New Weapons, Old Problems

...And as a result of this mistake, the second pilot, who was keying off the lead plane, dropped his bomb 300 yards away from the barracks building he was supposed to almost hit...

...It doesn’t matter...

...But when Gordon asked why, the general replied, “Go ask the Air Force...

...But as far as the Air Force inventory is concerned, Scott Shuger is an editor of The Washington Monthly...

...When a reporter for Air Force Times, Steve Weber, made a Freedom of Information Act request to the Air Force to release the inspector general’s report, he was turned down...

...There are two ways of learning that the risk of military failure is too great...

...Enter The New York Times’s Michael Gordon, a reporter with persistence-and a camera...

...But there is a world of difference between that notion and operational accuracy, which is the accuracy achieved by a system when it is subjected to the “fog of war...

...There was, for instance, the time two busloads...

...Prior to Gordon’s stories, the Pentagon had consistently emphasized the technical bombing precision of the F-117...

...Of course, that’s why newspapers should encourage aggressive reporters, too...

...They wouldn’t talk about it and they invoked considerations of classification, which in reality was just a disinclination to talk about it...

...But in doing that and little else, defense officials suppressed an important dimension of weaponry...

...Timewise, running down information about the stealth fighter is right up there with asking to fly one...

...I’m sure the FAA has seen stealth planes, but the FAA is kind of a paramilitary organization, and if they tell the controllers not to say anything, they won’t say anything...

...That’s an Air Force regulation, I don’t know if I have that number handy, but basically it’s to protect the witnesses and the people who contribute to these reports...

...As the Pentagon’s story fell apart, Gordon discovered other chinks in the mission...

...But when you sit astride an organization as sprawling and complex as the Defense Department, you can’t get out of the office enough, and even when you do you’re going to miss things...

...Susan Strednansky, the public affairs officer who deals with questions about the F-117...

...Once there, he asked to see the craters left by the stealth fighters’ bombs...

...Now, suppose you were a reporter for your favorite monthly magazine of politics and government and that in light of this development, you were trying to find out some basic information about the F-117...

...At the same time that Gordon was getting stonewalled, the Defense Department was preparing to partially unveil the F-117...

...Another sign of this came earlier this year when, after DOD conducted a three-month review of the Navy’s proposed stealth plane, the A-1 2, Secretary of Defense Cheney endorsed continued funding of the aircraft-nly to be told for the first time just days later that the highly classified program was having problems serious enough to delay its production up to a year...

...Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, upon returning from a trip to Panama shortly after the fighting was over, worried that the mission was based not on military considerations but on the desire to boost the imperiled budget prospects of stealth aircraft like the B-2...

...Tales like these suggest that the stealth programs may just be the most truth-proof organizations ever put together...

...I have nothing on that...

...Although it’s easier to stay with the canned briefings and in the good bars and restaurants, the truth is seldom found there...

...I don’t want to start comparing them to the Navy, because I don’t know anything about Navy aircraft...

...She doesn’t necessarily deal with answers...

...It’s not just the names, it’s the whole report that’s protected-what they say...

...In other words: “No,” they explained...

...And the other crater was on a hillside overlooking a basketball court, way off target...

...But it’s been designed specifically to attack at night and hit with a pinpoint accuracy...

...The F-117 in Panama was a useful reminder...

...Research assistance provided by Margaret Gray and Patrick O’Rourke...

...I brought them back to Washington and showed them to a variety of people...

...One was about 17 feet away...

...I have nothing on that either...

...And that would force it out into the open...

...At last we had a translation of the technical phrases the Pentagon used in assessing the stealth fighter’s first combat performance: “pinpoint accuracy” means missing one target completely, and limiting the “risk of collateral damage” means blowing up a saloon...

...All I can tell you is that the document is protected...

...In his initial description of the air strike, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Pete Williams, said that the “bombs hit their intended target,” and that “the Rangers landed with no opposition...

...That means you can be stealthy to one radar that you’re flying straight and level right at...

...Well, suppose you’ve done that...

...I thought at least if I put it out before the Air Farce Gordon had brought his wife’s camera with him...

...It was the same day Cheney and his spokesman Williams found out...

...I said, ‘This thing didn’t quite do the trick.’ And they said, ‘Oh no, we’ve been assured by the Air Force that it was fine.’ This went on and on...

...Perhaps another piece could have done a fair job, but we did not want to risk collateral damage...

...they need the press...

