The B-2 Stealth Bomber: Finding a Purpose Worth a $70-Billion Price Tag : Defense: A dubious manned weapon may now work better than a doomsday machine.

Last week Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney, under substantial pressure to cut the defense budget, indicated he would strive to preserve one of the most costly new acquisition programs--the Stealth bomber. Since international tensions are lowering and a huge amount of money--$70 billion or more--is involved in the B-2, Capitol Hill observers had expected the bomber to be an obvious candidate for sacrifice.

Don’t look now, but Cheney may be doing the right thing. The B-2, oversold and hard to justify on the Pentagon’s preferred terms--as an ultimate wonder weapon for an era of strategic overkill--may become much more attractive with the dawn of glasnost and the opening of the Eastern Bloc.

The Stealth bomber has been pilloried by critics as less proficient in doomsday matters than other proposed weapons systems. That’s correct--and may make the plane perfect for the 1990s. Whatever their technical specifications, nuclear bombers are simply less threatening than nuclear missiles. We may be bold to hope that, in the 1990s, less proficient doomsday systems will be the kind all major powers switch to. Suddenly, the B-2 may sound like a great idea.

In fact the relaxation of international tensions may do for the B-2 what no Pentagon spokesman has been able to--provide a rationale for its existence. Look at the history of manned bombers throughout the nuclear era:

Because of the tasks assigned modern bombers, discussions about them tend to be gloomy. The bomber pilots’ professional paradigm is the execution of a plan for widespread destruction: of supply depots staffed by teen-age conscripts, of factories run by noncombatants or, in the case of nuclear combat, of innocent multitudes. Whatever one may think of the military mind, no God-fearing family man draws satisfaction from this work.

Yet even after the nuclear bomb was invented, strategic bombers seemed like a great idea to military planners. During the decade following the Korean War, when the Pentagon’s budget was lower in real terms than today, the Air Force was able to complete five jet bomber construction programs--the B-47, B-52, B-57, B-58 and B-66--turning out several thousand in total. (A maximum of 132 B-2s is planned.) Since B-52 production ended in 1962, the United States has managed to field just 100 more bombers, B-1s, before production ended in 1988.

This has not been for lack of spending--many billions have been invested in failed bomber projects. The problem faced by manned bomber advocates of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) is that the kind of aircraft they long for--winged wonders able to fly halfway around the world, weave through Soviet air defenses protected only by electronic black boxes, then bring their pilots home under Armageddon conditions--don’t make sense in a missile era.

What is a nuclear bomber supposed to do that a missile can’t do faster, cheaper and without risk to crew? This question, dating back to the Kennedy era, seems more compelling each year as technical advances in electronics and manufacturing make missiles steadily cheaper, while complexities needed to respond to missile improvements make manned aircraft more expensive.

In the swirl of the Washington expert set, debates about whether missiles have rendered the bomber archaic usually turn on convoluted scenarios. There are simpler ways of looking at it. For instance, bombers can be shot down and currently missiles cannot. During World War II, thousands of allied bombers were downed despite the absence of guided antiaircraft weapons and the presence of fighter escorts. Today the Soviet home air defense system has approximately 300 SAM missiles per U.S. strategic bomber.

And World War II bombers, though slower than current designs, were bristling with guns for self-defense. The unlikelihood of destroying an approaching SAM missile with a gun, coupled with the need to trim off every pound of weight to make longer flights possible, caused U.S. designers gradually to remove guns from bombers. The B-52, with one cannon set in its tail, was the last “armed” U.S. bomber. Relative to Soviet fighters, the B-1 and B-2 are as defenseless as Korean Air flight 007.

This “tail gun factor” has long given many in the Air Force pause. How is a bomber to defeat interceptors over enemy territory? The most far-out plan involved the B-50, a gigantic bomber of the early nuclear era. At one point this plane was to carry in its weapons bay a miniature one-man jet fighter not much bigger than a Dodge minivan. When enemy interceptors appeared, the mini-jet would be dropped into the air and, after fighting off the attackers, fly back to the B-50 for a mid-air recovery in a sling. Right.

