COLUMN ONE : High-Tech Warfare--A New Era : The success of the once-controversial Tomahawk cruise missile is emblematic, experts say, of improvements in electronic weaponry. But many remain skeptical.

When the first Tomahawk cruise missile hit Baghdad at 3:01 a.m. Thursday, it ushered in a new era of warfare in which U.S. forces take advantage of sophisticated electronic weaponry developed since the Vietnam War to strike their targets with unprecedented precision.

In its wartime debut, the Tomahawk appears to have proved every bit as accurate as its proponents have long insisted it would be. According to Navy officials, more than 90 of the 100 missiles fired from U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf hit their targets in Iraq.

The success of the Tomahawk was emblematic, to many military experts, of the vast improvements made in electronic weaponry over the past two decades. If the early reports of such successes are borne out, that could mitigate the costly failures of high-technology weapons programs that have become so controversial in recent months.

Many weapons experts and even defense executives were cautious Thursday in trumpeting the weapons’ success, because preliminary reports often do not stand up under close scrutiny--and because the fighting has just begun. The missile attack launched against Israel early this morning made it clear that Iraq has not been crushed just yet.

The battle against Iraq is hardly the ultimate test of American equipment that was designed to fight the technically advanced forces of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the completion of 1,000 bombing sorties by U.S. and allied fighters in the first day of fighting in the Persian Gulf War with just one American loss is considered a tremendous success by itself.

“If we can come back with minimum losses, that shows that technology pays,” said Ben Rich, who retired two weeks ago as the head of Lockheed Corp.’s “Skunk Works,” its famed secret aircraft unit in Burbank. Although Rich remains cautious about jumping to quick conclusions, it appears that Lockheed’s F-117A Stealth fighter figured prominently in the air raids. Stealth has become a cornerstone of American high-technology weaponry.

“Some have said, ‘We spent $3 trillion on our defenses and what did it get us?’ ” remarked Norman Friedman, author of the Naval Institute’s Guide to World Weapons Systems. “Well, just watch! And the important thing is that unlike the last generation of U.S. weapons, these work.”

Indeed, Rep. Dave McCurdy (D-Okla.), a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said the war against Iraq will be a “laboratory” for a number of virtually untested high-tech weapons. These include the Stealth fighter, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor systems, laser-guided targeting systems and radar-jamming equipment.

If this new generation of weapons proves to be as effective as the Tomahawk, experts predicted, the war with Iraq would be a boon for the defense industry.

“This is just an unbelievable validation of what the defense industry has been doing,” said PaineWebber aerospace analyst Jack Modzelewski. “How are critics now going to beat up on the defense industry? People will say, ‘Lighten up.’ The real beneficiaries are going to be the big companies like General Dynamics, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed.”

But just one day of fighting will not erase the costly failures that have affected big defense programs. In the past year, the Pentagon has canceled the Navy A-12 attack jet after spending $3.1 billion and the Lockheed P-7A patrol aircraft after spending $300 million. Further, the $28-billion fleet of B-1 bombers remains grounded while the war is being fought.

And later reports could cast a cloud over preliminary stories of success. When the F-117A was used in the Panama invasion in December, 1989, it was praised immediately afterward as having pinpoint bombing accuracy. But months later, the Air Force admitted that one of the two jets missed its target by a wide mark as a result of human error.

Yet of all the new weapons on trial in Iraq, it was the Tomahawk that was singled out for high praise Thursday by Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I’m extremely pleased with the effectiveness of the cruise missiles,” Powell said. “They were used against a variety of targets where their precision was required for the target, or (where) because of the air defense system around those targets, we felt that an unmanned weapon was the best system to use.”

Powell’s views were shared by key members of Congress who supported development of the Tomahawk, beginning in 1972, despite the formidable price tag of $1 million each. “The fact that they are as accurate as they are is a technological wonder in itself,” McCurdy aid.

This was welcome news to Ralph Hawes, executive vice president for missiles and electronics at General Dynamics, which produces the Tomahawk along with McDonnell Douglas. In the final analysis, he predicted, the missiles will prove to be more than 80% accurate.

The Tomahawk is a 20-foot-long, computer-guided missile that--traveling at low altitudes at about 550 m.p.h.--can search out its intended targets while eluding radar detection. Its computer guidance system is so precise that Yale J. Lubkin, president of a defense contracting firm in Owings Mills, Md., said the Tomahawk operates much like “an airplane without a pilot.”

The missile uses both inertial and terrain guidance systems. The inertial system depends on small gyroscopes to find the precise geographical coordinates of the target; the terrain system matches the real landscape with the terrain programmed into its computer memory. Proponents say the missile is so accurate that it can be aimed not just at a building, but at a specific window.

Although Tomahawks can carry nuclear warheads, they were used to drop 1,000-pound conventional bombs on Baghdad. In tests on San Clemente Island, Tomahawks fitted with these warheads have destroyed entire warehouses made of reinforced concrete.

The Tomahawks fired at Baghdad came from several warships, including the battleships Missouri and Wisconsin about 600 miles away in the Persian Gulf. Navy officials said the missiles were programmed to hit air defenses in the Iraqi capital just moments before U.S. pilots arrived on the scene.

U.S. military officials declined to specify exactly what sites in Baghdad were hit by the Tomahawks. But it is well known that these missiles are intended to go after fixed targets such as missile sites, radar facilities and command centers. As an added benefit, they cause enemy radar systems to “light up”--as military officials describe it--making the radar sites easier to detect.

Like most nations, Iraq lacks an effective defense against the Tomahawk, according to Jeff Shaffer, military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He said the missile would be vulnerable if Iraqi jets had a “look-down, shoot-down” radar capability.

