Supersonic Counterattack

Last year an intensive drive by citizen groups concerned about ecology and national priorities nearly doomed continued development of the U.S. supersonic transport aircraft. After the Senate voted nay, the plane was temporarily saved by a House-Senate compromise extending funds through March of this year. With that mandate about to expire, the battle has been joined once more. This time the SST's supporters have mounted a highly professional counterattack that threatens to overwhelm the aircraft's critics.

The four-week, $150,000 pro-SST blitzkrieg is mainly the work of an ad hoc National Committee for an American SST, supported by the aerospace industry and some 30 labor unions. It has placed full-page ads in leading newspapers. One pictures a boy holding a model of the SST and asks: "Will SSTs really pollute his world?" The answer, claims the ad, is that one SST moving at 1,780 m.p.h. "will emit no more pollutants per mile than three compact automobiles traveling at 60 m.p.h." As for sonic boom, the craft will be banned over land. At sea, the ad contends, the boom effect on the ocean surface will be "comparable to the impact of a fisherman's spinning lure hitting the water."

Other ads appeal to nationalistic sentiment. One shows a Soviet SST and is headlined: "Announcing international SST service--the best that rubles could buy." The real question for Congress, the ads contend, is "Will America be left on the ground?" The Russians have inadvertently aided that argument by-running two-page ads in Aviation Week & Space Technology, a U.S. magazine, urging aerospace executives to buy the Soviet TU-144 SST. They also announced that their plane will go into regular passenger service in October.

Serious Students. The SST advocates are directly pressuring Congress as well. AFL-CIO President George Meany told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that the entire future of the American aerospace industry, already "in a state of economic shock," was at stake. He claimed that the SST could generate 50,000 aerospace jobs and another 150,000 in related industries. The U.S. is now too late to catch other nations in the first generation of SSTs, Meany argued, and it must hurry to "enter the competition for the second generation --the SSTs of the 1980s and 1990s."

The comparable subcommittee in the House was addressed by David Fradin, 20, an aeronautical engineering student at the University of Michigan, who heads a national group of technically oriented students who back the plane. "We are the serious students, the ones who go to class when others seek to shut down the school," Fradin said. "We will not give up our dreams of peace, clean environment and social progress brought about with the aid of aerospace."

Boycott Cheese. The SST supporters have deluged Congress and potential backers elsewhere with a mail blitz of 400,000 pieces of literature. In smooth prose, they seek to rebut each criticism of the plane and to stress its economic benefits. One broadside claims that "one SST sold overseas will offset the import of 20,000 Volkswagens or 200,000 Japanese TV sets."

The campaign has reversed the trend of congressional mail. Just two weeks ago. Freshman Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas was getting about 100 letters a week about the aircraft, 80% of them opposed. Now he gets 450 letters a week about the SST--and 80% are favorable. A particular target is the plane's most effective opponent, Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire. Backers have passed out bumper stickers intended to punish Proxmire on his home turf. One urges a boycott of Wisconsin cheese. In a lighter vein, another proclaims:

PROXMIRE EATS MARGARINE.

The SST may yet get off the ground. The House, which approved further funding last year by 14 votes, is expected to do so again. The showdown will be in the Senate, where more money was rejected by an eleven-vote margin. Not at all certain that the Senate will repeat that opposition, Proxmire is urging states to ban SSTs of any nation from their airports. Five states are considering such legislation. Concedes Proxmire about the pro-SST assault on the Hill: "It's the kind of campaign I've seen pay off again and again in Congress."

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