WASHINGTON REPORT: The Future of Aerial Warfare
Getlein, Frank
WASHINGTON REPORT THE FUTURE OF AERIAL WARFARE The new military aircraft, the B-l, has been regularly in the news recently for all the world as if someone somewhere in either the wonderful world...
...not overwhelming like 1,000, frivolous like 11 or 17...
...possibly even less...
...The name itself is the key, the letter-number combination...
...Clifford argues persuasively, from assumptions a good deal more militarily permissive than my own, that the machine is unnecessary, premature, obsolescent in advance and damned expensive, all of which are true and all irrelevant...
...One more point of prologue...
...They wouldn't actually do that, though, it's a little close to the wind...
...This will be interpreted by the Pentagon as a reason for ever more urgency in the B-l program...
...FRANK GETXEIN...
...More likely, really, with the new plane as joker...
...In the ensuing national panic, the one calm voice will be that of the Pentagon's procurement office saying that thank God the office does have these plans for a new weapon able to defy the Soviet device and get through to target...
...At least one of the countries will shortly have elections returning greatly increased Left-Socialist representation...
...Beyond price is what it all will turn out to be starting fast...
...Advocates of arms economy will whisper awe-fully in the House dining room of a possible $200 million tag, not yet knowing that high in the Pentagon's attic, in the inner ring, a visionary gnome will already have done a glissando on the computer and glimpsed, like stout Cortex at Darien, the vista of a whole new world before him: the possibility of the first ever single weapon coming in at over half a billion...
...Despite these vicissitudes and others, despite the carping of the harpies on the shores of press and politics, the mechanical armada will at last be completed, medals and commendations handed 'round, one final extra appropriation made to cover unanticipated closing costs, and a monumental flypast of the whole fleet conducted over the Southwest desert as part of the festivities celebrating the bicentennial of the Whiskey Rebellion, the first incursion of the armed forces into the civil life of the Republic...
...The "B-l" is actually the successor to the B-52, Kissinger's and Nixon's weapon of preference in smashing all those Commie bodies in Vietnam as surrogates for the ones in China and Russia they didn't dare destroy...
...The B-l will be built because it can be built and for no other reason...
...In the first finished product demonstration of the machine for an audience of appropriate, so to speak, congressmen and others, the wheels will fall off...
...On balance, the start-all-over numerology seems to fit exactly that and therefore be based more on the weeks than on the cards...
...In spite of those funds, the program will lag farther and farther behind schedule...
...It's a problem that doesn't yield easily to analysis...
...The Senate has passed a resolution putting it all off until the next administration is in office with the implication that then the sweet and low flier may be canceled altogether, although even if that improbable delay came to pass the probable result would be merely to pass the contract yummies out to firms in Democratic areas rather than to those in GOP areas...
...If successor to the B-52, why not the B-53...
...When the gnome, in response to a direct question from the chairman, tells a congressional committee of his projection, the Pentagon will eliminate his job description in a much lauded voluntary effort to reduce the military budget...
...Reach 52 and start all over...
...Congress will be asked for funds to speed up the manufacturing process...
...About half way along in the program as originally scheduled, the project will produce a spin-off in the form of a smaller version, less sophisticated technically and less costly, suitable for use by nations less rich...
...Cards of the deck...
...The appropriation will hardly be secure in the Pentagon keep before cost revisions will begin coming out...
...When this information is published, the House will establish a special committee to investigate the leak...
...The other half of the high-rankers, the stay-at-homes, will be deputed to write "severe" letters of reprimand to the gadabouts...
...Production will proceed...
...Next, Jack Anderson, followed in full force by the New York Times, will reveal that half of the officers of brigadier and higher rank and half of the civilians of corresponding rank involved on the project have been spending their vacations or leaves for the whole life of the project as non-paying guests at the resorts run by a subsidiary of the contractor in Sardinia, the Seychelles, the Moluccas and (for long weekends) St...
...And that will be only the beginning...
...This will lead not to a decision not to build the new fleet, as the naive observer might imagine, but to a crash shakedown of Congress for the extra money needed to correct the deficiencies...
...All that being so, and a pattern in those things long established, it is no great trick to write the history of the B-l ahead of time...
...Opponents of the plane, such as former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, have so far missed the rock bottom reason for the and hence its inevitability...
...This has been the driving force of our whole incredible arms development program ever since we put those funny little anti-missile missiles on the outskirts of selected cities and provided suburban housewives with an unexpected source of casual labor, the first and last instance of fall-out benefits to the civil population from the arms race...
...As part of the legislation funding the new committee, a relatively small appropriation will be made to stick the wheels back on...
...What's more, the Pentagon spokesman will add savagely, those letters will go in their permanent files...
...It's to be called the B-2 and should cost out, oh, in the neighborhood of...
...As in that delightful American usage, "first annual," naming something One means that the namer has every intention of later having a Two, Three, Four and so on, each of which will sell a touch more easily than it would have as 54, 55, or 56...
...The contractor will do some pushing himself, chiefly through bribes to high government officials in selected governments...
...not definitive or final like 50 or 100...
...not memorable, for that matter, like 33, 66, 99...
...The "tests," as the Pentagon amusingly calls them, will be taken and the plane will flunk on one or more crucial points...
...In fact, of course, no one who is familiar with the history of arms procurement in our time has any doubt whatever about the future history of the B-l...
...When these are discovered, the Pentagon will offer to become itself the delivering agency to foreign governments, thus eliminating the bribe-giving contractor...
...Fifty-two is a good, healthy number, indicative of time to wipe it all off the board and start all over...
...WASHINGTON REPORT THE FUTURE OF AERIAL WARFARE The new military aircraft, the B-l, has been regularly in the news recently for all the world as if someone somewhere in either the wonderful world of government or the scarcely less, these days, wonderful world of journalism had serious doubts about the future of the elaborate program that goes by the name of the flying machine...
...The original "oh, 80 to 90 million, somewhere in there," will firm up at 90, period, and leaks from a disappointed contractor will confirm that the real estimate price, tout compris, will be more in the nature of a hundred and a quarter, more or less, well, say more...
...With all that continuing history hanging on the initial venture, therefore, there can be no doubt that the B-l will be built...
...Lucia...
...As follows: After a little more backing and filling, a posture here, a gesture there, Congress will assuredly get aboard, vote for the B-l and announce that though it will indeed cost a lot of money, the security of America is beyond price...
...Well, the ice will have hardly melted in the celebratory Pennsylvania rye when the CIA will issue a report on a new mystery weapon the Soviets are planning that can cause the B-l to crash halfway to target...
...At the same time, the cost will mount higher and higher...
...Weeks of the year...
...Funds will be forthcoming...
...The Pentagon will push this "Mini-B" heavily for sale to foreign countries...
Vol. 103 • June 1976 • No. 13