...I don’t know if you are familiar with the classification...

...POWs, widows, and orphans know all about one of them...

...Basically, not to be too facetious, we were trying to miss the building...

...Here’s an item that shows how easily that can happen with stealth: Fred Hoffman, until last January the number two spokesman for the Pentagon, was kept out of stealth clearances for much of his tenure...

...Didn’t you talk to Col...

...Williams, who was with him at the time, didn’t see them at all because he was sitting on the other side of the aircraft...

...Strednansky : “There is no releasable document available...

...He found out that the Rangers went into battle thinking that the stealth fighters were going to bomb the barracks, not just try to hit near them...

...The move was clearly designed as a major escalation against Saddam Hussein: Breaking with its practice of confirming the departure of forces only after they leave their U.S...

...Although he may have chewed some people out, he didn’t fire anybody and he didn’t issue a new policy about forwarding stealth information up the chain...

...The first time this aircraft had been used in a combat situation and nobody had bothered to measure on the ground to see how it performed...

...A disturbing example: Although congressional aides with no need to know have been treated to tours of the F-117, the crews in the airborne tankers supporting the planes on their flight to Saudi Arabia were not issued data sheets on the fighter’s refueling characteristics...

...But we, the general public, can’t know what the results were...

...I would go to interview somebody and they would say, ‘It happened this way,’ and I’d say, ‘No it didn’t, here’s the photo.’ And they’d look at it and they’d say, ‘Hmmm, could I borrow that for a while?’ Finally, because of this, the Pentagon ordered someone to go down to Panama and take measurements of the goddam craters, which they had never done before...

...The episode fit the mold of many a Pentagon story...

...of congressional staff members without stealth clearances were taken out to Andrews Air Force base for free beer, hamburgers, and hot dogs, and a chance to get a very close look at an F-117...

...In a Panama score sheet appearing in the Post just days after the invasion, military analyst Edward Luttwak described the F- 117 mission as “totally unnecessary...

...So I knew that the initial account that the stealth fighters had dropped their bombs and scared off all the troops and that the Rangers had landed unopposed was wrong...

...This development prompted Gordon to ask many people in the Pentagon a pointed question: “How can you do that and yet refuse to answer any questions whatsoever about the F- 117’s first operational mission...

...How extreme...

...Was that FLIR built for that aircraft...

...Secretary Cheney said he’d like to know what happened, so we reviewed the case, came to some conclusions, presented them to Secretary Cheney, who said that he was happy with the result, and he felt that in no way had the Air Force tried to keep anything from him...

...So if you look at the mission it’s been designed for, yes, it’s the best machine for that particular mission...

...The one that among other things chides the Air Force for poor information flow...

...So it’s not classified, but it’s protected...

...And as one Pentagon analyst put it when discussing the Rio Hato raid, “The good news went up on a rocket booster and the bad news had to go through the sludge...

...So it is true that it’s considered more accurate for that mission than the other aircraft...

...Turbulent air is a good radar target...

...The Air Force has 1,772 public affairs specialists-that’s one for every four planes it owns...

...You’re not asking how big it looks on radar or if there are certain Iraqi radar systems that can detect it...

...by Scott Shuger Two weeks into the Iraq crisis, George Bush played a military card no president had ever played before...

...The day of the unveiling briefing-over three months after the bombing mission-the Pentagon told Gordon what its ground measurements revealed: a flawed mission...

...It looks to me like it’s show biz,” said Aspin...

...Indeed, a pilot of one of the cargo planes carrying the Rangers told Air Force Times that he thought the small-arms fire raking his plane came from troops who’d been brought to full alert by the bomb blasts...

...When it comes to finding out about black programs like stealth-finding out if they work well enough to be worth their tremendous cost, even finding out what that tremendous cost really is-the Pentagon’s Capt...

...It’s whether they easily could have kept it from achieving it-if the Panamanians had been a little better trained, better organized, or better equipped...

...You’re asking about one of its main missions...

...Gen...

...We had been told by Gen...

...That’s why they can’t be left on their own...

...Well, guess what . . . it’s classified...

...But that does include the F- 11 l?” “Well, see”-there’s a long pause here-“sure...

...Case closed...

...It was simply that something happened, there was a misunderstanding about what happened...

...In the face of these womes, the Pentagon provided nothing but comfort...

...Maybe that’s what they mean by stealth...

...We have lots of planes that can miss buildings...

