Norm Dicks

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Some Members of this very institution. Our colleagues have been POW's.

Mr. DICKS. I would like to also to yield to the chairman of the Procurement Subcommittee of the House Committee on National Security, another Californian, but also someone who has been at the forefront of ensuring that America has a strong national defense. The chairman was able to put into his mark and defend on the floor the authorization for two additional B-2s. Now we are going to have the appropriations bill in the next day or two. I hope that the gentleman from California [Mr. Lewis] and I are as successful as the gentleman from California was. I think it is important for the American people, for the press, for our colleagues to understand our intellectual rationale for this important defense system, one that I am proud to happen to start under a Democratic President but has been supported by Republicans and Democrats in the Congress for the last 15 years. I am honored to yield to our colleagues and chairman, the gentleman from California [Mr. Hunter].

Mr. DICKS. It is so true. The gentleman is exactly correct. When you have this standard package in our chart, the value of stealth, it was like I think 76 airplanes and 145 crewmen that went in, in the most heavily defended targets in Iraq, and they got turned back. They could not do the job. So they had to come back. We risked all those lives. We did the same thing the next day with eight F-117's, which were equivalent to one B-2. So one B-2, with two pilots and the 18 on, the 16 2,000-pound bombs, each one of which is individually targetable, could have done the job. They would have gotten the job done that the eight F-117's were able to accomplish but the huge package of nonstealthy airplanes were not able to accomplish. The other thing is, as the gentleman points out, because the weapons are less expensive, and because we do not want to lose any lives, I mean, stealth makes it possible for our kids to go in against the most heavily defended targets, take them out and come out alive. If we said, you have to throw the B-52 in there or the B-1B in there, they would be shot down by Russian surface-to-air missiles. I do not know how a commander would face his troops and say, go do that mission, especially if we have ability as a country and turned it down to put those young men in stealthy airplanes. Think about Captain O'Grady. He is in that F-16, a great airplane, but it was not stealthy. It got shot down. In our overview of this, in the intelligence committee, I asked the admiral who briefed us, I said, would his chances of survival have been greater if he were in the F- 117, another attack aircraft, but stealthy? He said, they would have been greater, Congressman. Probably he would have not been shot down. One last point, we had to send in two big helicopters full of Marines to rescue the downed pilot. We put all those young men's lives at risk. They got him out, and it was a great mission, but they never, if it had been a [[Page H 8025]] stealthy airplane, they would have never had to go in there and do it. So the value of stealth is not only that is saves us money, but most importantly, it saves us American lives. Think about World War II, when we lost plane after plane after plane over Nazi Germany, that were shot down by either fighters or knocked down by enemy anticraft. Now in this world we live in, we have this incredible Russian surface-to-air missiles that have proliferated in the world. So if we are going to send somebody in, we better have them in a stealthy airplane in order to win that air war quickly, gain superiority so that we can then use the stealthy assets after we have got total air superiority.

