B-2 Bomber a Visible Target for Budget Ax : Congress: Support for Stealth plane is eroding fast. Lawmakers look to $75-billion project to cut the deficit.

The B-2 Stealth bomber, the sleek, sinister-looking Air Force strike plane that is designed to elude enemy radar, is about to run into heavy--and possibly fatal--flak in the 101st Congress.

Anxious to find money to divert to domestic programs, both liberal and conservative lawmakers are setting their sights on the $75-billion B-2 project as the most obvious target for making the military cuts that will be needed to reduce the deficit or finance new spending elsewhere.

If its critics prevail, the prized but controversial bomber program could be scaled back sharply from the 132 planes that the Air Force wants to build. Some lawmakers want to stop the B-2 just as it is lifting off the runway, refusing to authorize any more than the 16 bombers that either already have been built or are in the production pipeline. Right now, they seem unlikely to prevail, but momentum for such a “cap” is building steadily.

Even so, Congress seems almost certain to deal the B-2 program a serious blow, possibly laying the groundwork for years of guerrilla warfare on Capitol Hill, as happened with the equally controversial MX missile. In the end, it is unlikely that more than two wings of the aircraft--about 60 B-2s in all--could survive what one Capitol Hill aide called a “dribbling to death” at Congress’ hands.

Even the B-2’s longtime backers have begun to lose heart--and conviction. “The merits of the program have been lost long ago in the frenzy of defense budget cutting,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “I’m very skeptical about its future as a program at all.”

Analysts say the result could be to drive the prorated cost of each B-2 far above the current $570-million-per-aircraft price tag, jeopardize ratification of the Administration’s strategic arms reduction treaty, known informally as START, and plunge the Northrop Corp.--the prime contractor for the beleaguered plane--into serious financial trouble.

For Southern California, where the B-2 program could spawn more than 17,000 jobs under current plans for peak production, the crippling of the bomber program could mean visible economic disruption.

The political maelstrom surrounding the B-2 is fast becoming a nightmare for Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, who has been publicly touting the program as one of the Pentagon’s highest priorities, despite what some defense officials say are some personal misgivings. Although Cheney has ordered an internal review of the B-2 effort, due later this month, he is expected to continue to support the program, though possibly at a slightly lower production level.

But the program is facing fierce head winds on Capitol Hill. To some lawmakers, the lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union is threatening to make the B-2 a bomber without a mission. Others fear that spending on the program is going too fast, outstripping the pace of testing that is needed to make sure the revolutionary design will work.

Most, however, are daunted by the $75-billion price tag. Congress already has approved some $26.8 billion of the total, most of it for research and development.

With those factors now in play, the B-2 program is solidly locked on congressional radar screens as this year’s easiest target for would-be military budget slashers. “Something’s got to give somewhere in the strategic program, and the B-2 is vulnerable on a lot of fronts,” Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said. “It’ll be a big fight.”

To be sure, the Bush Administration, which has not begun its most intensive lobbying for the B-2, may yet salvage the program on the strength of the plane’s revolutionary design and its pivotal future role in the nation’s nuclear deterrent force.

But the list of defectors seems to be widening almost daily. Even conservative Republicans, who previously have been the program’s staunchest supporters, seem to be abandoning the program in droves.

“I have to tell you, I have to take a look at (the B-2),” Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently told an Air Force general. “The world climate is different. The cost is astronomical. I just have to ask myself, do we have to have the B-2?”

Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), who is leading a fight in the House to halt production of the B-2 immediately, counts some 30 GOP House members in support of his plan.

“I’ve had calls from Republicans that stunned me--conservative, pro-defense guys who call and tell me they’re thinking of switching,” he says.

Even lawmakers whose districts include contractors for the B-2--another once-formidable lobbying group for the program--appear to be switching sides, a factor that has eroded the support the Pentagon could have expected to command for a program whose contracts have been spread over 46 states and 383 congressional districts.

Among the most prominent is Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.). Although the Golden State’s 49 B-2 contractors could expect to reap some $32.1 billion--almost half the funds allocated for the B-2 program--Cranston is now a leader in the move to cap the program where it is, contending that the democratization in Central Europe has created “a totally different situation.”

“I didn’t conceive of costs getting this high,” Cranston added. “When we’re looking for a badly needed peace dividend, this is the most likely place to start,” he said in an interview.

But the opposition in Congress is not only over the B-2’s cost. To many lawmakers, the bomber program has become a larger battle over which branch of government will set the parameters for U.S. arms control policy--Congress or the Administration.

