PERSPECTIVE ON WEAPONS : Stealth Makes Power Usable Again : The B-2 bomber can restore to America the role of deterring conflict in places we often fear to go.

There’s a new and urgent mission for a stealth platform. If Iraq continues to hide its nuclear weapons manufacturing capability, how will we take it out?

The lessons learned from the Persian Gulf War are still being analyzed, but one of them seems pretty clear. One bit of new military technology that saw a great deal of use was Lockheed’s F-117A. Called “Stealth fighter,” it isn’t really a fighter since it lacks air-to-air offensive or defensive capability, lacks supersonic performance, lacks the agility of a true fighter and has decidedly poor pilot visibility. With that list of debits, you have to wonder why the Air Force bothered building it at all. Except for one thing: It’s the nearest thing to the invisible man since H.G. Wells.

Back in 1985, when I was researching “Red Storm Rising,” I traveled to Langley Air Force Base, headquarters of the Tactical Air Command, to discuss Stealth aircraft with some of the Air Force’s thinkers. Stealth was still very “black” then, though I did learn a new term--”low observables.” The only thing those people were willing to tell me was, “Son, you may safely assume that an invisible airplane is tactically useful.”

Exactly how useful stealth is can be discerned from the fact that in the Gulf War we lost examples of nearly every aircraft in the inventory, but not one of the 44 F-117As deployed had as much as a nick. That is remarkable for two reasons. First, while the F-16 and F-15E are superb high-performance birds with every feature an airplane driver could wish--heavy weapons load, speed, agility and optimum pilot visibility--they can be spotted fairly easily, and are evolutionary developments of their antecedents.

Second, the F-117A was the aircraft that owned the skies over Baghdad. It was the “Black Jet” that went “downtown” into the densest part of a highly refined air-defense network. Indeed, the first bomb dropped by the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing took out the Iraqi air-defense headquarters, and that is a subtle and interesting statement right there. The first tactical employment of stealth was a brain shot that had the effect of dislocating the entire Iraqi air-defense network with a single weapon. Remember that the crisis had been going on for months; that the signals we’d sent to Iraq could scarcely have been more clear; that the Iraqis must have been at a high state of alert, and that they had state-of-the-art equipment.

Yet, due to stealth technology, we were able to send a single aircraft into the very center of their defense system, and, with the first shot, destroy its headquarters.

Military historians will look long and hard at the Gulf War. One thing they are certain to note is that a new chapter of military history was opened by the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing. Stealth works. Stealth invalidated fully 50 years of technological progress.

The odd thing is that the F-117A is a relatively primitive aircraft. It’s subsonic, small, modest in range and able to carry only two bombs. Conceived in the 1970s, and first built around 1983, like most pioneering efforts it was a cautious first step into a new world. Its effectiveness results from the fact that it is relatively difficult to counter. Effective or not, it’s time for the next step.

That next step is the B-2 bomber, being built by Northrop.

Let’s turn the clock back to July 31, 1990. The CIA has determined that Saddam Hussein has either misread or disregarded signals from the U.S. government, and has issued the “Go” order to his commanders. We’d like to stop him--but how?

Let’s further assume that we had the B-2 in the inventory and that a group of four had been quietly dispatched to Diego Garcia. One of those four is then loaded with 40 tons of sophisticated ordnance. The aircraft lifts off and heads northwest toward the Persian Gulf. At about 3 in the morning, the U.S. ambassador phones in an urgent request to meet with the Iraqi leader, and in a fit of largess, the meeting is agreed to. While our ambassador is waiting for this world leader to shave, the B-2 crosses over Baghdad, at an altitude of about 40,000 feet. Its bomb doors open and inertially aided munitions are dropped out. Perhaps an air-defense radar crew notes a brief bit of electronic noise directly over their capital city, a ghostly blip appears, then disappears a few seconds later, and they think no more of it. But 40 1,000-pound bombs are falling. Their semi-smart guidance packages aim them at the river that meanders through the city. The river is wide enough that they all hit it in a brief but violent ripple of noise that creates a lot of foam and spray, but does nothing more than wake people up and break some windows.