Mr. DICKS. It was our strength and our commitment. The fact is, in this dialog here today, that was bipartisan, Democrats and Republicans joining together to foster a defense policy for this country that I think is so important. On this question, what we are really talking about is a revolutionary conventional capability. I think once we can demonstrate it and show the skeptics, including some in this administration and the previous administration, that in fact this capability can work and will work effectively, as Rand has said in its simulation that it will work by destroying 46 percent of Saddam's invading division, I mean, to me that will give us for the first time conventional deterrence. We have nuclear weapons, too many nuclear weapons. But we know we do not want to ever have to use those nuclear weapons. A conventional deterrent, on the other hand, if deterrence fails and someone makes a move from North Korea or from Iran or Iraq, then we have got the capability to fly this plane a third of the way around the world with one aerial refueling and with these smart conventional weapons attack these mobile divisions. Frankly, we have never had a conventional capability to do that. That is why this decision is so important. The other point, of course, is that of maintaining the industrial base for bombers, and this is a revolutionary technology. We are talking about stealth, long range, and a tremendous conventional capability against mobile targets, against, as the gentleman and I both have been following in the analysis of the gulf war, one of the biggest problems we had was finding those Scud launchers. With the block 30 upgrade on the radar of the B-2, we will have an ability to fuse into that cockpit the kind of intelligence that we are now able to gather so that we can go after those mobile targets. Remember, if those Scuds had been accurate, which they thank God were not in the gulf war, and the upgrades in Scuds were going to be accurate, or if they had used chemical, biological or, God forbid, nuclear weapons, then we would have been in real trouble and our forces would be in real trouble. We had really no capability to go and find those mobile targets. The B-2 could be used in that respect.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, they have proliferated all over the world. This is not something that is just in a few countries. We have them in North Korea, Iran, Iraq, China. We have them in Bosnia, where Captain O'Grady was shot down. Another thing here, for some of the crowd of American people saying, ``Are these two Congressmen just up here by themselves?'' I feel very proud of the fact that without any request from me or anybody else who is a B-2 supporter, seven former Secretaries of Defense wrote the President of the United States, and this is unprecedented in the 17 years I have been on the Subcommittee on National Security of the Committee on Appropriations, and said, ``Mr. President, please keep this line open. This is the kind of weapon system that we are going to need in the future. Twenty of them simply is not enough.'' One of those colleagues, Mr. Speaker, former Congressman Dick Cheney was the one who made the decision with Les Aspin, our former colleague, former Secretary of Defense, now deceased, to limit this to 20. There was absolutely no military rationale for that decision. It was strictly a decision made on what Congress would go along with. At that time there was some question about the plane, but now we have six of these at Whiteman Air Force Base, according to the pilots there. One just flew all the way to Europe, did a mock bombing run over the Netherlands, went to Paris, engines running, changed crews and flew back to Whiteman Air Force Base. Mr. Speaker, this thing is going to work. It has a 95-percent mission reliability, and it is at the block 10 configuration. Over the next 4 years it will be upgraded to block 30, which will give us this revolutionary capability. Mr. Speaker, to have seven former Secretaries of Defense write the President and say this would be a terrible mistake, is, I think, one of the most unprecedented things I have seen. In light of all that, I am amazed, frankly, and with the importance of power projection in this very dangerous world, and with the potential conventional utility of this system, why we are killing this at this point. I think it is the greatest mistake that I can think of since I have been in the Congress and involved in defense matters. This is a terrible, awful decision. We in the Congress, under the Constitution, as the gentleman well knows, serving as a senior member of the Committee on National Security, ultimately have the responsibility for raising navies and armies and, by inference, air forces. It is the constitutional responsibility of the Congress of the United States, and I am proud of the fact that we have stood up on this issue and are trying to correct a very serious mistake in judgment. The gentleman from California has been willing to stand shoulder to shoulder to discuss this issue, to lay out our rationale with the American people, and I just am very pleased that he has been willing to continue to engage in this colloquy to explain to the American people why we feel so strongly about this and why we think those seven Secretaries of Defense were correct. [[Page H 8027]]

Mr. DICKS. I think we ought to have a little colloquy here, a little dialog on this. I appreciate that the gentleman has been on the floor and has been very much involved in other matters. He makes some very important points. The thing that I have always believed in and the great secret of our success in the cold war was that America stood for strength but it also stood for deterrence. We had a strong capable military so that we could deter the Soviet Union and its allies from ever attacking us in NATO.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to the gentleman from California, the distinguished chairman of the HUD appropriations subcommittee and a very strong supporter of the B-2 and one of the most knowledgeable members of the defense appropriations subcommittee.