The B-2’s role in the larger skirmish comes because of a loophole in the START agreement that the two superpowers are negotiating. Although the accord technically limits the United States and the Soviet Union to 6,000 long-range nuclear warheads apiece, it also contains a fine-print clause that counts some strategic bombers, such as the B-2, as single warheads--even if they are chock-full of nuclear bombs. If all 132 B-2s were built, that would give the United States about 2,500 “free” warheads that otherwise would not be allowed.

As a result, the White House has contended that the B-2 will become the centerpiece of the American strategic nuclear deterrent once the START agreement finally is signed. Gen. John T. Chain, head of the Strategic Air Command, has warned that the United States will not be able to threaten vital Soviet targets if the B-2 program is not continued. And a senior Administration official declared recently that if Congress cancels the B-2, the Administration will have to “go back to the drawing board” on the entire START agreement.

“The B-2 is the most important element of the START agreement,” Chain said in recent testimony.

But the Administration’s arguments have drawn hostile fire in Congress, where the B-2’s critics charge that the Administration is trying to hold the START agreement hostage to force congressional approval of the plane.

“The purpose of our arms control positions is to enhance deterrence and stability, not to protect a weapons system,” said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), chairman of the House Arms Control Caucus, who also has joined the fight to cancel further production of the B-2. “The Administration will use the START agreement to justify every single part of their strategic modernization program. . . . I just don’t think many people are going to be swayed.”

Instead of going “back to the drawing board,” Berman and other Democrats have urged the Bush Administration to go back to the negotiating table--and persuade the Soviets to change the bomber counting rule. Some lawmakers have warned that if it doesn’t, Congress would force the change itself, using its power of the purse to alter presidential decisions on what kinds of weapons--and how many--the U.S. nuclear arsenal must include.

“The bomber counting rule is driving this issue, and we ought to be seizing the opportunity to negotiate major new changes in (it),” said Rep. Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma, a moderate Democrat who is trying to work out a compromise. “Our frustration as Democrats is we don’t have the White House, and (therefore) we don’t issue the guidance from on high.”

But one Democrat, Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, has become an unlikely ally to the Bush Administration. Dicks, the B-2 program’s leading congressional proponent, has urged that Bush threaten to veto any defense bill that does not call for the eventual production of at least 80 to 100 B-2 bombers, on the grounds that the START treaty will not win critical military backing unless the airplane is built.

Given such rising tensions, the best hope for B-2 supporters this year may be to put off any serious confrontation until the two sides have a chance to cool off. Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has proposed a “pause” in B-2 production that would give the Administration time to refine its arms control positions and to weigh the need for the bomber in light of changes in the Soviet military threat.

It also would allow the Air Force to complete critical flight tests before production resumes. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, recently cited serious problems in the plane’s development and early production phases. A final series of flight tests, designed to check the B-2’s ability to penetrate Soviet air defenses without detection, could prove to be the most decisive factor in determining whether the B-2 will pass congressional muster.

To be sure, even a temporary “pause” in production would hurt defense contractors--and, ultimately, drive the B-2’s costs up further. If production were halted at 16 aircraft, for instance, the prorated cost of each airplane will hover close to $1.7 billion.

Shelving the B-2 this year would mean the loss of some $5.5 billion in appropriations that would benefit Northrop and some 155 other B-2 firms around the country. Northrop figures a year’s delay will add $4.5 billion to the program’s costs--nudging it still closer to extinction. The firm has told lawmakers that until it begins building 16 B-2s per year--a production rate that the Air Force hopes to achieve only by 1994--it cannot begin to make any profit on the B-2 program.

With opposition to the bomber mounting, advocates have charted a new mission for it.

“It’s the only element of the strategic triad that can be used in conventional conflicts with Third World nations and terrorist adversaries,” said Rep. Duncan L. Hunter (R-Coronado), one of the B-2’s most ardent supporters.

But Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Berkeley) scoffs at this. “Once you point out the plane doesn’t have a strategic mission, they start talking about flying it over Libya--but a $70-billion bomber program to fly over Third World countries is lunacy at best,” said Dellums, a fiery liberal who has joined with the conservative Kasich to try to halt B-2 production.

But to the Air Force, all of the maneuvering and political posturing has sidetracked the very serious discussion of the plane’s unique mission, which is to penetrate overlapping rings of Soviet air defenses and search out and bomb hard-to-reach mobile missiles and command posts.

“It’s a sticker-shock reaction and it’s awful hard to keep the dialogue on the mission and the requirement,” conceded Chain, who has emerged as the Air Force’s chief pitchman for the bomber. “It always comes back to the sticker-shock.”