About the only way a Pentagon planner believes U.S. bombers will transit Soviet airspace in one piece is by assuming that on-board electronic countermeasure boxes, designed to jam enemy sensors, will work perfectly. But perfection in electronic counter-measures has rarely occurred. Many of the B-1’s operational troubles stem from its primary black box. The Air Force admits it may not be able to mask the B-1’s presence. It has, however, been known to jam the B-1’s own radar.

If some of today’s defense-lobby pleas for the B-2 sound detached from reality, it is important to know that, since the late 1950s, all advanced bombers contemplated by the Air Force have been improbable--because all have been attempts to justify why, at great cost, men should go on what are inherently one-way missions. A quick review:

--The initial superbomber was the B-58 Hustler. Operational in 1959, the B-58 was the first heavy supersonic bomber, billed as the wave of the future. Instead B-58s achieved the distinction of being mothballed a few years after leaving the factory. The aircraft burned so much fuel they could barely get to the U.S. border, let alone the Soviet Union’s.

--Next came the nuclear-powered bomber. More than $5 billion (1989 dollars) was spent on a conjectural reactor-propelled aircraft supposedly able to remain aloft days at a time. Yet routine calculations showed that even if nuclear engines worked, they would require so many pounds of shielding the plane would not be able to take off. No machine was built and most engineers now consider the whole notion a crackpot idea.

--Concurrently the X-20 Dynasoar, a sort of space bomber, was researched. Resembling a one-man space shuttle, Dynasoar was supposed to be launched into orbit atop a Titan missile. The craft would release a warhead in space, reenter the atmosphere and glide back to a runway under pilot control. Essentially an ICBM with a man strapped on.

--By the early 1960s, SAC’s fondest hopes for sustaining the manned bomber in a missile age centered on the B-70, a proposed superbomber resembling the Concorde, that was to compete with the speed of ICBMs by flying at three times the speed of sound all the way to the Soviet Union. Fuel consumption rates, unfortunately, showed this to be impossible. Ultimately the program met an ignoble end when a B-70 crashed during filming of promotional photographs.

Perennially the Air Force is accused of falling under the spell of hardware: craving top speed and sleekness while neglecting practical considerations of performance at the lesser velocities and altitudes where most military aviation occurs. The $530 million B-2, however, is subsonic. At last the Air Force has found a slow airplane it can love--because it’s finally figured out a way to make one incredibly expensive.

The two-decade cessation of bomber production not only indicted the tenuous nature, in the intercontinental ballistic missile age, of arguments supporting manned strategic delivery systems. It signaled a fundamental shift in U.S. military priorities, away from ability to wage conventional war.

Bombing remains applicable for conventional war, but for this purpose aircraft with winged-wonder credentials may backfire, because they cannot be obtained in militarily significant numbers. The U.S. manufactured some 35,000 bombers during the World War II period: far smaller production runs are one reason inflation-adjusted costs per bomber have risen so dramatically. Considering that massive allied bombing failed to halt German war production, or that six times the World War II tonnage--dropped with greater accuracy--failed to overcome North Vietnam, it’s hard to imagine how today’s relatively tiny contingent of superbombers could do more than incidental damage in a serious conventional war.

In this regard it’s important to consider Air Force contentions that the B-2 could be used for conventional war. Stealth works only against electronic detection. If its mission were conventional war in Europe--a much smaller area jam-packed with soldiers who can see a Stealth bomber go by--electronic ghostliness is only a partial help.

No one doubts the B-2 will be more elusive than the B-1 or the radar-friendly B-52. Yet even with the first B-2 now flying, the Pentagon is saying it couldn’t dream of shining a radar on the plane till 1991 at the earliest. Congressional suggestions that the Stealth bomber be flown cross-country to determine if it shows up on air traffic control radars have been met with huffy Air Force comments about the primitive technology of civilian tracking systems. One can’t help wondering if the generals fear the B-2 would make a cameo appearance on some overworked controller’s screen. That would be the end of a $70 billion acquisition right there.

But given the B-2’s breathtaking price tag, at $530 million per aircraft, even radar-evasion properties that work do not alter the case against manned “penetrator” bombers. In technospeak a penetrator flies close to its targets and delivers nuclear bombs via free fall.