Mr. DICKS. Mr. Speaker, I took this special order today in order to again be able to present my very strong and deeply held concerns about the future [[Page H 8023]] of the U.S. defense policy and defense posture. I have served on the defense committee on appropriations for the last 17 years, and I can remember very well, almost vividly, when President Carter and Secretary Harold Brown made the decision to start producing a stealthy long-range bomber known to the American people as the B-2 bomber. We are now at the point in this program where we have committed ourselves to purchase 20 of these B-2 bombers. They are being delivered to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. They have met, according to Secretary Darleen Druyun, all requirements under the block 10 configuration, and they will be steadily improved between now and the year 2000. In the defense appropriations bill and in the defense authorization bill in the House, there has been authorization and a recommendation to the House to appropriate funds to do two additional planes, the long- lead for two additional planes, and I want to rise today in very strong support of that recommendation. We have a very difficult problem as we look at our bomber force. Today America possesses over 90 B-52's, and over 90 B-1B's. They represent the bulk of our American bomber force. Unfortunately, neither one of these bombers are able to penetrate air space where we have Russian surface-to-air missiles. One of the problems we face today is that Russian surface-to-air missiles have proliferated around the world. In fact, just a month ago, when Capt. Scott O'Grady was shot down, he was shot down by an A-6, a Russian surface-to-air missile in Bosnia, and he was flying a nonstealthy airplane. One of the lessons that we learned in the Gulf war in the first 10 days of that war is that the F-117's, the stealthy attack aircraft, were used for only a small number of sorties, about 2.5 percent of the sorties, but they were able to knock out 40 percent of the most difficult targets. The reason for that is when you put smart conventional weapons together with stealth, you are able to go in against the most heavily defended targets, knock them out, destroy those surface-to-air missiles, destroy those radars, and the pilots are able to then come out and survive. This is a truly revolutionary capability. If you think back to World War II, if you think back to Vietnam and Korea, we lost a lot of our planes and a lot of our pilots because they were shot down. As I have mentioned, with the proliferation of Russian surface-to-air missiles in Korea, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, all over the world, China, our planes, if they fly in over enemy airspace, are going to get shot down unless they are stealthy. So the decision that we are about to make on whether we should continue to build the B-2 bomber is, in my judgment, one of the most important defense decisions that we will make in this decade. I happen to believe that the B-2 bomber offers us a revolutionary new conventional capability. You have got long range. This plane can fly over 5,000 miles, and, with one aerial refueling, it can go one-third of the way around the Earth. When you combine that with smart conventional munitions, JDAM's or GATS/GAM or the sensor-fused weapon, you give this airplane a tremendous conventional capability. Rand did a study in 1991 that looked at what would have happened if we had had the B-2 operation and we had loaded it up with sensor-fused weapons against Saddam Hussein's invading division from Iraq into Kuwait. In that scenario, three B-2's, each B-2 would have had about 1400 of these little bomblets, and they would come down with little parachutes and hit the moving Iraqi vehicles, this division in column, and they were able in this scenario, in this simulation, to knock out 46 percent of those moving mechanized vehicles, and that includes tanks. We have never had that kind of a conventional capability against a mobile division. That is why I think this is such an important decision. Rand, General Jasper Welch, and I even asked Colin Powell, I said what would be the ideal number of B-2's? And in each of these studies, the recommendation was somewhere between 40 and 60. So I believe that the decision on the part of the House thus far to go forward with longlead for two additional planes is a very important decision. The other point is that we have an industrial base out in California where we produce the B-2 at Palmdale, and the Northrop Co. receives parts from all over the country, but particularly parts from Texas and Washington and other States, Ohio, and they put that plane together there. That industrial base, in my judgment, is very important, for if we shut this line down and we have a bomber force today which is not adequate in my judgment to the future challenges, then it is going to take us a number of years to get that line reopened. In fact, if we wait 5 years, I am told it will cost somewhere between $6 and $10 billion just to reopen the line. For that, we will get no additional airplanes. So if we keep the line open now and start moving toward buying the right number of B-2's, we can save the taxpayers a great deal of money. Now, I also want to talk about the administration's very, I think, flawed study on the bomber force. That study I think was flawed in several respects. First of all, it said that we were going to have in the future 14 days of actionable warning time in order to move tactical aircraft like the F-16's, and F-15's, and F-18's out to wherever the problem would be in the world. Well, we did not have 14 days of actionable warning time before Pearl Harbor, we did not have 14 days of actionable warning time before the Korean war. We only had about 3 days of actionable warning time before the gulf war. And because the picture was clouded, as it always is in these situations, with the intelligence community saying, yes, we think Saddam Hussein is going to invade, and the leaders in that part of the world saying, no, he would never do that, then we took no steps whatsoever. In fact, had it not been for the 5 months that Saddam Hussein gave us, he could have kept coming. He could have gone right into Saudi Arabia. And it took us 5 months to get all the equipment out there in order to be able to effectively deal with his invasion and to throw him out of Kuwait. Now, what if we do not have 5 months to build up our forces? What if it is in a place in the world where there is not appropriate infrastructure, landing fields, and harbors and everything else that was necessary and fortunately was available to us in Saudi Arabia so that we could move our forces? What if that does not exist? Then it is the condition of the bomber force that that force can react in a matter of hours. That is going to be crucial for the security interests of our country. I am convinced that if Saddam Hussein had known that we had 60 B-2's, 20 in Guam, 20 in Diego Garcia, 20 at Whiteman Air Force Base, he might have thought long and hard. If they were married up with a sensor fused weapon, the smart conventional submunition that I described earlier, that if he had known that, he might have thought long and thought long and hard about whether he should invade because he would have known that his Republican Guard would have been destroyed before it got into Kuwait. That is, in my judgment, my colleagues, a revolutionary conventional potential capability. So buying enough of this airplane I think makes a great deal of sense. The other problem is in the weapons, in the administration's study on bombers. They say we should rely on standoff capabilities. In other words, we should load up the B-52's and the B-1's that cannot penetrate with long-range cruise missiles. Well, there are a couple problems with that. The first problem is that the long-range cruise missiles cost $1.2 million per missile. So, if you have 12 to 14, you can do the math, it is going to cost somewhere between $15 and $20 million for a load, for one plane load of those missiles. The other problem is they can only go to a fixed target. They have no utility against a mobile target, a mobile division moving in the field. They also will not help us go after the launchers, the mobile launchers that the Scud missiles utilized. So they have very major deficiencies. What are the costs of the weapons on the B-2 bomber? The JDAM's, the 2,000-pound bomb, the equivalent of what we [[Page H 8024]] used on F-117 and the F-15 Eagles, they only cost $20,000. The B-2 would handle 16 of them. So that is $320,000. That is one-fourth the cost of one cruise missile. So the difference in weaponry is very, very important. And the administration has no plan to buy all these long- range cruise missiles, and it certainly is not part of their budget. The other weapon that I mentioned, the sensor fused weapon, a load of those would cost about one-fourth the cost of a load of standoff cruise missiles. So the difference in cost in weaponry is very, very significant, and as I mentioned before, the difference in cost, if you shut this line down and have to open it up and you will have to spend $6 to $10 billion, and you will not get a thing for that except to open the line up, and then it is going to take a number of years to start producing the planes again. To me that just does not make sense.

