
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 14, 1995                   TAG: 9506140054
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

STEALTH

REMEMBER the stealth bomber? The nuclear-attack craft that could sneak past the sophisticated radar defenses of a superpower enemy? The plane whose fantastic technology was matched only by its fantastic price tag?

The plane fell victim to the reality of change. Initially, 132 were to be built. In 1990, with the Berlin Wall crumbling, that was scaled back to 75. Last year, the Clinton administration cut the program to 20, of which 13 have been completed.

The difficulty for the program? The bomber is a Cold War weapon in a post-Cold War world. Conflict no longer is superpower vs. superpower. Conflict, rather, is characterized by ethnic strife and civil wars - bloody and dangerous, but not particularly high-tech.

Now, however, House Republicans are trying to put money into the 1996 budget to embark on a program to build 20 more stealth bombers. The builder, Northrop Corp., is even offering a deal. The additional 20 would cost "only" $650 million each, compared with a cost of $2.3 billion per plane for the first 20 completed or under construction.

A bargain, though, is not a bargain if it's something you don't need or can't use anyway.

Militarily, that is. Politically, the stealth-bomber boondoggle may offer a rationale. Doubling the size of the program would restore or retain thousands of assembly-line jobs in California, Texas and Pennsylvania. Those are the states where most of the bomber's components are made - states with a total of 109 electoral votes, 40 percent of the total necessary to elect a president.

by CNB