...Neither Gordon nor anyone else has shown that the bomb guidance system of the F-117 is technically unsound-that under ideal and controlled conditions, it cannot deliver bombs accurately...

...Based on these official statements, the news media widely reported a refreshing contrast to such past events as the raid against Libya and the Iran rescue attempt: In Panama the paradigm of our very expensive military technology had performed flawlessly...

...Tony Capaccio of Defense Week, who also visited the target area, reported that the second bomb left a third, empty barracks standing, but generated a fireball that completely incinerated its interior-thus raising another question about the “stun but not destroy” concept of the mission...

...The emperor’s stealth clothes Truth doesn’t thrive unassisted in large bureaucratic organizations...

...Does the F- 117 have a radar...

...I almost exposed the film by mistake...

...What if you just blacked out their names...

...Is there any wonder that the A-12 embarrassment followed in short order...

...didn’t...

...But what about all the other radars along your flight path...

...After you’ve called the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and then the Air Force Chief of Staff’s office and have been transferred to the Air Force Office of Public Affairs and from there to the Operations Division and then over to the Tactical/Conventional Branch, you will eventually find yourself talking to Capt...

...it’s been designed to attack at night with pinpoint accuracy and for that particular mission it is the best aircraft...

...When Cheney visited Panama he saw the craters at Rio Hato only from his helicopter...

...First of all, it’s not a bomber...

...Most of it is classified Special Access Required...

...So I went to ask the Air Force...

...I never got in the front door there...

...I’d particularly like to see some tests against the typical Russian search radar, which is very low frequency...

...Twenty of the aircraft were deployed to Saudi Arabia-fully one-third of the Air Force’s operational stealth planes...

...Because of the FLIR [forward-looking infra-red detection system...

...That is, even after DOD discovered that the F-117’s operational accuracy was considerably less than its technical accuracy, it was still disingenuously conflating the two...

...The plume from a jet is an excellent radar target at the lower frequencies...

...When I got in touch with Col...

...When I tried, I eventually found myself once again on the 976-STEALTH line with Capt...

...Stiner, and the Air Force planners all knew that the goal was only to hit near the buildings, they each had in mind a different distance...

...By going into the field and then tugging hard on the single thread of detail that his pictures captured there, Michael Gordon was eventually able to unravel a host of important problems that had remained hidden either by mistake or by design...

...you’re in for quite a morning...

...But the way I look at it, ‘Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...

...The brick wall is also a reminder that good government depends on a tenacious press...

...Larry Welch...

...According to Gordon, the report also stated that the F-117 pilots switched from intending to bomb the barracks to bombing near them only two hours before take-off...

...bases, the Pentagon announced the move well in advance, and one defense official told the Los Angeles Times that positioning the planes in the Middle East gave “the president an option of making Iraq pay a significant price on some pretty significant targets...

...The press is the other...

...Nobody asked,” Williams observed lamely, “if they were aimed in the right place...

...This wouldn’t have been the only occasion when military rules were bent in the attempt to woo Congress on stealth...

...Four months after the Department of Defense finally admitted that the Rio Hato mission was defective, the Air Force was still calling the bombing a full success...

...Also, this particular report is highly classified, as a matter of fact...

...It wasn’t that...

...Let’s grant that Dick Cheney and Pete Williams really were not being deceitful when they told the world that the Rio Hato mission was an unqualified success...

...I’d come up with an idea and say, ‘You know, we ought to be doing this,’ and they’d say, ‘Wait a minute,’ and they’d close the door and say, ‘Hey, there’s a program on that you’ve got to be briefed on.’ I’d throw a little bit of a temper tantrum and say, ‘Wait a minute...

...That happened...

...He stationed a stealth aircraft-the F-117 stealth fighter, his newest and most glamorous weapon-overseas...

...It turned out that this was the initial objective, but it had been changed orally by senior planners without informing the Rangers...

...No...

...You can never overestimate the stealth world’s tendency to frustrate outside scrutiny...

...Calling it an investigation makes it sound like something bad happened and then you had to investigate it and come to conclusions...

...The Air Force “justified” its denial on the grounds that the report “contains predecisional self-evaluations of the effectiveness of internal management procedures...

...Everybody had received the same explanation from the Air Force...

...That’s why those in the big jobs in government should welcome and encourage aggressive reporters-people like Michael Gordon who choose to flyspeck the problems the officials can only fly over...

...Murtha raised that issue with Secretary of the Air Force Donald Rice and then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen...

