TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050691/0506102.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 118 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 24

Is This Plane Necessary?


The Air Force is set to launch the costliest procurement program
ever, with or without a debate on its merits

By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT -- Reported by Edwin M. Reingold/Los
Angeles and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    Standing in the hangar under bright spotlights, the YF-22
Lightning looks just like what it is: a low-slung, sharply
angled killing machine. In the air, the advanced jet fighter is
not only fast (sprinting up to twice the speed of sound) and
agile (pitching and rolling like a Piper Cub) but almost
invisible to enemy radar. If the Air Force has its way, the
plane will rule the skies for the better part of the 21st
century.

    The YF-22 was the winner last week of an intensive
five-year competition for the richest prize in the history of
military procurement: a contract for 650 jets costing nearly
$100 million apiece. To be built by Lockheed, Boeing and General
Dynamics, the YF-22 beat out the YF-23 Gray Ghost, a
Northrop-McDonnell Douglas project, for the honor of succeeding
the venerable F-15 Eagle, now more than 15 years old. The full
cost of the new Advanced Tactical Fighter, stretched out over
more than two decades, could exceed $95 billion in today's
dollars -- $32 billion more than the contract for the B-2
Stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in Pentagon history.

    Overshadowed by the furious debate surrounding the B-2,
the ATF project was largely shielded from public scrutiny until
last week, when Air Force Secretary Donald Rice announced the
winner. Suddenly, after the expenditure of nearly $3.5 billion
in development funds, official Washington was raising the
questions that should have been asked five years ago: Who needs
this jet? What is it for? And why does it cost so much? As Leon
Panetta, chairman of the House Budget Committee, points out, "It
is hard to justify building $100 million airplanes" in the light
of the current budget deficit and increasingly urgent domestic
needs.

    The debate centers not on the merits of the YF-22 -- no
one seems to have anything bad to say about it -- but on the
role of the U.S. in the post-cold war era. Even the Pentagon
concedes that the Soviet Union is in such a state of internal
disarray that it is unlikely to launch an offensive against the
U.S. or any other NATO country. As for the rest of the world,
Operation Desert Storm has just delivered an indelible lesson
in the superiority of America's existing technology.

    The Air Force replies that the Soviets remain a threat, if
not as an actual combatant, then as the chief arms dealer to
Third World nations that the U.S. may someday have to fight.
Many of these countries are already equipped with Soviet
planes, such as the MiG-23, MiG-29 and SU-27, that are
"aerodynamically competitive" with the F-15. Being as good as
the Soviets' best is not good enough, especially when flying
against an enemy that may have its entire air force at its
disposal. "When you're a pilot, you don't want equality," says
Ben Lambeth, a senior analyst at the Rand Corp. "You want to be
the biggest gorilla in the sky." Thus, the emphasis on stealth
and other technologies that give pilots the capability called
"first look, first kill."

    Critics reply that it is misleading to emphasize the speed
and maneuverability of comparable Soviet planes. More important
in the age of first-look, first-kill aircraft is how far
combatants can see, and that is largely a function of computers
and electronics, where the U.S. retains a huge edge.

    Others question the Air Force's requirement that the ATF
be both stealthy and highly maneuverable, a specification that
helped push the cost of the plane to more than double that of
the F-15. Planes must be agile to win dogfights, but since the
ATF is supposed to destroy enemy aircraft long before it is
seen, such encounters should never occur.

    The strongest argument against the ATF is its cost.
Speaking at a hearing of a Senate Armed Services subcommittee
last week, Congressional Budget Office analyst Robert Hale
declared that under its current budget restrictions, the Air
Force simply cannot afford the plane. To build the full
complement of ATFs will require either dropping the Multi-Role
Fighter (the successor to the smaller F-16) or further reducing
overall air strength.

    Hale offered a variety of strategies for coping with this
shortfall, ranging from canceling the ATF and replacing it with
an upgraded (but still not stealthy) version of the existing
F-15s to ordering only a handful of ATFs and deploying them in
a small force of killer fighters: "silver bullets" in the jargon
of the field. Congressman Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, had earlier put forward a compromise that
would continue research on the ATF but hold off on procurement,
staying for now with the F-15.

    In the current political climate, these arguments are not
likely to carry much weight. The entire debate over the ATF has
been skewed by the Air Force's impressive performance in
Operation Desert Storm. Congressional Democrats who opposed the
use of force against Iraq are looking not for defense projects
to oppose but for defense projects they can support. The ATF in
its current configuration is a lot of airplane -- probably too
much airplane for the job it has to do. But the smart money in
Washington says that when the votes are in, the Pentagon will
get most -- if not all -- of what it wants, regardless of the
merits of the case.