Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 24, 1991 TAG: 9102250280
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But irony No. 1 about the B-2 is that the Persian Gulf War is making the idea look better - even though no B-2s are in use there, and it isn't the conflict for which the bomber was intended.
Irony No. 2 is that the same war is also making the stealth bomber more unaffordable than ever.
The idea behind the B-2 was for America to build an armada of manned bombers that could, within hours of an exchange of each side's awesome arsenal of nuclear missiles, penetrate Soviet defenses and hit mobile or hardened targets that escaped the first round of destruction.
Even if you think the Gorbachev-era Soviet Union remains a threat, and that the ability to strike back is a marvelous deterrent to nuclear war, the initial B-2 thinking was flawed: The morning after the holocaust, with thousands of missiles already having visited nuclear destruction, who'd care about much of anything, including wiping out survivors with a manned bomber?
Enter the Gulf War and Saddam Hussein, and with them the reminder that serious war is not necessarily - even less likely to be - between nuclear superpowers.
There are no stealth bombers in the gulf; the only two in existence are still being flight-tested. The Gulf War, however, has brought home a couple of points bearing on the issue of whether to build more B-2s.
For example, stealth technology works. Supporters of the B-2 point to the air superiority won so quickly by the allied coalition: It was made possible in part because of the performance of another stealth warplane, the F-117 fighter, in the first nights of the war. Evading detection, the fighters helped destroy Iraq's air defenses and so enabled the allies subsequently to put more destructive but more vulnerable craft, including B-52 bombers, into the air over Iraq and occupied Kuwait.
The Gulf War also has shown the high military value, given America's existing weaponry, of having land bases relatively close to enemy targets, and of time to get Navy aircraft carriers in place. Those conditions cannot always be assumed - hence the need, it is argued, for the long-range, versatile B-2s as a companion to the F-116s and a replacement for the aging fleet of unstealthy B-52s.
There is, however, a not-so-small problem: At a cost of as much as $1 billion per plane, America can't afford the B-2.
The United States already has more than 300 nuclear-armed manned strategic bombers, including 97 brand new B-1Bs and other long-range bombers. Stealth bombers are so expensive, how could we afford to deploy them in conventional skirmishes and risk losing a few?
Sure, a speed-up in production would drop the B-2's per-unit cost, but in the short run that would drive the total cost even higher. Laboring under the massive load of debt acquired during the borrow-and-spend '80s, the United States simply doesn't have the money.
And Desert Storm, the war that Americans seem ready to support with yellow ribbons but not tax dollars, is adding to the load: This year alone, the federal-budget deficit may reach $400 billion.
The need to devote an ever-increasing share of federal resources to debt servicing - and, now, to Desert Storm - has shrunk resources available for long-term domestic investments that create an economy capable of sustaining the costs of such things as stealth bombers.
In America's fiscal fix, arguing the merits of the stealth bomber is almost beside the point. It's like arguing the merits of a Rolls Royce to a customer who can't keep up the payments on his Ford.
by CNB