Word: bomber
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...honor of succeeding the venerable F-15 Eagle, now more than 15 years old. The full cost of the new Advanced Tactical Fighter, stretched out over more than two decades, could exceed $95 billion in today's dollars -- $32 billion more than the contract for the B-2 Stealth bomber, the most expensive plane in Pentagon history...
...sudden public adulation of American technology, long seen as sinking under Japan's rising sun, has even revived the Northrop Corp.'s hopes for its flawed and perhaps missionless B-2 bomber. The California company has launched a furious campaign to get more money for an aircraft that carries an $865 million price tag. The company and the Pentagon claim that the B-2 can destroy Soviet mobile missiles dispersed in millions of square miles of thick forests. Never mind that Saddam Hussein launched Scud missiles for weeks from sites in the open desert while a huge force of allied...
...different strong points. Northrop's YF-23, with its sharp, surprising lines, may be stealthier. Its engines are slung under its wings, but their exhaust is sprayed into troughs on the wings' upper surfaces to shield from heat-seeking missiles, a technique borrowed from Northrop's B-2 Stealth bomber. The material surrounding the exhaust outlets in the YF-23 can withstand a temperature of 540 degrees C (1000 degrees F), while the undersurface only a few inches away never gets hotter than 140 degrees C (280 degrees F), making the plane hard to detect by enemy infrared sensors...
Similar offensives by the supporters of multibillion-dollar programs like the Stealth bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative are getting under way. Everyone with a favorite weapons program, whether a member of Congress or a general, points to the gulf war as justification. Last week, for example, Democratic and Republican representatives from New York and Pennsylvania joined forces to order continued production of the F-14 Tomcat, a carrier- based interceptor Cheney says the Navy has in sufficient quantity. Price tag for the congressionally ordered continuation: $987 million...
...their attempt to justify the B-2 by providing it with a mission, advocates have argued that the bomber could be used to hunt down and destroy Soviet mobile missile launchers. But the allied air campaign's failure to silence Iraq's Scuds after four weeks of relentless searching has strengthened skepticism about the B-2's ability to locate Soviet missiles concealed in millions of acres of forests in the U.S.S.R. Opponents argue, furthermore, that the $70 million F-117A stealth fighter-bomber is not only a lot cheaper than the B-2 but also brilliantly effective; according...