Grounded by the Budget

President Kennedy's decision to cancel the development of a nuclear-powered military airplane brought howls of consternation from several airframe, engine and electronics manufacturers. In a terse paragraph in his defense budget message to Congress, the President favored dropping the 15-year-old project because, although $1 billion has been lavished on the program, "the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote." The U.S., he went on, would have to spend at least another billion "to achieve the first experimental flight." The President proposed to shunt "the entire subject matter" of nuclear-powered flight to the budget of the Atomic Energy Commission, where "it belongs as a nondefense research item.''

Primarily affected by the proposed cancellation are the Convair Division of General Dynamics Corp., major contractor for the initial airframe design, General Electric Co. and the Pratt & Whitney Division of United Aircraft Corp., who are developing the nuclear-powered engines. G.E. has already begun sending out notices to dozens of subcontractors and suppliers to stop work on orders totaling millions of dollars, estimated it may have to lay off hundreds of employees. Pratt & Whitney expects to lay off about 800. Convair would also be hurt by the elimination of additional funds for its 6-58 Hustler bomber and by Kennedy's decision to cut back the B70 jet bomber program. If all the cuts go through, and if Convair gets no other contracts, its 18,000-man work force at its Fort Worth plant would have to be deeply slashed.

G.E. testily challenged the President's assertion that a nuclear aircraft is a remote possibility, said that it recently proposed to perform the first test flight of its engine in 1963 "for less than one-fifth" of the additional billion dollars mentioned by Kennedy.

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