Mr. DICKS. We had a little break in the action, and so we jumped in and took our shot.

Mr. DICKS. The gentleman makes a very important point. I do not know if he was here on the floor, but I suggested that if we had had, say, 60 B-2's, 20 at Diego Garcia as the gentleman suggests, Guam and at Whiteman, Saddam might not have made the attack. If he did, we could have obliterated that division, we could have stopped the war. Do you know what it cost us to move all the forces out to the gulf to fight the war, just in transportation? Ten billion dollars. The cost of the war to us and our allies was $60 billion, for a total of $70 billion. With an adequate bomber force that is stealthy, that has long range and can use smart conventional weapons against mobile targets like Saddam's republican guard, if we could just prevent one war out there in the future sometime somewhere, whether it is North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or wherever, that would save and pay for this more than once. There is nothing else that can do it. That is why it blows my mind when people talk about priorities. Well, other things are more important. I say, I cannot think of one except the young men and women serving in our military today. They are more important, obviously. They are first in my mind. But in terms of other weapons systems, other things that we are doing, that have the capability to give us conventional deterrence and if deterrence fails, a way to knock out the enemy quickly and save American lives while we are doing it and not even risk them because of stealth, I cannot imagine how this Congress in its wisdom can stop this system when every export has said that 20 of these is simply not enough, that you need somewhere between 40 and 60. Colin Powell, as good a military mind as I know, he has recommended to Chaney 50. Sometimes you have got to make hard decisions. You have been on the Hill for a long time as I have. I asked the staff of the Committee on Appropriations, I said, ``This is going to cost us about $2 billion a year for about 7 or 8 years in order to get the additional 20 planes.'' I said, ``How much did we cut out of the defense budget, about $250 billion, how much did we cut out just in a cut here, a cut there, through the thousands of line items that are in that budget?'' The answer is in both this year and last year, $3.5 billion in just low- priority items. Right there is more than enough money to finance the B-2. I know the gentleman has been urging reform in the procurement areas where we have thousands and thousands of extra buyers or shoppers or whatever you call them. There is another way to save some money that we could use to finance the acquisition of these weapons systems. You are the procurement subcommittee chairman. You know as I do that procurement in the peak of the Reagan buildup was $135 billion a year in today's dollars. Now that is down to about $40 billion to $45 billion, or it has been reduced about 70 percent. We have got to continue to do some things that make sense. Here is a system that gives us a revolutionary conventional war-fighting capability, and I believe the potential for conventional deterrence. Not to get this and spend the money on a bunch of lower priority things that have no comparable worth or value to the American people and to our military, to me is just unbelievable.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. The B-2.

