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After years of delay and months of suspense, the U.S. has all but decided to enter belatedly the race to build a supersonic jetliner. A special Cabinet committee headed by Vice President Johnson will shortly send to the White House a long-awaited report strongly recommending that the Government bear the financial brunt of developing the costly plane, which will be able to fly from coast-to-coast in less than two hours and from New York to Paris in less than three. President Kennedy is expected to ask Congress for an appropriation to get the whole thing started. Congress, already balky about the high cost of getting to the moon, must be convinced on similar grounds that national prestige is involved. The sums are so big that, in the words of Northrop Corp.'s Chairman Tom Jones, "there has to be a purpose other than free enterprise." Three months ago, Federal Aviation Administrator Najeeb Halaby visited the plants of the Anglo-French consortium-British Aircraft Corp. and Sud-Aviation—and was shocked to see how far along the British and French were in building their needle-nosed Concorde jetliner, which will fly at Mach 2.2 (or 2.2 times the speed of sound). The market for a supersonic transport (or SST, as it is widely known) will at first be only 100 to 150 planes, and both U.S. and foreign airlines are naturally inclined to order the planes from the company that can promise the earliest delivery date. The Russians are also pushing ahead with an SST. Speed Debate. U.S. aviation experts are hotly debating whether the U.S. should build a Mach 2 or a Mach 3 jetliner. The FAA favors a Mach 2 plane, because it could be built more quickly and less expensively, would be able to use existing design techniques and metals. Just about everyone else, including the airframe makers, strongly favor a Mach 3. "We ought to do better," growls North American Aviation's Chairman Lee Atwood, "than just to build another Concorde." Since a Mach 3 jetliner, to resist heat at such speeds, would have to be built of stainless steel and titanium, it would take longer to make and would also require costly engineering for new engines. But its backers argue that a Mach 3 would be a radically new plane that would give the U.S. undisputed future leadership. There is also talk of a compromise Mach 2.3 or 2.4 plane that could later be developed into a Mach 3. Though the U.S. is getting off the runway late, it already knows quite a bit about what has to be done. The only large jet in "the free world that has logged any substantial supersonic flight time is General Dynamics' B-58. Boeing has 100 engineers working fulltime; at its Renton plant near Seattle on a supersonic project. In its usual guarded fashion, Boeing has been testing models in wind tunnels for at least five years, has built a full-scale mock-up of a cabin section of a Mach 3 jetliner. North American Aviation is building three prototypes of the supersonic B70 bomber. Pooled Skills. But none of the U.S. airframe makers can on its own raise the $1 billion to $2 billion needed to develop an SST. To get a program moving this year, President Kennedy must get $100 million or so out of Congress during the current session, or face a delay that would make it practically impossible to catch up with the French and British, who promise delivery of the first Concorde in 1970. If the Government encourages U.S.