Although the Tomahawk was available in the mid-1980s, it had never been used. Some experts said the Pentagon did not use the Tomahawk against Libya in 1986 because it was feared that the missile might misfire and fall into Soviet hands, thus compromising the new technology. The development of the missile was marred by a number of flubbed test firings.

And even though the idea of attacking enemy targets without using manned aircraft has been politically popular on Capitol Hill, it has encountered some resistance among U.S. military pilots. They see it as their job to hit tough targets, according to defense analysts.

Many of today’s electronic systems were just being developed at the end of the Vietnam War, according to Friedman, and they did not work very well at that time. Since then, he said, the technology available to the defense industry has improved even more than the home computers available to every citizen. “They now work,” he said.

The Lockheed F-117 Stealth fighter, for example, played a critical role in destroying Iraqi air defense systems and command centers. Used only briefly during the U.S. invasion of Panama, the Stealth fighter is designed to evade enemy radar.

Even though its designated targets put the Stealth aircraft at high risk, none of them were lost. “We didn’t expect to lose any,” said Rich, the recently retired Lockheed executive. “The leverage of Stealth is survivability. That’s the whole idea. It gives you the element of surprise.”

Likewise, some U.S. aircraft are believed to have relied upon FLIR sensor systems to seek their targets through the dark of night. Loral Aeronutronic in Newport Beach manufactures a FLIR pod for the F/A-18 Hornet that is mounted on the plane’s fuselage and detects objects by the different levels of heat they emit.

Loral also makes a laser-guided targeting system, known as Pave Tack, for the Air Force’s F-111F aircraft. The system was previously used in the attack on Libya to guide bombs to a target by illuminating it with a laser beam. But officials said it did not get a true test until Thursday’s air strikes.

Texas Instruments and Martin Marietta make a low-altitude terrain-following radar (LANTIRN) system that gives the F-15 and the F-16 fighter aircraft the ability to navigate at low altitudes at night. Texas Instruments also has made more than 6,000 high-speed, anti-radar HARM missiles, which sense the radar emissions of enemy antiaircraft positions.

Some analysts attributed the initial lack of Iraqi response to widespread disruption of their communications systems by Lockheed’s Compass Call, a C-130 transport plane equipped with special communications countermeasures systems. Communications can be knocked out by broadcasting high-powered signals that jam over-the-air transmission or insert false information into those transmissions to render them unintelligible.

Iraqi radar and antiaircraft weapons were apparently immobilized by special electronic warfare aircraft, including the Grumman EA-6B Prowler, the F-4G Wild Weasel and the General Dynamics EF-111. Anti-radar systems detect signals using a very sensitive receiver and use a computer to analyze them. The source of the signal is then destroyed or jammed with a high-power radio signal.

Watkins-Johnson Co., a military subcontractor in Palo Alto, makes radar-jamming equipment used on the F-15, F-16 and B-52 aircraft as well as guidance systems for several missiles, including the HARM, Sparrow, AMRAAM and Aegis defense system.

Most defense industry officials were pleased with the performance of the military’s high-tech weapons.

“We may see the ratification of the high-tech approach to military weaponry from this,” said John Stuart, chief financial officer of Irvine Sensors, a small Orange County research company building electronic systems for the weaponry. “These systems had never been tested in the field before. And if they are as effective as the first reports indicate, it may have an effect on Congress’ approach to spending.”

Sara Fritz reported from Washington and Ralph Vartabedian from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Carla Lazzareschi in Los Angeles, Dean Takahashi in Orange County, Chris Kraul in San Diego and Jonathan Weber in San Francisco contributed to this report.

MAKERS WEIGH RESULTS: Cruise builders in San Diego took somber satisfaction in the missile’s apparent success. D1

TOMAHAWK II

The Tomahawk II cruise missile played a key role at the start of Operation Desert Storm. In the opening hours of the air campaign, more than 100 Tomahawks were fired at sensitive Iraqi targets. Pentagon officials were especially pleased with the performance of the sea-launched, radar-guided Tomahawk, which had never been used in combat.

The Tomahawk, capable of following any geographical terrain to its intended target, can “see” through a tiny television camera mounted in its nose. Length: 21 ft. Diameter: 20.9 inches Wing Span: 8 ft. 6 inches Cruise Engine: 606 pounds thrust turbofan Range: about 710 miles Cruising Speed: 550 mph Source: Jane’s Weapon Systems

DUELLING SIGNALS IN THE SKY:

Radar, invented in the late 1930s, is an acronym for Radio Detection and Ranging. It’s a means of using radio signals to determine the location of objects in the sky. In large part, electronic warfare is a battle of radar signals. In modern warfare, several kinds of radar are used:

Surveillance radar: Monitors a certain area of the sky for any objects.

Tracking radar: Follows a particular object by redirecting its beam when the return signal begins to weaken.

Lock-on radar: Found in the missile itself, it homes in on a target and follows it. HOW IT WORKS:

1. A radar system sends out high-frequency radio signals. When those signals strike something in the sky, such as an airplane, they bounce back to the source. The distance of the object is determined by the time it takes for the signal to make the roundtrip. 2. Electronic countermeasures aircraft, or special modules mounted on fighter planes, tell the pilot the plane is being “watched” by enemy radar. The warning receiver then “reads” the radar signal to determine its frequency and the power. It feeds that information into a computer, which checks the data againsts its “threat table” to determine what kind of system it needs to counter. 3. The, counter measures are taken. The radar may be:

Jammed, by broadcast a very high-powered radio signal at the same frequency.

Destroyed, with a missile or bomb that homes in that signal

Duped by broadcasting a signal that the enemy radar will mistakenly believe is its return signal or a squadron of planes.