Senate Passes B-2 Funding, ‘Star Wars’ Compromise : Defense: Bid to halt Stealth output at 15 fails. Action is at odds with House, which has adopted such a ceiling.

The Senate voted Thursday to keep the B-2 Stealth bomber alive and approved a refocused “Star Wars” missile-defense program that stresses early deployment of a limited ground-based system. President Bush wants a broader, space-based system.

By a vote of 57 to 42, the Senate rejected a bid to halt production of the radar-evading B-2 at the 15 aircraft already authorized. The action puts the chamber at odds with the House, which has approved the 15-plane ceiling.

In a series of earlier votes Thursday, the Senate endorsed a compromise “Star Wars” plan that calls on Bush to press for changes in a 1972 U.S.-Soviet treaty that limits the kind of defenses that can be deployed to guard against incoming missile attacks.

Lawmakers who wanted to scuttle or scale back the B-2 and “Star Wars” programs cited the sharply reduced threat posed by the Soviet Union. But those who favor continued robust funding for both programs prevailed with arguments that the Persian Gulf War had demonstrated the need for stealthy airplanes and missile defenses.

The vote on the B-2 program means that Bush’s request to build four new planes next year would be granted in a $291-billion defense authorization bill that is expected to clear the Senate today.

The House-passed defense measure provides for no new planes and the disagreement will have to be resolved in negotiations between the two bodies before the authorization legislation is sent to Bush. The Air Force wants to purchase a total of 75 of the bat-winged bombers.

The B-2, which was designed to deliver nuclear bombs deep inside Soviet territory, is built by Los Angeles-based Northrop Corp. A decision to halt production would deal a severe blow to Southern California’s ailing aerospace industry.

The Senate’s B-2 opponents lost three votes since last year’s vote on the controversial program, an apparent result of Air Force efforts to link the B-2 to the success of the stealthy F-117 fighter-bomber in the Gulf War.

The Air Force also may have picked up support with an 11th-hour letter informing lawmakers that another modern strategic bomber, the long-troubled B-1, had developed serious cracks at the point where its wings join the fuselage.

Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), co-sponsor with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) of the amendment to halt B-2 production, called the letter’s suggestion that the B-2 is needed more than ever “a matter of great curiosity.”

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) voted to halt production, agreeing with Leahy that the $860-million-a-copy plane is too expensive and lacks a legitimate mission in the face of the reduced Soviet threat. Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) opposed the amendment, saying that the bomber would be outstanding in both strategic and conventional roles.

Earlier, the Senate approved a compromise “Star Wars” plan that would deploy a modest ground-based system while seeking changes in a U.S.-Soviet treaty to allow development of more extensive defenses, including the space-based “Brilliant Pebbles” program sought by Bush.

In a series of votes, the Senate beat back nearly all challenges from critics who complained that the plan would waste money and effectively commit the nation to building defenses that violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union.

Proponents, led by Sens. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), said that the new plan contained in the defense bill is needed to bring order to an aimless “Star Wars” program and to meet a sharply changed threat.

While “Star Wars,” formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative, originally was meant to repel a massive nuclear strike by the Soviet Union, the new proposal mainly would protect against accidental launches and long-range missiles fired by Third World dictators or terrorists, the two senators said.

Their $4.6-billion plan falls $550 million short of Bush’s request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, although it still would increase Star Wars spending by 50% over 1991 and provide $1.1 billion more than the House had voted.

The compromise, whose sponsors are the top leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, calls for deploying by 1996 ground-based interceptor missiles at a single site as permitted by the ABM treaty. That treaty limits a ground system to 100 interceptors at one site and bars putting interceptors in space.

Such a limited ground-based shield is supported by Nunn and other congressional moderates.

But in a bow to conservatives who seek multiple ground sites and a space-based system, the Senate plan also would press for amending the treaty to allow more extensive testing and deployment of such weapons.

Bush and the conservative lawmakers want to test and deploy “Brilliant Pebbles,” a globe-girdling network of orbiting missile interceptors. The Senate plan would provide $630 million to continue research on the system, while the House defense bill would deny any further funds.

Administration officials have indicated that Bush would reluctantly accept the Senate proposal.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) led a failed assault on the plan, offering a $4.6-billion alternative that would have stressed defenses against short-range missiles on foreign battlefields. This provision would have built on successes of the Patriot missile against Iraqi Scud missiles in the Persian Gulf War.

Gore’s amendment also would have continued treaty-compliant research on defenses against long-range missiles, but would not have moved toward deployment.

Gore charged that the Nunn-Warner plan sets an “unwise and radical new course” that could trigger a new weapons race.