“What was that?” our ambassador asks in some alarm soon after meeting the Iraqi strongman. “Oh, by the way,” she adds. “While your people are checking that out, we need to make it clear that we’d prefer that you did not tell your army to march. I wonder what all that noise was . . . . “

Would Saddam have marched? Maybe. Maybe not.

The B-2 is a weapons system about which I was, until recently, highly dubious. Designed as a penetrating strategic bomber to attack the Soviet Union, its mission appeared to have been invalidated by the changes now transforming the world. But the “strategic” appellation means more than dropping nuclear weapons. The business of the U.S. military for the next 20 years will be to forestall conflict. Historically that has meant sending conventional forces to hot spots. That used to be called gunboat diplomacy. The proliferation of sophisticated weapons to the most unlikely of places has made that increasingly dangerous. What used to be a free demonstration of power is now something else--while we can easily defeat and/or overwhelm nearly any country in the world, it cannot be done without some cost, and our people place a higher value on human life than most.

What stealth does is invalidate the weapons behind which some world leaders might be encouraged to hide with impunity. In simple terms, the B-2 bomber, with its range, payload and relative invulnerability, offers the same power as nuclear weapons, but with the added precision that makes its use politically possible. Its remarkable capabilities allow a strategic platform to be employed in a tactical mode, but with strategic effects. It is, in fact, a nightmare come to life for any tin-pot despot who’s been able to purchase SAMs for cash from any of several willing markets. The Stealth bomber for the first time offers the capability of applying the deterrence principle to people against whom deterrence has lost its value.

The point is a subtle, but valid, one. Libya, for example, cannot defeat a determined attack from a single U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, but can use its Soviet and French air-defense systems to threaten us with some losses. America prefers not to lose any of its young men, and that political fact, in deterring us from applying force, sometimes encourages others to take bold action.

The B-2 presents such enemies with a new and very different threat. This aircraft can reach thousands of miles, can effectively ignore the most sophisticated air-defense systems in the world and can deliver enormous firepower without warning. One such bomber could, for example, eliminate an entire air base and all its aircraft. It could also perform that mission with near-complete deniability. The B-2 can deliver the same guided bombs that were used to drop bridges in Iraq, but can deliver between 20 and 40 of them--not the two that the F-117A can deliver--in a single pass, and be heading away before the first one lands. All the money spent by all the Third World dictators for all those weapons would end up generating nothing more than additional targets to be attacked with impunity. That’s called leverage.

One can talk about the cost, but such discussions have acquired a metaphysical element in Washington. A less polite observation would be to call a lot of the talk outright lies. When a B-2 rolls out of the Northrop plant, and the keys--or whatever--are given to the Air Force, the cost is about that of two Boeing 747s. That does not seem terribly unreasonable. People who oppose the B-2 cite cost figures that often include 20 years of operation and support, plus the research-and-development funding that they themselves supported. (Many of these people opposed the B-1B in favor of supporting development of the B-2, and now that the B-2 is ready to enter service, they attack that program--yet another example of political integrity.)

The basic issue is a simple one: Is this capability useful? Is it in the national interest of our country to purchase a weapon that can deter (read: intimidate) the Saddam Husseins of the world? Is this a weapon likely to forestall conflict? Will it discourage people from offending our country and abusing our citizens? If the answer to these questions is yes , then does it not make sense for the government to spend roughly what a handful of American air carriers will spend on Boeing airliners? Oh, yes, do remember that this capability will also discourage people from blowing such airliners out of the air.

This weapon is a revolution. Revolutions are not cheap, but this one is not outrageously expensive. The principle has been validated. We made history with it. It works, and it will enable us to project American power into places where we often fear to go. It’s worth the cost. In the past decade we’ve seen that peace is the dividend of a judicious investment in power. This additional investment will pay more dividends still.