TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/073189/07318900.028

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.2 KB | 106 lines

                Θå                                                            NATION, Page 18

The Stealth Takes Wing


But its price and uncertain role may shoot the B-2 down

By Bruce Van Voorst


    The B-2 Stealth bomber is designed to be virtually
undetectable by enemy radar, but never in history was an
aircraft's first flight more visible. Before scores of
television cameras and thousands of spectators, the bat-shaped
flying wing lifted into the sunrise at Palmdale, Calif., last
week for a 106-minute, slow-speed, wheels-down flight.

    But even at the moment of its apparent success, the
technologically revolutionary bomber faced a threat to its
existence, not from hostile radar and missiles but from a newly
skeptical Congress that has become increasingly alarmed over
the plane's horrendous cost. By the Air Force's own
calculations, each of the 132 B-2s it wants will cost more than
$530 million, a total of $70.2 billion over the next decade.
Already $23 billion has been spent on research and development.
How, Congressmen wonder, can the most expensive weapons system
ever built be reconciled with a shrinking defense budget?

    The Air Force's estimate of the B-2's price tag, gargantuan
as it is, may be far too low. In an exchange with Air Force
Chief of Staff Larry Welch, House Armed Services Committee
Chairman Les Aspin warned that Congress would never go along
with the Air Force's plan to spend $8 billion annually -- more
than twice the current SDI budget -- on the Stealth. At the more
likely spending rate of $3 billion a year, said Aspin, the
sticker price would soar to more than $1 billion for each plane.

    Many Republicans not only agree with Aspin but are leading
the assault on the Stealth. Says the committee's ranking
Republican member, William Dickinson of Alabama: "The B-2
program is in a lot of trouble, not for technical reasons but
simply by price tag." Declares Ohio Congressman John Kasich:
"Nobody's pushed harder for the (Secretary of Defense Dick)
Cheney defense budget than I, but America cannot afford the
B-2." To South Carolina Republican Arthur Ravenel Jr.,
cancellation of the B-2 is inevitable, "just like death and
taxes."

    Until much more testing is completed, the debate cannot
answer a very basic question: Is the B-2 capable of attacking
targets in the Soviet Union without being detected? The initial
flight proved only that the boomerang-shaped delta wing can fly.
It remains to be seen whether the sleek aerodynamic design,
composite-plastics fabrication and other tricks intended to
evade radar will actually work.

    Nor is there agreement on the strategic justification for
the bomber. Cheney argues that the Stealth is needed to maintain
"the effectiveness of the bomber leg of the strategic triad,"
the mix of land- and sea-based missiles and nuclear weapons
carried by aircraft on which U.S. deterrence has been based.
Welch contends that bombers are regarded by both the U.S. and
the Soviets as "the most stabilizing element of the triad."
Unlike missiles that can strike in 30 minutes or less, bombers
need hours to reach their targets and hence do not represent a
first-strike threat against the Soviets. Moreover, because they
can take off and fly to safety when threatened, they can survive
a Soviet attack.

    Even conceding that bombers are stabilizing, however, does
not clinch the case for the B-2. There are other, cheaper ways
of achieving the goal. The Pentagon has just spent $28 billion
to acquire 100 B-1 bombers, which despite all their failures
should be capable of penetrating Soviet airspace for many years.

    Critics contend that the Air Force has failed to define a
realistic mission for the B-2. The traditional wartime
assignment would be for the bombers to join a missile attack on
such fixed targets in the Soviet Union as missile silos and
command centers. In addition, the Air Force for a time
suggested, the B-2 could locate and destroy a more elusive class
of targets: new Soviet mobile missiles. But that now seems
technically improbable. The Air Force has also proposed using
the B-2 to carry conventional weapons to Third World targets
such as Libya, a notion widely rejected as unnecessarily
expensive.

    Perhaps the most potent challenge to the B-2 comes from
those who argue that in the missile age, there is no reason for
a manned aircraft to penetrate Soviet air defenses. New
"standoff" air-launched cruise missiles, with great range,
extraordinary accuracy and the ability to evade detection by
radar, could be fired from outside the Soviet Union by the
existing fleet of B-52Gs.

    The fate of the B-2 will be the centerpiece of the
military-budget debate in Congress this week. Cheney earlier
agreed to cut $1 billion from the B-2s in the 1990 budget. But
both the Senate and House Armed Services committees made further
cuts, and amendments will be offered on the floor to suspend
production or terminate the program. Last week the President and
the Pentagon upped the ante, warning that unless the B-2 is
built, the Joint Chiefs of Staff might oppose a new strategic
arms reduction pact with the Soviets. Colorado democratic
Senator Tim Wirth called it a "very high-stakes poker game."
Indeed it was.