Mr. DICKS

Mr. DICKS. Two carrier battle groups.

Mr. DICKS. That is right.

Mr. DICKS. It is because we cannot make any decisions about roles and missions, and it is not just this administration that has failed to be able to sort things out. The Bush administration with Cheney and Powell failed, as have Perry and Shalikashvili failed, to address the value of this and make room for this in the defense budget. In my judgment it is a disgrace to our country that, if we say that we are going to use B- 52's after the year 2000 that are going to be 50 to 60 years old, have a huge radar cross-section, and they are going to get shot down. I mean I do not know how we explain to these kids that we are going to go put them in harm's way when we have got a better way to go, and it is not that expensive. And the other thing that just bothers me so much in this whole thing is that the B-1B's, and I supported them, I did not like them at first, I thought the B-2's were better, but the B-1B's cannot penetrate either without being shot down because they are not stealthy, so we are going to wind up with a bomber force after the year 2000 where we have the B- 52's that cannot penetrate, the B-1B's that cannot penetrate, and we are only going to have 20 stealth bombers, and the gentleman knows so well all the respected studies have said, Rand has said, Jasper, Welsh, and Colin Powell told me at the White House a few months ago that he recommended 50 to Cheney, that what we need to have a capable bomber force for future challenges is somewhere between 40 and 60 bombers, and the gentleman has been in the Congress for many years and has risen to a point of major authority. Can you ever remember in modern history seven Secretaries of Defense writing a President and saying, ``Please don't stop this program?'' I mean, if that is not a repudiation of the Defense Department and its inability to sort our priorities, I do not know what is.

Mr. DICKS. Those seven Secretaries of Defense, including Harold Brown, whom the current Secretary of Defense worked for, they have said that this is such an important issue that we should continue the production of this and get enough of it now. The other problem with this, if we do not do it now, and come back to it in 5 years, it will cost 6 to 10 billion just to reopen the line. We will have wasted all the money we have invested in this and then we will not get any airplanes. Now we can get them for 15.3 for another 20 airplanes. To not do it at this juncture is, I think, the most serious mistake we will have made in the two decades I have been involved in defense policy on Capitol Hill.

Mr. DICKS. I yield to my distinguished friend.