One theoretical advantage originally used to justify investment in a “penetrating” Stealth bomber was that such a plane could operate, unobserved, above the Soviet Union at high altitude, away from the pilot stress and physical dangers of treetop flight, beyond the range of ground guns and small SAM missiles. At high altitude, the airplane’s flying-wing shape, a handicap during low flight and maneuvering, becomes ideal for fuel efficiency, theoretically giving a Stealth bomber the potential to inspect a large area of the Soviet Union before deciding what to destroy. But last year, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Larry D. Welch announced that one reason for B-2 cost increases is redesign of the bomber for treetop-altitude penetration. This is hardly reassuring: An aircraft on which no expense was spared to reduce detectability may have to hug the ground to escape detection.

Another possible advantage of a Stealth bomber is the ability to go after movable targets that ICBMs, whose destinations are fixed at launch, have missed. Welch has described this as a principal justification for the B-2.

Assuming B-2s were used as Welch suggests, about 10 hours after the initial nuclear exchanges they would scour the Soviet Union for anything still moving, and wipe it out. A gruesome new level of unthinkability? Not necessarily, at least under the old set of assumptions about the evil Soviet Union. Soviet leaders underground in protective bunkers might tell themselves they could survive a missile attack. If they knew a special weapon would be coming later to get them personally, they might be less prone to act rashly.

Chasing relocatable targets is probably the best pure military argument for the B-2. Yet the same task might be executed by cruise missiles, which could be made capable of receiving target updates in flight, using spy satellite information as their guides.

While interviewing U.S. fighter pilots recently, I asked what future aerial threat they most feared. Several mentioned the possibility that the Soviets would build comparatively cheap bombers designed to launch Stealth cruise missiles from off our shores: once the little missiles were away, the pilots said, there would be no finding them. Trying to sound like a B-2 salesman I countered, “Don’t you fear that the Soviets will copy us, concentrating their resources on a few superbombers designed to fly deep into the United States undetected?” Every fighter pilot rolled his eyes as if someone had let Howdy Doody into the room.

Then are there any reasonable arguments in favor of continuing U.S. possession of manned nuclear aircraft?

Yes, principally that bombers are inherently less threatening than ICBMs. They travel to the target much more slowly than missiles--and can be shot down using current technology. And as SAC officers never tire of pointing out, manned aircraft can be recalled once launched. For these reasons both sides in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks have concentrated their energies on cutting back missiles, not bombers.

Neither valid reason for manned bombers, however, requires “penetrator” systems as expensive as the B-2. An attractive alternative would be a fleet of simpler bombers intended principally to ferry the advanced cruise missile to a standoff launch point.

Increased reliance on standoff bombers carrying cruise missiles would have nothing to do with eliminating the airborne “leg” of the strategic triad--pilots would still fly the cruise missile carriers near the enemy borders. Such a fleet would preserve the deterrence and stabilizing advantages of bombers while eliminating the huge expense and suicide logic of insisting that a man come within view of the target and toggle a bomb release.

Today Air Force leaders who privately concede that a lower-cost standoff bomber might have been preferable to a B-2 maintain that the point is moot because the B-2 exists and its development costs--about one-third of the price--are sunk and cannot be recovered.

But if the Pentagon changes the reasoning for building the B-2, elected officials should not hesitate to change the mission. The B-2 was conceived in a period of rising nuclear tensions. Today there is cause to hope that the Soviet Union will become much less a threat to its neighbors, perhaps even a tenuous U.S. ally.

On the other hand, because the B-2 is inherently less threatening than other strategic delivery systems, its acquisition for use as a cruise-missile carrier might be easier to justify today than a year ago, before the Berlin Wall fell. If the B-2 were reconfigured as a cruise-missile carrier it could be slightly deglorified technically, lowering unit costs.

The catch: The B-2 might become a good buy if the Pentagon is willing to cancel some other new strategic systems in return. Ideal candidates are the rail-mobile MX, the truck-mobile Midgetman and the Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, currently in testing. All are expensive and far more threatening to the world than manned bombers.

It may seem contradictory to argue that a weapon like the B-2 ought to be funded because it is less proficient than available alternatives. But if there is indeed a new golden era of lowered doomsday horizons, less proficient weapons will be the kind in society’s best interest. Properly redefined, the Stealth bomber might become the perfect procurement expense for the winding down of the Cold War.