Sgt. York Gun the Latest of a Number of Projects Killed : Some Canceled Weapons Return

The cancellation of a major weapons program after the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars, such as occurred Tuesday with the Sgt. York air defense gun, is unusual--although not without precedent.

But then again, neither is it unheard of for such weapons projects to reappear later.

According to analysts at the independent Center for Defense Information, at least 17 major defense weapons projects, each with costs exceeding $100 million, have been canceled since 1957 by either the Pentagon or Congress. But history also shows, the analysts noted, that once canceled, big-ticket defense programs have a way of popping up again in one form or another.

Perhaps the most spectacular cancellation in modern U.S. history was of the B-1A bomber in 1977. By the time the bomber was scrubbed by former President Jimmy Carter, the government had invested $4.7 billion in it, according to analysts David C. Morrison and Stephen Daggett of the independently financed defense center, which was founded and is led by former military officers.

B-1 Bomber Revived as B-1B

Of course, since then the B-1 has been revived, redesigned and redesignated the B-1B under President Reagan. The first operational B-1B is now deployed at Dyess Air Force Base, Tex.

In another case, the mobile Minuteman missile was canceled in 1962, three years and $108.4 million in expenditures after it was authorized. Since then, the mobile missile has struggled for new life, first in the mid-1970s as the highly controversial mobile MX, which was to have been based on large tracts in the West, and now as the Midgetman, a new mobile missile system under study.

Some weapons ideas, however, just plain flop and are forgotten. A proposal for a nuclear-powered aircraft was scrubbed in 1961, for instance, after what the center estimated was $1 billion worth of research. Weight and safety were major unsolved--and perhaps unresolvable--problems.

The XB-70 strategic bomber, meanwhile, was shot down--literally--after the Soviet Union in 1960 captured the high-flying U2 spy plane of Francis Gary Powers. The XB-70, authorized in 1958, was touted as the bomber of the future, with Mach 3 speed and the capability of flying too high for enemy fire.

$1.5 Billion on XB-70

But when the Soviets downed Powers’ plane, they showed that even aircraft at such high altitudes were vulnerable to missiles, and the XB-70 was eventually canceled after an expenditure of nearly $1.5 billion. The techonology lived on for a while in the U.S. civilian program to build a supersonic transport, but later that, too, was canceled.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, two major cruise missile programs ran into technological and strategic problems that led to their downfall, according to the defense center’s analysts. They were the Navaho and Snark missiles--both land-based intercontinental cruise missiles. Nearly $1.4 billion had been invested in those systems.

More recently, the proposed LLLGB, or low-level laser guided bomb, was canceled earlier this year after an investment of $336 million, according to the center’s calculations.

Last year, after a $1.3-billion effort to improve the Roland surface-to-air missile deployed by some U.S. allies, the program was ended while still in production. And two years ago, the shoulder-launched Viper anti-tank missile was scrubbed after what the center computed was a $250-million investment.