Mr. DICKS. The other problem is, those bombers, those B-52's, which we will have 66 of, and the 90-plus B-1B's, they cannot go into those heavily defended targets because they will get shot down. They have extroardinarily limited capability. The other problem we have is that today, off of our aircraft carriers, we do not have a stealthy airplane. That means that those attack aircraft, the F-18's, have only a limited capability to go to the deep targets early in a war situation. Now we are reduced to only having 50 F-117's, and, literally, only 16 of the 21 B-2's would ever be available at any one time. Then we are going to chop off our stealth capability. Now, that is the biggest mistake that has been made, and I want to just even the score up here, that decision was made during the previous administration, and, as Cheney has pointed out, it was a political reality that Chairman Aspin at that time kind of put forward. It was a political reality. We did the best we could in the circumstances. Now, however, with a new Congress, and a Congress that is putting more money into defense, we have an opportunity to take some of that additional money and invest it in keeping alive this stealth technology. This is enormous value. We are buying something that will save American lives. We are buying something that will get the job done. If we had 60 bombers of these B-2's, and put 20 at Diego Garcia, 20 at Guam, and 20 at Whiteman Air Force Base, and loaded them up with smart conventional submunitions, like the centrifuge weapon where we had this division killing capability, I think you would deter North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Think about this. If Saddam had known, and if we had demonstrated that we had this capability and Saddam had known it, and let us say he might have been deterred, first of all, but let us say he was not and he came in, and we flew the B-2's in over that moving division, and, with those smart submunitions, destroyed that division. Do you know what it cost us to go out there and fight that war and move all that equipment from Europe and America out there? That cost $10 billion just to get the equipment out there, and then we had to spend $60 billion with our allies to win the war. We have in our own potential the capability of possessing something that could have stopped it from happening in the first place so that not one single American life would have been lost. None of our kids would have come home with these chemical diseases and other problems that they have had because we had something that we could have used that would have gotten the job done. In my whole career in Congress, I have never been more disappointed in any decision. It is a shame. It is an absolute shame that this is on the verge of happening. I just hope that the gentleman from California, and I and our colleagues, when they search out the truth here, will listen to the seven former Secretaries of Defense, listen to General Horner, who conducted the air war in the gulf, who said if he had had the B-2 he would have used it, because in the first couple days of the war, the F-117's flew 2.5 percent of the sorties but knocked out 32 percent of the targets. Stealth works and it makes it possible for our kids to survive. And we proved it. It is proven.

Mr. DICKS. The gentleman is so correct. I want to talk to my colleague a little bit about the money involved in this. Before my good friend got here I mentioned the fact that there is a great difference in the cost of the weapons. The administration says we will use standoff weapons, cruise missiles. Those standoff cruise missiles cost $1.2 million per missile. The cost of the bombs on the B-2--they are JDAMS, as the weapon of choice--cost $20,000. So 20 times 16 is, what, $320,000. That is one-fourth the cost of one missile. There is an enormous difference because they can fly in over the targets and drop those 16 bombs. Now, the cost of the centrifuge weapon--and I will explain this, too. This is a new revolutionary conventional submunition. A B-2 would carry 36 of these bombs. Each bomb has 40 bomblets. So you are talking about 1,400 little bomblets from each plane. They are like a skeet and on the top of it you have a little parachute and you come in over the moving division. This thing will cover like 2,100 yards by 9 miles deep, and a moving division, you fly in and drop these things down. It hits the tanks and the vehicles and according to the Rand study it will knock out 46 percent of the mechanized vehicles. So it is a much less expensive weapon than what we will have to use. The ones coming off the B-52 and the B-1's can only go to a fixed target. They have no capability against a mobile division moving in the field. The B-2 gives you the ability to attack the mobile division coming in and also to go into the heavily defended areas with 16 2,000- pound bombs. Remember the gulf war the first day. It was the F-15 Eagle or the F- 117 that dropped one of those 2,000-pound bombs right down the elevator shaft of the opposing air commander's building. This is a revolution that is going on out here. I know what my friend and colleague and I are worried about is that here America will turn its back on the technology that gives it the advantage for the future and we are not going to buy enough of it when the line is open out in California to have a credible bomber force for the future. We can save money during this. We can use the B-2's and use much less expensive weapons than the standoff cruise missiles that are much more expensive and not nearly as effective. I would yield to my colleague if he wants to comment on that.

