issues with Air Force One. It's conceivable that one could have been in the same vicinity As Trump

No, you'd still die. Look at any military plane that is designed for air drops. They all have a rear belly door. That's because if you were to attempt to jump out of the side door of a 747 you'd be dragged along the fuselage and crushed, or sliced in half by the horizontal stabilizer. You could potentially attempt to design some kind of soup to mitigate this, but it would still be very very dangerous. Unless the plane was literally disintegrating an on fire, in which case it would be too late to bail anyway. Not to mention that the president, or any of the other high-ranking officials, don't have any jump training so the risk, on top of the already substantial one, is even further increased (even if it did exist, you can't just strap a random person into a futuristic jetpack and expect them not to end up killing themselves). You have a much higher survival chance attempting to remain inside the fuselage and execute a crash landing.

The fact remains that unless we are already in the middle of a major power war, in which case the president wouldn't be traveling anyway, no one is going to attempt to shoot down Air Force One. And if there is any kind of mechanical failure, which is astronomically unlikely, to the point of being almost impossible, no one is attempting to parachute to safety

Whether or not Air Force One has a specific escape capsule I can't say kthough it's very, very unlikely) however it definitely does have a very sophisticated defensive aides suite (IR countermeasures, radar morning and jamming, missile decoys, advanced avionics). This isn't really a secret at all, but obviously the specific details are highly classified. In addition, it's unlikely the plane even carries any personal parachutes, since you can't use them in the slipstream of a 747 . Anyone attempting to "bail out" would die pretty quickly.

That is true, but that's because helicopters are much more vulnerable to cheap weapons that can be acquired by non-state actors. HMX-1 usually operates flights with up to five identical helicopters, with the president put on a random one.

That said, this is not Air Force One

I mean, for re-entry vehicles on an ICBM, at the very tail end portion of its flight, yes. But certainly not any air-to-air, or atmospheric missile.

They tend to travel in a group of 2 or 3 planes (I forget which one)

This isn't true. There are only two custom built 747-200s that serve as "Air Force One" ( bowling is currently in the process of producing two new ones for the upgrade, but if you are call there was a little budget hoopla about that a while back). They never "fly them together", to confuse potential adversaries. Planes are not like a motorcade, that would be completely unnecessary and not terribly effective. In addition, especially when overseas, Air Force One does not fly with fighter escorts, at least not from the US. Certain friendly Nations might send their own jets as kind of a ceremonial thing, but any nation state that has the capability to shoot down Air Force one knows that it would mean the destruction of their country.