A SEND-OFF FOR LAST B-1 BOMBER : Biggest Battle for Jet Was With Critics

After nearly two decades of unrelenting controversy, the last of 100 B-1 bombers built by Rockwell International will be formally rolled out of final assembly in Palmdale this morning, two months ahead of schedule and narrowly within the budget set by the Air Force six years ago.

Rockwell first proposed building the B-1 to President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, but a convoluted series of political turns over the next decade thwarted production of the huge warplane until it was launched in a $28-billion program in 1982.

Despite Rockwell’s apparent success in meeting a difficult schedule, critics in Congress continue to dog the program, saying the bomber is not the fully capable weapons system that it was intended to be. Rockwell and Air Force officials brush off such criticism, citing the nuclear bomber program as a model of defense procurement.

Lt. Gen. William E. Thurman, who will be leading a delegation of high-level Air Force officials at the ceremony today, said recently that the B-1 is “the highest quality airplane that I think we’ve ever produced--measure it almost any way you want to.”

The B-1 bombers eventually will be on alert at four Air Force bases in the central United States, loaded with up to 125,000 pounds of nuclear weapons and ready to scramble within seconds of a national alert. The sleek, swept-wing aircraft, which has a maximum operating weight of 477,000 pounds and carries a crew of four, is intended to penetrate the Soviet Union at tree-top level at speeds that would make it difficult to catch.

But critics say the B-1 will not have its full capability to perform that mission for at least several years until various deficiencies are corrected. The B-1 has been severely criticized by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), who has said the aircraft will cost $3.6 billion more than quoted by the Air Force for equipment that was never part of the original bomber package but is essential for an operational system.

One highly placed congressional source said Tuesday that if the B-1 has gotten a black eye in Congress, it is not so much for Rockwell’s performance as much as it is for the Air Force’s management of the program and for the snafus at Eaton Corp., which is responsible for the B-1’s electronic warfare system. The B-1’s radar jammers, known as the AN/ALQ-161, are not operating properly and would leave the aircraft more vulnerable to Soviet defenses.

But on the eve of the rollout, Rockwell officials were philosophical about criticism that has been so much a part of the bomber program ever since its beginning.

“Controversy is almost like an adjective that is permanently attached to the airplane,” Rockwell Chairman Robert Anderson said in an interview Tuesday, recalling that anti-war protesters tried to throw themselves under the wheels of the B-1 when the first prototype was first rolled out in a 1974 ceremony.

“There are some members of Congress who would find a way to be unhappy if we were building a sling shot,” Anderson said. “That is all part of the adversarial relationship to ensure that Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer are well served. But in some cases, particularly in peacetime, we get a little more criticism than is properly deserved.”

Anderson decried the delays that stalled deployment of the B-1 through four presidential administrations. “I never dreamed at the time we were looking at our proposal for the B-1 in 1970 that here I would be in 1988, two weeks within my retirement, and still involved in this airplane,” he said.

Canceled by Carter

Wolfgang Demisch, aerospace analyst at the New York securities firm of First Boston, praised the B-1 program, saying: “By any objective standard, the B-1 is how a military program ought to be run. Within the constraints of the program, the B-1 has done spectacularly well.”

“Any time you spend $28 billion, you can probably find ways of doing it better,” he added. “In some respects, it is beneath the Congress to get into picky details.”

The program was canceled in 1977 by then newly elected President Jimmy Carter, but the bomber was kept alive at congressional insistence by a flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base with four prototype aircraft. Despite great opposition, President Reagan launched production in 1982.

The development and production schedule set for the B-1 in 1982 was among the most demanding in the history of the aerospace industry, requiring the creation of a 27,000-person work force and several new production facilities in only a few years.

Sam Iacobellis, the president of Rockwell’s North American Aircraft Operations, who has been working six and seven days a week for the past six years, called today’s rollout of the 100th B-1 an “aerospace success story.”

In defending the B-1 against ever-present critics, Iacobellis points to the statements of Air Force pilots who have lavishly praised the flying capabilities of the B-1.

“In my opinion, this plane is more maneuverable than most fighters I have flown,” said Lt. Col. Robert A. Chamberlain, the Air Force pilot who conducts the final acceptance flights of aircraft that come off the production line in Palmdale.

Still, the B-1 has some loose ends. The Air Force is withholding $110 million in payments to Rockwell, an amount that Iacobellis terms as minor in relation to the $28-billion program.

Rockwell will complete the B-1 program about 3%, or roughly $500 million, over its contract target of $16 billion (the rest of the $28 billion went to other contractors). But that cost increase will not push the overall program over the politically sensitive cost cap given by President Reagan to Congress, he said.

Despite the higher costs, Rockwell will emerge from the B-1 with enormous profits. Anderson said Rockwell will earn an after-tax profit on the B-1 of more than 5%, or about $800 million. Pretax profit margins reportedly were as high as 14%.

Rockwell Profit Up 29%

Separately, Rockwell reported Tuesday that it earned $192.9 million in its first quarter of fiscal 1988, ended Dec. 31, up 29% from net income of $149.4 million a year earlier. First quarter sales were $2.7 billion, down from $2.9 billion for a year ago.

Anderson said the results show that Rockwell will successfully exit the B-1 program without a major drop in profit.

Even after the Air Force has formally accepted all of the 100 B-1 bombers, which should occur sometime this spring, Rockwell still will have a sizable business in providing support services, spare parts and training, Iacobellis said. That should provide continuing jobs for 6,000 to 7,000 employees, he said, after layoffs of roughly 20,000.