Strength Through Politics

The dart-shaped B70 is an airman's vision: designed to fly three times faster than sound and 15 miles above the ground, it could serve as a nuclear bomber, a satellite launcher, or a six-jet civilian transport that could span the Atlantic in an hour. But what would be its strategic value in the missile age? "Doubtful," answered Old Infantryman Dwight Eisenhower last January, as he chopped the B-70's development budget for fiscal 1961 from a requested $385 million to only $75 million, barely enough to build two stripped-down flying shells. Last week, just eight days before the election, the Eisenhower Administration swung around, increased fiscal 1961 funds for the B70 to $265 million.

The action had military, economic and political reverberations. In Washington jubilant Air Force officers said that they could now begin building two combat-equipped B-70's as well as two stripped models, start airborne tests in late 1962. On Wall Street the spending announcement set off a four-day market rally, paced by stocks of the null prime contractor (North American Aviation) and some of its 18 major subcontractors (G.E., IBM, Westinghouse, etc.). In Southern California, where the new funds will go far to fight unemployment in the airframe industry, Campaigner Jack Kennedy charged the Administration with a last minute "transparent political maneuver to increase Republican votes." Big question: Was the spending decision spurred by cold war or hot politics? Answer: Both. Last June, in a new mood of militancy after Russia brought down the U-2 and torpedoed the summit conference, the Democratic-controlled Congress increased

Ike's $39.2 billion defense budget by $662 million.' In recent weeks the Administration has been unfreezing these funds, plus millions more in unspent appropriations from previous years. Box score for new allocations since midyear:

P:Polaris submarines: $382 million (for a year's total of $1.335 billion).

P:Military airlift: $194 million (total: $550 million). P:Atlas missiles: $131 million.

P:Antisubmarine warfare: $105 million (total: $1.47 billion).

P:Army modernization: $90.5 million-- with another $68 million coming soon.

P:B-70: $190 million -- $155 million released last week, and $35 million unfrozen earlier (total: $265 million).

Though last week's spending decision pumped new life into the B-70, airmen can expect many another fiscal fight. Navymen and missilemen argue that ICBMs and antiaircraft missiles will have rendered obsolete all manned aircraft by the time combat-ready B-70's go on the line in 1965. In rebuttal, airmen argue that planes always will be more accurate, reliable and flexible than missiles and that the U.S. always will need both. To keep the B70 program aloft, airmen require something like $400 million in the budget for fiscal 1962. How far and how fast to go with the controversial B-70--perhaps the last piloted bomber--will be one of the first military decisions to face the incoming Administration.

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