The Stealth bomber story you haven't heard; it doesn't work, and it'll probably crash

Washington Monthly, Jan-Feb, 1991 by Scott Shugar

Sad state of the ARTS

If the Air Force is not exactly shining the harsh light of open inquiry on the B-2, neither is the plane's primary contractor, Northrop. And to this point it's been Northrop that's had custody of the plane and primary control of the testing process at its B-2 offices in Pico Rivera, California and its final assembly plant in Palmdale, California--the Air Force manages the program from Washington and Dayton, Ohio. Generally, there are only two Air Force people stationed at the California B-2 facilities. The program manager rarely comes in from Dayton, and when he does, he gives Northrop advance notice. And Northrop knows what to say when it's warned: "Shhhhh!"

According to one former Northrop B-2 employee--let's call him Bill Boniface--the credo of deception colors every aspect of life at the company's B-2 division. Right down to such nonstealthy items as office equipment. Every month, Northrop sends Washington a list of items on which it is charging depreciation to the government under the terms of its contracts. Boniface discovered that as much as 50 percent of the computers and other office items listed monthly as being in his department--some of them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars--were nowhere to be found. Boniface learned that many supplies were disappearing from the shipping and receiving department. "The classical joke throughout the building," he recalls, "was that the general manager had to order three wastebaskets to get one." Boniface reported these findings to management, but no corrective measures were taken. In fact, he says, very senior corporate officials covered up the discrepancies.

Well, lying about five- or six-figure sums must make it easier to lie about 10-figure ones. At least that's what Boniface observed. Consider what he discovered was going on with the B-2 component called the ZSR-62. As for the function of that piece of equipment, Boniface says that classification rules will permit him to say only that it's an electronic component not associated with flight controls that is essential to the airplane's success. Without it, the B-2 is nothing but an overpriced B-1. Suffice it to say that much of the B-2's advertised stealthiness is supposed to come from the ZSR-62. Well, the problem is that the ZSR-62 doesn't do what Northrop said it would--one insider says it "doesn't work worth a damn." Yet senior management--all the way up to the recently retired chairman Thomas V. Jones--did what it could to keep the Air Force in the dark for as long as possible. (In case you find it hard to believe that the CEO of a major corporation could engage in such wrongdoing, consider that during Watergate, Jones pleaded guilty to a federal charge of making an illegal $170,000 contribution to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign and admitted falsifying documents and lying to a grand jury and the FBI about it.) When a report revealing the ZSR's shortcomings was forwarded to top management, those in the know were ordered to keep quiet about the problem, and all copies of the report were retrieved and destroyed. "They made it very clear to me," says Boniface, "that the Air Force must not know these things." (Boniface thinks that the Air Force may have recently learned the truth and, as a result, canceled the component. If so, he says, "you'd be left with a cargo airplane.")