Stealth Is a Secret at Pentagon but Not to Buyers in Toy Stores

Attention all foreign spies: If you want to know what the Air Force’s supersecret stealth fighter jet looks like, try your local toy store.

A model of the F-19 stealth--an aircraft so sensitive that the Pentagon will not even say it exists--is available for $9.95 at toy stores across the country. According to its manufacturer, Testor Corp. of Rockford, Ill., it has become the hottest-selling model in the country.

“It’s bizarre,” says Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who held up a copy of the stealth model during a hearing of a House subcommittee on oversight and investigations this week. “What I, as a member of Congress, am not even allowed to see is now ending up in model packages.”

The secrecy of stealth received fresh scrutiny at the hearing when the aircraft’s builder, Lockheed Corp., acknowledged that it cannot find more than 1,000 classified documents relating to the program.

“As far as the security system on this goes, it’s like the old Gertrude Stein quote: ‘There’s no there there,’ ” Wyden said Friday. “The fact is (the stealth security system) is absurdly easy to penetrate.”

The model first hit the streets at the end of June and about 100,000 stealth kits have already been ordered by toy stores--three times more than a typical new model plane, Steve Kass, Testor’s national field sales manager, said.

But Kass said the model gives away no information that has not already been published in a flood of trade press stories. Stealth aircraft are designed to escape detection by enemy radar. But the model does not disclose the aircraft’s insides, which, according to Kass, is where the real stealth secrets are.

Moreover, he added, none of the missing Lockheed documents were used in designing the model.

Bill Sweetman, author of a book on stealth aircraft, says the model “in size and proportion and quite possibly in overall plan . . . is pretty accurate.”

When asked to comment about the model, Pentagon spokeswoman Jan Bodanyi refused. “I have nothing to say about this alleged stealth fighter,” she said. “I can’t even say there is such a thing.”