LETTERS
LETTERS Mirror, mirror I considered your piece on the media coverage of Desert Shield (“How They Missed That Story,” James Bennet, December] to be consistent with the no-nonsense...
...Granted, high-performance aircraft often must give up some stability to accomplish other performance features...
...Let me point out that the airplane has been flying since July 17, 1989...
...Shuger relies on statements from two Hill staff members in accusing the Air Force and Northrop of lack of independence in B-2 testing and criticizing their failure to consider techniques other than radar that may detect stealth airplanes...
...As I reported, at the time my piece went to press, the two flyable B-2s had accumulated 100 flight hours...
...What good is a strategic bomber that can’t take off in crosswinds...
...MI: Rolando is a It...
...Colonel Blanks wants us to be reassured because the total is now 117...
...He asserts that the airplane will not fly, that it is aerodynamically unstable...
...I experienced the narcissism that Washington thrives on growing up in Alexandria and working as a public policy intern in the Pentagon...
...Your air is cleaner, your parking lots are roomier, and your petroleum dependence is smaller...
...economy, but he still must answer Jesse Jackson’s question: What do you do about U.S...
...As I observed in the piece, the Air Force evaluators have been anything but “independent”-for years they’ve resisted many concrete testing proposals that could be performed by disinterested parties without delay...
...The current flight-test program involves the verification of IO years’ worth of previous computer modeling and wind-tunnel testing...
...ought to ban the import of products made with slave labor or with extreme disregard for the environment and worker safety...
...He then elaborates on potential problems with the “four ARTS units on each B-2...
...LETTERS Mirror, mirror I considered your piece on the media coverage of Desert Shield (“How They Missed That Story,” James Bennet, December] to be consistent with the no-nonsense journalism expected of your publication...
...It is designed to push the limits...
...workers who lose their jobs because foreign companies make a cheaper product by paying their workers slave wages and spending nothing on safety and antipollution devices...
...Although radar is the primary means of detecting aircraft at a long enough distance to be of value to air defense systems, other means could be developed (albeit at great expense...
...Looks like you missed the irony in criticizing governmental support for nonpetroleum transportation while decrying America’s “hypnosis” over the oil-rich Persian Gulf...
...The big problem with the ARTS is heat buildup caused by poor circuit design...
...Shuger states that there is intentional “foot dragging” due to “fear that realistic and expedient tests would quickly produce bad news...
...This approach has been described by one former Northrop engineer as “a Band-Aid solution...
...each side of the aircraft is controlled by four of them...
...The F- 16 is a perfect example...
...JOHN A. ROLAND0 Washington, D.C...
...The Air Force has conducted a total of 31 sorties and accumulated in excess of 117 hours on the two flight vehicles...
...The issues raised were poignant, but they were all addressed by analyzing the news reporters and not the newsmakers...
...Through the use of assertion and hearsay, he weaves a story of intrigue and adventure...
...RANDOLPH M. BLANKS MI: Blanks is a colonel in the U.S...
...This flight-test phase cannot be accomplished overnight...
...The piece was better suited for a trade magazine and not for a reliable forum of world events...
...The group has not found any projected technologies capable of detecting and engaging a B-2 to a degree that would allow it to be defeated...
...Flight profile testing is proceeding quite well, and the Air Force is pleased with the results...
...The Air Force’s “correction” was to devise ways to blow the heat off the circuits-a principal one was to have the pilots lower the landing gear to let in outside air (a maneuver not feasible in all phases of a mission...
...A so-called cascade failure problem associated with the ARTS power supply existed earlier in the program...
...JOHN F. HILLEN I11 Saudi Arabia MI: Hillen is afir.st lieutenant in the Second Armorrd Cavalry stationed in northern Saudi Arabia...
...To this day, the circuit architecture has been left unchanged and the root problem left undiagnosed...
...The radar-measuring or stealth-testing phase follows the same philosophy as the aerodynamic performance phase...
...bike staff...
...Trail mix You and the Rivlin Commission wonder why the District of Columbia government needs a three-person bicycle staff [“Tilting at Windmills,” January/February...
...colonel in the U S . Air Force arid a federal e.wcrr~ivefe llow at [he Bi-ookings Institution...
...This occurrence was discovered during laboratory testing and corrected well before the first flight...
...The B-2 has eight ARTS...
...bicycling infrastructure, including bike lockers at Metro stations and extensive commuting and recreational trails, is probably the best in the Northeast...
...Time to expand the bike staff...
...One small example illustrates the weakness of Shuger’s assertions...
...DOUGLAS SCZYGELSKI Dayton, Ohio...
...Slave trade David Halberstam [“Coming In From the Cold War...
...A modern fighter or bomber is not meant to pull up to Gate 12 at National, onload passengers, and act as a skybus to your next destination...
...It was tested for only four hours prior to the inaugural flight...
...Some of our most capable fighters are designed with a great deal of inherent instability...
...Shuger states, “Another dark secret of the B-2 is that it’s not very airworthy...
...Pushing the journalistic limits seems to be the design of your article...
...There are eight ARTS systems per B-2-but each set of four controls one wing...
...CHARLES KOMANOFF AND JON ORCUTT New York...
...The U.S...
...The D.C...
...It’s not hard to show how insignificant that sum is: The flight hours accumulated to date are fewer than would be used by just five B-2s flying a single round-trip mission from the western United States to targets in Moscow-less than 7 percent of the flight time that would be used on such a mission by the fleet of 75 planes that the Pentagon wants to buy...
...It is also well known among aircraft designers that in many cases we give up stability of design in our modern war-fighting aircraft to achieve higher capabilities and level of performance...
...However, 1 would caution you about being too introspective in the only story you ran about what looks to be the event that will shape a generation of policymakers...
...Lose one wing and you lose the plane...
...New York B-2 bombs Scott Shuger’s piece, “The Stealth Bomber Story You Haven’t Heard” [January/February], represents yet another attempt to delude the American public into believing that the B-2 is a failed program...
...And noncyclists like you also benefit from the work of the D.C...
...I invite your staff to reach outside the Beltway and the op-ed pages of major newspapers and attack this event with the same gusto you use in pursuing cloakroom and Capitol corridor news...
...Air Force...
...In addition to computer-aided design and manufacturing, there were 750,000 hours of system and subsystem testing done by computers, plus 24,000 hours of wind-tunnel testing before the first B-2 got airborne...
...James Bennet is welcome to ride with a lead cavalry squadron if he so desires...
...I reported that in the opinion of well-placed insiders at Northrop, it is “not very airworthy” and is likely to crash...
...The author replies: I did not say that the B-2 will not fly...
...Lest the many mirrors that Washington uses to admire itself confuse you, remember what is the reflection and what is the object...
...Lose one set and you lose the wing...
...But in the case of the B-2, there’s a lot of evidence that stability has been not compromised but sacrificed altogether...
...January/February] is right to say that trade barriers are no panacea for the U.S...
...Recognizing this possibility from early on, the Air Force involved a team of independent evaluators to determine if radar or other means could be developed to detect the B-2 to any significant degree...
...Considered one of our most successful fighters, its fly-by-wire controls allowed us to build and control the aircraft in ways unthinkable in the past...
Vol. 23 • April 1991 • No. 4
