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Despite its stratospheric cost, the Stealth bomber has the support not just of military boosters like Weinberger and Tower but also of Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Michael Dukakis. With good reason: if successful, the Stealth bomber could neutralize the strategic dominance that radar has enjoyed for half a century. In a war, the B-2 would fly undetected over Soviet territory and from an altitude of 30,000 ft. drop nuclear bombs on the Soviets' mobile SS-24 and SS-25 missiles. But Air Force Chief of Staff General Larry Welch indicated that the Stealth's primary targets would be Soviet ICBM silos and underground bunkers housing the command posts of top Soviet leaders. The B-2, in other words, could be considered a $500 million weapon aimed directly at Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Stealth bomber's detractors, including the Federation of American Scientists and the Union of Concerned Scientists, question whether the plane would really be so difficult to detect. High-flying Soviet radar planes might spot the B-2 from above, and the airborne tankers that would refuel the bomber en route to the Soviet Union would be as visible and vulnerable as an ordinary plane's. The bomber's secondary mission is also questionable: mobile targets such as SS-24s and SS-25s can be located only by intelligence satellites. If the Soviets were to knock out certain U.S. satellites or jam satellite communications with the B-2, the bomber would be left to hunt targets on its own -- an improbably difficult task, considering that the Stealth would be traveling at 600 m.p.h.
The defense establishment argues that the very existence of the B-2 will upend Soviet military strategy. "What counts is not what outside observers think about the airplane, but what the Soviets think about it," says Air Force Secretary Edward Aldridge. "They're going to be just devastated by their conclusions." The B-2, declares former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, "makes obsolescent $200 billion worth of Soviet air defenses."
Still, the same destructive tasks could be performed more cheaply by cruise missiles, which are also being constructed with radar-eluding Stealth technology. Hundreds of relatively low-cost cruise missiles could be fired from the ground, and cause just as much damage as the bombs dropped by the B- 2. Cynics complain that military leaders have selfish reasons for favoring manned aircraft. Says John Pike, an analyst for the Federation of American Scientists: "You don't get ahead in the Air Force by pushing buttons to launch missiles."
Moreover, as Pike points out, the U.S. already has a new manned bomber: the B-1. The Pentagon has purchased 100 of the planes for a total of $28 billion. But the Air Force has conceded that the B-1 cannot yet perform its basic task -- low-flying penetration of the Soviet Union -- because its electronic jamming system does not work properly. Last year a B-1 crashed after colliding with wild geese. In the space of ten days last month, two more of the bombers went down during training flights. The latest disaster, which occurred in South Dakota, may have been caused by ice buildup on the plane's wings. Commercial airliners have long been equipped with deicers, but the B-1 unaccountably is not, even though the planes may be called upon to attack the Soviet Union in winter.