Clancy on B-2 Bomber

In response to “Stealth Makes Power Usable Again,” Commentary, June 30:

Tom Clancy’s belief that the B-2 bomber will “make power usable again” is more than a flight of fancy--it is ludicrous. What Clancy proposes for the $650-million bomber is a new form of gunboat diplomacy that the United States does not need. What the United States desperately needs is a comprehensive, concise, and consistent foreign policy, and not new missions for the nation’s strategic weapons systems. The supposition that the B-2 can deter Third World conflicts or acts of international terrorism are without foundation. The 1986 bombing of Tripoli by U.S. F-111s was to have ended Libya’s terrorist activities. In this, the raid against Moammar Kadafi failed. Evidence today points to a Libyan connection in the destruction of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Scotland in December, 1988, and murder of its passengers and crew.

The reality is that with so few aircraft, and given the cost of a single B-2, at nearly $290 million per plane excluding crew training, spare parts and maintenance, which inflates the per plane cost to $650 million, the only missions B-2s are ever likely to fly are training missions.

Neither the B-2 nor the F-117A can, as Clancy claims, “effectively ignore the most sophisticated air-defense systems in the world.” These aircraft are not invisible to radar, nor are they the wonder weapons Clancy claims them to be. They are without question the most advanced strike aircraft in the world today, and yet even Clancy, “who was dubious of the B-2,” is forced to find new missions for the B-2 bomber. Any tactical use of the B-2 or, for that matter, its use as a strategic bomber, simply does not justify the cost of the B-2 program. The belief that tactical air strikes or simply the threat of air strikes will end international terrorism is simplistic at best. If Clancy honestly believes that the B-2 alone can act as a deterrent to international terrorism, then he has begun to live the fiction that he writes so well.

GAVIN FEEHAN

Granada Hills