Relying on Stealth

In the wake of America's spectacularly successful air campaign against Iraq five years ago, selective reporting from the Pentagon and weapons manufacturers painted glowing accounts of the battlefield performance of a new generation of advanced high- tech weapons like stealth fighter planes, laser-guided bombs and Tomahawk missiles.

Based on those accounts, subsequent Pentagon procurement budgets invested heavily in these extremely costly weapons systems, with nearly $60 billion allocated to "smart bombs" alone.

Now, a detailed four-year study conducted by the General Accounting Office, comparing Pentagon target data with later damage assessments, finds that the advanced weapons did not achieve significantly better results than much cheaper aircraft and weapons, despite their much higher cost. Laser-guided bombs, which amounted to only 8 percent of the tonnage dropped during the war, accounted for 84 percent of the munitions cost.

Sophisticated stealth fighters sometimes proved less operationally reliable than more conventional aircraft -- and far less effective than advertised.

The Air Force claimed an 80 percent success rate on bombing runs by the stealth fighter, but the classified report placed the figure at about half that. In addition, weather conditions and the smoke of battle foiled even the most sophisticated optical and electronic sensing systems and made it hard to locate and home in on important targets. So did the high altitudes pilots flew at to protect themselves from potential ground fire.

The lesson is not to give up on these advanced weapons, which, if used more judiciously and in conjunction with more timely battlefield intelligence, have the potential to provide a military advantage and can at the very least give American forces a significant psychological edge.

But Congress does need to take a much more skeptical, cost- effective approach to defense procurement. It would be a grave mistake to rely too heavily on finicky technologies that are only effective under specific operating conditions not always encountered. Congress must assure an appropriate mix of smart and dumb weapons that makes the most efficient use of the American taxpayer's dollars and the most suitable use of advanced technologies.

That advice is particularly timely just now, as Congress moves to work out differences between House and Senate versions of next year's defense budget. Both versions are swollen with unjustified procurement add-ons that bring total spending up to $266 billion, $11 billion above the Administration's already excessive spending request.

Special attention should be given to the funding for three new fighter aircraft, all requested by the Clinton administration and all incorporating stealth technology, with a projected eventual program cost of more than half a trillion dollars. Unfortunately, the current Congress, like its predecessors, seems more interested in delivering procurement spending to the districts of influential members than in digesting dry studies of weapons performance.

Procurement costs for weapons systems loaded with dazzling experimental technologies of untested reliability and uncertain battlefield utility are a major factor in keeping defense budgets close to Cold War levels in a world where no other global superpower threatens American security the way the Soviet Union used to. The United States needs a robust defense, but its spending should have some connection to real-world threats and needs. Right now, American military spending is equal to that of the next 10 biggest military powers combined -- and most of those countries are allies.

By relying less heavily on costly and unproven high-tech weapons systems where conventional weapons would do the job, Americans can have the same high degree of military effectiveness for significantly fewer dollars.

-- The New York Times