Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Feinstein Says She’ll Vote for B-2

Standing before a crowd of aerospace workers, Sen. Dianne Feinstein made her first public commitment to the B-2 program Wednesday, pledging her support for the 20-plane program and leaving open the possibility that she would promote the production of even more of the stealth bombers.

Feinstein, a California Democrat, visited Northrop’s B-2 assembly plant in Palmdale, as well as the company’s El Segundo plant where the F/A-18 is built, and the C-17 test program at Edwards Air Force Base. The daylong tour of the defense facilities was pegged by Feinstein aides as a fact-finding mission in advance of her vote next month on the programs as a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

“I am a positive vote for the B-2,” Feinstein told a crowd of about 2,500 Northrop B-2 Division employees, who greeted her statement with loud applause, cheers and whistles. It was her second appearance at Northrop’s Palmdale facility, which she visited while campaigning for her Senate seat.

In brief remarks to the aerospace workers, she repeated familiar themes, stressing the need for a strong defense and securing federal funds to retrain laid-off aerospace workers.

Feinstein’s ambivalence about the possibility of additional stealth bombers comes at a time of growing discussion in the Pentagon and Congress of the need for more than 20 of the radar-evading B-2s.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, last month sent a letter to Defense Secretary Les Aspin stating that it is a “mistake” to stop production of the B-2 at 20 aircraft.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Merrill McPeak, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and the former vice commander of the Air Combat Command also have voiced support for an increase in the B-2 order.

The Defense Department initially planned to buy 132 of the bat-wing planes. The number was cut to 75 and then further reduced to 20. A recent RAND Corp. analysis concluded that the Air Force should have a fleet of 60 B-2s.

An increase in the number of B-2s would be good news for Northrop and its thousands of employees as well as the beleaguered Southern California aerospace industry. Already it is consolidating its operations from Pico Rivera to Palmdale and by early 1996 expects its B-2 Division work force to be just 6,500, down from a high of more than 13,000. If 20 were the maximum number built, Northrop expects that it would roll the last B-2 off the line in mid-1997.