As a military-hardware order that had been proclaimed the richest in U.S. history, the F-111 fighter-bomber project seemed likely to set more records for hot controversy than cold cash. Air Force and Navy brass bridled at Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's 1961 decision to build a single all-purpose TFX, as it was then called, for both services. When General Dynamics Corp.'s design got the nod over Boeing's, the bickering grew louder—and helped ease the Chief of Naval Operations out of his job. Congress, too, filled the air with investigations over what critics called "the flying Edsel." So cloudy were the F-111's skies that even last year General Dynamics President Roger Lewis could not guess how big the buy might be: "We don't know how many children we'll have," he shrugged. "We're just engaged."
Growing Pains. Last week, after six long years of political and technological birth pangs, the revolutionary 1,650-m.p.h. whiz-bang won its first formal production contract. The Air Force, which is handling all F-111 procurement, gave General Dynamics an order for 493 planes to be delivered by 1970. Of the total, the Air Force will take 395 of its F-111A and FB-111 versions. The Navy, which is still unsatisfied with its model, the F-111B, will take only 24. Britain, with an order for 50, and Australia (24) account for the rest. Total value of the contract, which does not cover engines, weaponry and some electronics: $1,821,938,651.
Big as it is, the first order came nowhere near the 1,000 to 1,400 planes which, it has been estimated, the project will eventually involve. One reason is that the 23 prototype F-111s built by General Dynamics have had problems. The key swing-wing design, which permits 120-m.p.h. landings and supersonic dashes, has worked well, and the plane, in its 1,800 test flights to date, has hit speeds as high as Mach 2.5. But the Navy, in particular, has complained that the F-111B, which at 66 ft. and 35 tons has grown considerably from its design size and weight, is too long and too heavy for carrier operations. The price tag, too, has grown. Instead of the $2,800,000 each plane was originally expected to cost, estimates now put the F-111A at $5,000,000, the more complex F-111B at $8,000,000.
Other Plums. Whatever the cost, General Dynamics should fare well—and its F-111 earnings will add a lot of lift to a company already flying high on other projects. Under Lewis, General Dynamics has spectacularly recovered from the staggering $214 million loss it wrote off on its Convair jetliners in 1961. Climbing back to its 1961 sales peak of $2 billion, the company last year earned $58 million on sales that were up by 22% to $1.8 billion. Nearly 80% of that comes from Government orders for items ranging from Atlas and Centaur rockets for NASA to Navy surface ships and nuclear-powered attack submarines.
For the future, General Dynamics is in line for a pair of plums: likely to become $1 billion projects are the jobs of refitting Polaris subs to handle the advanced Poseidon missile and building a new Navy Standard Missile to supplement two of its earlier products, the Tartar and the Terrier.