...Left on their own, those in the defense world who want to get at the truth tend to get overmatched by the stealth officers and contractors...

...Buttimer, he had a different explanation for why I couldn’t see the report...

...The point is that you don’t have to be a military genius to figure out that where these craters were didn’t bear any particular relationship to any particular target...

...Strednansky, the issue is not whether the mistakes at Rio Hato kept that mission from achieving its objective...

...The stealth programs, wrapped as they are in technical mystery and pampered by lush budgets, are the extreme example...

...Stiner”-the invasion task force commander-“that the bombs were to have landed 150 meters from their targets and all you had to do was look at the craters to see that one appeared to have landed too close and the other appeared to have landed too far away...

...Strednanskys are considerable obstacles...

...It used to be obligatory to say that the SR-7 1 was stealthy, but I worked for the FAA for 10 years and it was the biggest target we ever saw...

...In short, at this date there is no reason to doubt that in a brochure, laboratory sense, the airplane is an accurate bomber...

...The Wushingron Post broke the story that moments before Ranger paratroopers landed at the Rio Hato airfield as part of the invasion of Panama, two stealth fighters dropped bombs near two barracks buildings in order to stun and confuse the Panamanian troops housed there...

...The technology is better, it’s a newer aircraft, and the advantage is that the F- 11 7 has been designed to penetrate dense threat environments...

...Murtha was assured by the Air Force that the mission had gone off fine...

...Is it more accurate than the A-6E or the F-l5E...

...That goes double for large military organizations, with their rigid chains of command and obsession with classification...

...There’s no question there could have been other planes chosen...

...I’m not a very good photographer...

...What’s the force of your saying it was not an investigation, that it was just a review...

...Strednansky, because he wanted to avoid the appearance of giving me the runaround...

...But the report as such is just protected...

...I think it was an Olympus...

...Rep...

...Gordon’s story prompted Cheney to order an inquiry by the Air Force inspector general into why the Air Force failed to inform him about the true results of the stealth fighter’s mission...

...And Rep...

...if they had been, say, . . . the Iraqis...

...Even after Cheney found himself dispensing less than the whoie truth about Rio Hato, his chief spokesman Williams defended the Air Force by saying it was only natural that nobody volunteered that one of the bombs was off target because it still fell where the pilot aimed it...

...On his last day in Panama, Gordon got the opportunity to go to Rio Hato...

...That’s why it’s a good thing there are still journalists like Michael Gordon...

...To be sure, some skeptical voices were raised...

...Precisely the kinds of problems the secretary of defense, Congress, and the public need to be aware of in order to make wise decisions about such mammoth investments as stealth aircraft...

...You come into the Pentagon beat skeptical,” says John Broder of the Los Angeles Times, “but it’s easy to get co-opted and to start to go with the flow and to believe the generals and to forget that every one of their claims ought to be held up to empirical evidence...

...After more than 10 years of near-total cover, plans were being made for a Pentagon briefing featuring a videotape and still photographs of the plane as well as fact sheets and partial cost figures...

...Which I find astounding...

...I mean basic-say, whether it’s any good at bombing...

...It’s protected...

...In the case of the F-117, the Pentagon didn’t own up to that difference...

...At that point people in the Pentagon-not the Air Force-became more responsive...

...had used its ultra-secret F-117s in combat for the first time...

...I had already interviewed the Rangers at Fort Benning,” he recalls, “and they told me that they were shot at getting out of the airplanes...

...I thought I was briefed in on all these programs!’ And they’d say, ‘Well, this one is a little bit different...

...The other expert agreed with the SR-71 point and summed things up this way: “Talking about reducing the radar crosssection of an airplane means with respect to a radar that’s nose-on...

...What’s more, “There are no factual portions of the report which can be released without, at the same time, disclosing the evaluative and deliberative process undertaken in conducting the inspection and compiling the report...

...Runaround Sue And remember that inspector general’s report that Cheney requested in the wake of Gordon’s story about Rio Hato...

...Rio Hato was proof, he said, that “the basic diseases of Vietnam-the manipulated body counts and infiltration rates, etc.-are still in place...

...I think that’s the bottom line...

...When I first came into the ‘building,’ I made it a condition that I would be briefed on every black program in my area of responsibility...

...He also explained that he was handling this even though he really should have referred me back to Capt...

...Gordon had to ferret it out...

...With all due respect to Capt...

