WHAT YOU DON'T SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740097-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 18, 2012
• Sequence Number: 97
• Publication Date: May 18, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/18 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605740097-7
What You
Don't See
Is What
You Get
I N THE NAME of national security,
tens of billions of dollars in defense
spending are being hidden from public
scrutiny so that we can build war planes
that are equally invisible to our enemies.
This program is called Stealth.
Already concealed from most public
accounting are at least 50 Lockheed
strike fighters that probably cost about
$40-$50 million apiece; a new General
Dynamics cruise missile program that is
expected to cost about $7 billion; and the
most expensive warplane ever built, Nor-
throp's Advanced Technology Bomber
(ATB), with expected program costs be-
tween $35 billion and (according to hostile
sources) $80 billion.
The Pentagon considers Stealth to be
so sensitive that it will not say what the
Northrop bomber or the General Dynam-
ics cruise missile will look like or when
they will enter service. So that nobody
can guess these dates from the way mon-
ey flows into the program, the Pentagon
has classified all the cost figures as well.
In the case of the Lockheed fighter, the
Pentagon bluntly refuses to acknowledge
that the plane exists at all.
The Pentagon has classified these
weapons because they are based on a rad-
ical departure in warplane design. Instead
of using height, speed, defensive maneu-
vers, weapons or electronic radar jam-
mers to protect themselves from attack,
Stealth airplanes and missiles are de-
signed to avoid detection by radar or oth-
er detection devices.
Here is why the Pentagon believes we
need Stealth. In order for, say, the new
B1B bomber to have its best chance of
surviving against the Soviet Union's elab-
orate air defense system, it would fly
Bill Sweetman is technical editor in North
America for the Interavia Publishing
Group of Geneva, Switzerland, publishers
of Interavia and International Defense
Review, and the author of `Stealth
Aircraft-Secrets of Future Arrpower."
published by Motorbooks International.
W~ISHINGTON POST
18 May 1986
barely 250 feet off the ground. But the tealth is not a single magic trick but a
terrain which hides the bomber from the ~ means of designing a warplane so that
defenses also hides the targets from the -ts "signature" or "observables" are
bomber. To hunt for a target such as a drastically reduced. A plane's radar reflec-
mobile ICBM, the B1B must climb to a tions;~Ye the most important, but emissions
better vantage point, exposing itself to of l~g,~, heat or sound are significant, too.
attack. In a few years, too, it will be vul- Mtn conventional aircraft are ideal radar
targets. They present large flat surfaces,
nerable to new Soviet airborne radars that such~t~ the body sides and vertical fin, at
can pick out low-flying targets against the right angles to the direction from which
"clutter" from the ground below them. mos~adar waves are likely to arrive. They
These ground-hugging tactics might have