Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100030
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MICHAEL KILIAN CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
By the year 2054, said Martin Marietta President Norman Augustine, the entire U.S. military would be able to afford just one airplane.
Augustine, a respected former Pentagon official, observed that airplane prices have increased fourfold every decade since the Army bought its first Wright Brothers' ``Flyer'' in 1908. By the middle of the 21st century, he said, a single combat aircraft would cost a stunning $300 billion and couldn't be risked in combat.
This prediction sounded wacky at the time, but judging by the defense appropriation bill that came out of a House-Senate conference committee late last month, the United States is well on its way to that one-aircraft military, and the $1 billion aircraft is already a reality.
As any bookie might have predicted, the ``defense hawks'' in Congress handily defeated the supposedly ascendant ``budget hawks'' in winning conference committee approval of a $243 billion ``compromise'' military spending plan for the next fiscal year.
It keeps virtually every controversial big ticket weapons project alive - at a cost of some $6.7 billion more than the administration requested. Looming large on the goodie list is a third Seawolf nuclear submarine, bearing a pricetag of $2.4 billion.
Even more conspicuous in the new spending blueprint is go-ahead money for another 20 B-2 ``Stealth'' bombers - whose cost estimates have ranged from $570 million a plane to $1.5 billion each by the time the project is complete.
Perhaps the most alarming comment in the B-2 debate came from the proponents of the project. Manufacturer Northrop Grumman blanketed Congress with charts showing that one long-range, radar-evading B-2 Stealth Bomber, operating from bases in the continental United States, could hit a target in a conflict like the Persian Gulf war with a payload that would otherwise require 75 bombers and support aircraft employing conventional bombs, or 55 bombers and support aircraft using precision or ``smart'' bombs.
One B-2, the company's lobbyists argued, literally could replace dozens and dozens of less-sophisticated airplanes.
And so on and so forth. Sometime in the next century, presumably, an even more complex, sophisticated and costly airplane would be developed that could replace dozens and dozens of B-2s - or at least the 40 now on the books.
At a fourfold cost increase every 10 years, starting with a base of $1 billion now, a super sophisticated aircraft in the year 2030 might cost $128 billion each - with $512 billion asked for the 2040 model.
And there you have Augustine's far out prediction come true.
But what if we spend all that money and the B-2 doesn't work?
A recent General Accounting Office study found that the B-2's radar-proof silhouette has yet to make it as invisible as it's supposed to be. The GAO also complained that the B-2 mistakes rain showers for terrain obstacles and that its electronic defense systems are easily overloaded.
The Pentagon countered that the tests are only half complete and it's too early to make such judgments. But what if some future foe develops a counter measure that detects the airplane anyway?
After all, we're spending those billions on Seawolfs and super subs because Russian scientists are supposedly down in their skunkworks developing a new submarine menace ``stealthier'' than ours.
What if these same Russian geniuses put their minds to undoing the B-2? When Capt. Scott O'Grady was shot down over Bosnia this year, his F-16 totalled out at a loss of $16 million (enough to build a new school or two somewhere).
What if a B-2 were to get shot down - or its pilot, groggy after the 16-hour flight from his U.S. base, decided that the mountain showing up on his radar terrain following device probably was just a rainstorm?
That's $1 billion going into the ground, and the Air Force doesn't carry collision insurance. B-2 proponents say their plane is desperately needed to replace the aging fleet of B-52 bombers, some of which are 50 years old. There are still 95 B-52s operating.
This is the same argument we heard 15 years ago when the Pentagon wanted money for the hot new state-of-the-art long-range bomber of its time - the fabled B-1.
This is the aircraft that distinguished itself on an early, impress-the-Congress demonstration flight over Fairfax County, Va., by having two of its doors accidentally drop off.
Fairfax County is about the only place ever successfully bombed by this turkey, of which 96 copies are in stock. When begun in the Carter administration, the B-1 was supposed to cost $40 million each. Midway through the Reagan administration they were more than $200 million each, and, by the end of the production run, the total unit cost was more like $300 million.
Yet when we had an actual war in the Persian Gulf, and long-range bombers played a big role, we used B-52s, F-111s, F-117s and fighter/attack aircraft - but no B-1s! Saddam Hussein probably wasn't afraid of falling doors.
The Pentagon defended the B-1 boondoggle by saying the B-1's mission was ``deterrence.'' It worked. It deterred the Russians from building a B-1 of their own.
by CNB