...proached, Gordon let it be known that he intended to write a story to the effect that, while the Pentagon says the stealth fighter hit its target, here’s evidence it apbriefing,” Gordon explains, “at the briefing everybody would ask about it...

...A lot of times the black programs get away with things that should be scrubbed out or at least debated,” states a former high defense official...

...Panamanian Hato trick Last Christmas Eve the world learned that the week before, the U.S...

...It has the night capability...

...It heightened my skepticism again...

...That’s even higher than just Secret...

...I can’t tell you more than that...

...To him the mission was accomplished, and at the time nobody really worried or cared where the bombs fell exactly because the mission was accomplished...

...To fly, an airplane has to disturb the air,” said one, a man with 38 years’ experience with radar...

...Cheney’s trying to get the word out that he must be kept better informed about stealth programs “by anecdote rather than by policy,” says a reporter with a defense trade journal...

...But for instance if you took the parts out that have anything to do with national security . . . .” “Well, yeah you could do that, but I’d hate to give you a percentage of what you’d have...

...And my bosses all agreed, but the problem with that is, how do you know when you’re briefed into them all...

...Gordon doesn’t have a copy, and to any reporter who tries to get one, best of luck...

...The inspector general reports are protected, and therefore not releasable...

...Suppose they really were given bad information...

...Your conversation with her might go something like this: “Where does the F-117 stand as a bomber relative to other things in the inventory...

...Well, two longtime Pentagon scientists recently offered a striking explanation for why there is such poor information flow about stealth: it doesn’t work...

...After a tour and briefing at Rio Hato, Senator John Warner of the Senate Armed Services Committee stated, “We were told, and I concur, that this piece of equipment is the best...

...He said it was like an accident report...

...You’re asking about something that has nothing to do with stealth...

...Stiner finally admitted to Gordon that one of the bombs had fallen too close to its aim point...

...That this brick wall is still there even after the Rio Hato story broke is a reflection of the weak response Cheney made to being embarrassed by his subordinates...

...It just makes common sense that when you go into a reviewthis was not an investigation or an accident report, by the way-you have people there who have to testify, so you protect them...

...And even though the Panamanian air force had no fighters and there was no radar at Rio Hato, the charges of “unnecessary” and “show biz” were met by continuing to insist that the stealth fighter’s use was justified by its bombing accuracy...

...It’s a fighter, technically speaking...

...But I don’t have access to test results...

...Foul shots Shortly after the shooting stopped in Panama, Gordon-who’s been at the Times since 1985 and who last year helped break the story about West Germany’s role in building Libya’s chemical weapons plant-went down there for a week...

...I suspect that with a low frequency radar you could see the F-117 very nicely...

...I took pictures of these craters...

...That wasn’t very successful...

...Buttimer about that...

...Additionally, the IG reported that a contributing factor in the inaccuracy of the bomb delivery at Rio Hato was that the pilots had not trained in the same weather conditions they encountered in Panama, weather conditions that affect the use of the plane’s targeting systems...

...Moreover, although Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, Gen...

...On the one side you had the Pentagon’s turbocharged public affairs engine turning at max rpms to put out the official version, and on the other, you had a few stray reservations starved for facts...

...You’d have mostly black lines...

...Gordon’s subsequent story revealed that because the lead pilot forgot about the change in plans driven by the prevailing winds at the target area, the first aircraft dropped its bomb about 60 yards from the barracks that was supposed to be the near-target for the second plane-and only five yards from a cantina...

...And the best way to get shot down is to fly straight and level...

...I kept finding new ones...

...John Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, was told by a Ranger who participated in the drop at Rio Hato-and who was recovering from wounds he received there-that the stealth raid had not completely suppressed Panamanian fire against the incoming paratroopers...

...But,” he concluded, “I guess that’s what we’re really doing anyway...

...Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney originally credited the mission with “pinpoint accuracy...

...The commander who was leading the operation was happy with the results...

...And it has the night capability...

...Gordon later wrote that the report indicated that the commanding general of the Tactical Air Command (TAC) knew the truth about the bombing shortly afterwards, but that the only word up the chain from TAC was that the mission was “fully successful...

...If so, the episode makes it all the more clear how important it is for the defense secretary and his top aides to encourage truth-telling up and down the chain, and to do so by getting out of the office...

...Well, I think the results were pretty much publishedthe fact was that when the planes were sent down there, they were given a mission, the mission was to stun and disorient the Panamanian troops...