New Democrats for the B-2: Influential Senator Lieberman Recognizes Need for Upgrading the U.S. Manned Bomber Force

(Washington, D.C.): What a difference a war makes! Thanks to its highly successful
baptism of
fire in the conflict with Serbia, the B-2 stealth bomber — long derided by the Clinton
Administration and its supporters on Capitol Hill as an artifact of the Cold War that is of no
relevance to the Nation’s future security needs — is suddenly undergoing a major political
make-over.

Not surprisingly, a pathfinder in this long-overdue re-estimation is one of the most
enlightened
and respected “New Democrats,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT). In
comments to defense
reporters earlier this week, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee’s
Air-Land Subcommittee declared: “The B-2 really did the job.”

According to a report in Defense Daily, Sen. Lieberman told
reporters this week that the
performance of the stealth bomber was “impressive”:

“‘One thing the Air Force and all of us will want to be reviewing is the bomber
force and whether we ought to be investing more in it,’ Lieberman said.
The
review should consider ‘whether we buy some more B-2s or look at another
alternative’ for long-range airpower, he said….‘I can conceive of a lot of other
conflict situations in the future where we will want to rely on them,’ he said,
referring to the B-2s.“

No less interesting is Sen. Lieberman’s overall assessment of how the armed forces and
their equipment acquitted themselves in combat: “My conclusion is the military
performed
extremely well and the weapons systems we invested in over the last three decades
performed brilliantly.”

The Bottom Line

It can only be hoped that other Democrats — and so-called Republican budget-hawks — will
follow Sen. Lieberman’s lead. It is past time for those who have wrongly claimed that the B-2
would not be able to perform its mission in the rain or avoid mountains, ¹ who insisted that there
would be no need for aircraft with the unique power projection capabilities of the B-2 ² and/or
who contended that the B-2 would never be exposed to combat due to its high cost ³ to
recognize that the visionary investment made “three decades ago” in this formidable strategic
bomber has paid off handsomely and will continue to do so.

¹See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Bureaucratic Foul Play Is A Threat To the B-2
Bomber, Not Foul Weather (No. 97-D
116, 25 August 1997).

² See The Nation Needs More B-2
Bombers (No. 97-D 85, 23 June 1997);
The B-2: A Key
Component Of The Cost-Effective Defenses Needed For The 21^st
Century (No. 97-D 01, 2
January 1997); and Center Releases Summary of High-Level Roundtable That
Affirms The
Case For The B-2, Debunks Critical Studies ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-P_61″>No. 95-P 61, 9 June 1995).

³ See What’s Wrong With This Picture? Clinton
Doesn’t Get The Need For Strategic Air
Strikes — Or The Right Tool For Conducting Them ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_26″>No. 98-D 26, 9 February 1998).