We need the bat-winged bomber

By Jim Courter and Loren
The Washington Times, 02 January 1997
Thompson

William Cohen’s designation as the
president’s choice to be the next
secretary of defense means that he will
play a central role in shaping the
Clinton legacy – the body of ideas and
achievements that the president bequeaths
to future generations. So far, though,
most of the discussion of the Clinton
legacy in the national media has focused
on domestic issues such as reforming
welfare and improving access to higher
education. Almost no one talks about the
president’s legacy in the area of
national defense.

That is a serious oversight because if
there is one thing the record of the 20th
century proves, it is that threats to
national security are seldom as remote as
many Americans imagine. The military
forces that President Clinton and
Secretary Cohen leave to their successors
may face aggressors in the next century
just as dangerous as the various
imperialists, fascists and communists who
have shed a cloud over world history
since 1900. And because it takes well
over a decade to develop modern weapons,
future presidents may not have sufficient
time to remedy any gaps in inherited
military capability before the nation is
at war.

These issues usually get short shrift
when the nation is at peace, and in
fairness to the president, he has done a
better job than many predecessors in
preparing the nation for future military
challenges. Since 1993 he has stuck to a
plan of gradual demobilization that
preserved high levels of military
readiness while building the
technological base for future
modernization of aging weapons
inventories.

But on one key issue the President has
been badly misled by his representatives
at the Pentagon, and that issue is now
headed for a showdown in the Congress.
The issue is the B-2 stealth bomber, one
of the most capable military aircraft
ever built and certainly among the most
controversial.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich has
pledged to introduce legislation funding
production of more of the bat-winged
bombers, and a number of prominent
Democrats such as Norm Dicks of
Washington, Ike Skelton of Missouri and
Jane Harman of California are aligned
with Speaker Gingrich and his key defense
allies in the Republican caucus. In
addition, the administration has been
directed by Congress to conduct a
comprehensive review of U.S. military
strategy and forces in which the future
of the bomber force is likely to figure
prominently. The review is expected to be
completed in May, and a panel of
independent experts will offer their own
recommendations later in 1997.

Mr. Clinton inherited from the Bush
administration a plan to buy 20 of the
high-tech bombers, which are nearly
invisible to radar and other tracking
devices. The B-2 had been intended to
replace the Air Force’s older,
non-stealthy bombers, half of which were
built more than 30 years ago. But despite
congressional pressure to buy more -the
original goal was 132 aircraft -Mr.
Clinton’s only deviation from the Bush
plan has been to approve upgrading of a
test aircraft to operational status. The
problem with the B-2 is not its design or
technology. As the only stealthy,
long-range bomber ever built, its
military value is obvious. The problem is
money.

Each new B-2 costs $700 million, or
nearly five times the price of a Boeing
747 jumbo jet. Even in a defense budget
that totals a quarter of a trillion
dollars annually, it is hard to overlook
a plane that costs $700 million.

So instead of buying more B-2s, the
Clinton administration wants to load up
older bombers with long-range cruise
missiles and buy smart bombs for fighters
to carry. The older bombers aren’t
stealthy, but in theory they don’t need
to be if cruise missiles can do the job
of penetrating enemy air defenses. And
although fighters have shorter ranges and
smaller payloads than bombers, in theory
they can overcome these drawbacks by
operating continuously out of foreign
bases near war zones.

That’s the theory. In practice, the
administration’s plan is a fiscal and
military disaster waiting to happen. In
terms of costs, the cruise missiles to be
carried on older bombers sell for about a
million dollars each. Since the U.S.
attacked about 40,000 target-points
during the six-week air war in Desert
Storm, simple arithmetic suggests that it
would cost $40 billion for munitions
alone to repeat that operation using the
bomber/missile combination. If it is
assumed that the Air Force will have to
fight several such campaigns over the
next 30 years (the likely service life of
a bomber), then the “low-cost”
alternative to buying more B-2s costs
around ten times as much as doubling the
size of the B-2 fleet.

Because stealthy B-2s can safely
penetrate through air defenses to their
targets, they can rely on precision
glide-bombs that cost about 5 percent as
much as a cruise missile. A B-2 recently
used such bombs to destroy 16 separate
targets in a single test run. The same
thing could be accomplished using bombers
equipped with cruise missiles (assuming
the targets are not moving – another
drawback of cruise missiles), but the
missiles would cost $16 million.

It’s a safe bet the Air Force will
never buy enough cruise missiles to carry
out a real air war, so that leaves most
of the bombing burden with fighters
equipped to carry smart bombs. There’s
only one problem: Even if they are
stealthy, without nearby bases the
fighters can’t reach much that is of
interest.

Remember when the administration
decided to punish Iraq in September? U.S.
allies in the region denied access to
their bases, forcing us to rely on cruise
missiles launched from ships and
30-year-old bombers. At least as far as
the fighters are concerned, if allies say
no, we can’t go.

Access to overseas bases will be
harder to come by in the future. The U.S.
has cut its overseas presence in half
since the end of the Cold War. Even if
regional allies are willing to let the
Air Force use their bases in wartime, a
few well-placed bombs by adversaries more
resourceful than Saddam Hussein could
shut down bases for days or even weeks.

The B-2’s 6,000-mile range enables it
to penetrate air defenses and precisely
attack targets from far outside war
zones, a mission non-stealthy bombers and
fighters will never be able to accomplish
on a sustained basis. In theory an
aircraft carrier can move U.S. fighters
to within range of regional aggressors
without having to depend on local bases,
but “within range” has a
double-edged meaning in regional warfare:
what admiral is going to risk sending a
$5-billion boat with 5,000 personnel on
board within cruise-missile range of a
well-armed adversary?

So when all the costs and requirements
are added up, it turns out that the
world’s priciest aircraft, the B-2
bomber, is actually the cheapest way of
winning future wars. The other
alternatives either end up costing a lot
more or simply won’t work.

The main reason nobody at the Pentagon
will admit it is that much of the cost of
buying more B-2s must be paid over the
next four years, whereas the cost of
alternative approaches – all those
munitions – can be largely passed on to
the president’s successors. The
alternatives to the B-2 are a great way
of balancing the budget as long you don’t
have to actually fight and win a war. But
for precisely that reason, they aren’t
much of a legacy to leave future
generations.

Former Rep. Jim
Courter chaired two rounds of the base
closure commission and now heads defense
programs at the Alexis de Tocqueville
Institution. Loren Thompson, a senior
fellow at the Institution, manages its
national security research.