Mr. DICKS. On that point, what it says to me is that we are in a very different world in the post-cold-war era. We face terrorists, we face people like Qadhafi. We have situations like North Korea, Iran, Iraq where there is peril out there that has already been demonstrated. We have also seen that sometimes, even with our nuclear deterrent, because people do not think we will use it, that someone like Saddam invades. But the revolution here in technology, with precision-guided munitions and these smart submunitions and a bomber with long range and stealth, means that we now have a conventional capability that if deterrence fails we can destroy that man's divisions, and he has got to take that into account because he knows we could use that capability unlike nuclear weapons where the American people do not want to use them unless the survival of the country is at stake. I think it is this compact kind of weapon that we need for the future. As the gentleman and I both know, we have gone through a major reduction in defense spending. People forget that in 1985, if we took today's dollars, we were spending about $350 billion on defense. We have cut it down to $250 billion. The gentleman is an expert on procurement. We have reduced the procurement budget from $135 billion down to $40 billion. Yes, the Republican Congress is putting a little bit of money back into defense, and that helps.

Mr. DICKS. And I support that aspect of it, especially because we need a little bit more money in there for procurement. But we have already reduced defense spending by 37 percent. We need to have a technological advantage in order to be able to prevail in the future with a much smaller force. What the B-2 allows us to do is keep America secure for the future, because even though we have got a smaller Army, a smaller Navy, a smaller Air Force, we still would have a highly credible force. Another point is, we are going to have fewer air bases abroad. That is why having a bomber that can go one-third of the way around the world with one aerial refueling is really a revolutionary capability. I had a hearing the other day with Brent Scowcroft. I said, ``Tell me about the 3 days before the war started.'' He said, ``Norm, people always say we are going to have actionable warning time. Well, there was not any actionable warning time because the intelligence community was telling us that [[Page H 7984]] Saddam was preparing to invade, but all the leaders in the gulf were saying he would not do it, so we did not do anything. We did not take any steps.'' For this administration, for the Cominsky study to say that there is going to be 14 days of actionable warning time so we can move 800 tactical aircraft to the gulf in order to stop the guy from coming in is laughable. It is a joke. When in the history of this country have we had 14 days of actionable warning time? We certainly did not have it at Pearl Harbor, we certainly did not have it in the Korean war, and we certainly did not have it in the war in the gulf. What this country needs is the ability within a matter of hours to interdict an invading division, whether it is in Korea or in the gulf or anywhere else, and stop it with long-range bombers that are stealthy and survivable, that will get the job done. This is a revolutionary potential. To stop it prematurely, to not get enough, there is not one study that says 20 of these bombers is enough. Every study that has been done says you need somewhere between 40 and 60 so you can get the sortie rates up, so you can use the whole potential of them. Then you can have a smaller bomber force, get rid of some of the older planes to take care of life cycle costs, and there are many ways we can finance it. The gentleman from California is an old pro up here. You have been on the Hill as long as I have. I went back to our staff on the defense appropriations subcommittee and I said, ``How much do we cut out of that budget every year in low-priority items?'' For the last 2 years, even when the budgets are down, with a $250 billion budget being sent up here, the professional staff of the Committee on Appropriations with the chairman and the ranking member have cut out $3.5 billion a year, in just things you do not need to do, that are not important, low priority, and can be put to the side. All we are asking in order to keep this thing going, to keep this line open, is about $2 billion a year in Air Force procurement.

Mr. DICKS. It is a joke that we have reduced procurement from $145 billion down to $40 billion and we still have as many people over there as we have had in the past. I commend the gentleman for his initiative to try and reduce the number of those people, because that saving can also help us pay for the B-2. But remember something: I think, and can the gentleman think, I do not think there is one thing in this budget in procurement that I can think of that has more defense potential capability for this country than the B-2. So how can anyone say, ``We cannot afford it''? But we are going to buy a bunch of other things that are not real important, that are not stealthy, that cannot get the job done, but we are going to buy them because we have already made up our budgetary mind to say, ``We have this much for the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force and we can't make any hard decisions on roles and missions and we can't face the reality.'' It reminds me of those old admirals in the Navy who were defending the battleships. They just did not get it. This is the future. Stealth technology is the future. We are about to end this line in California and it will go down as the greatest mistake in the history of this country from a military perspective. It ranks with not being prepared for World War II.

Mr. DICKS. ``We'll do it with stand-off capabilities.'' The gentleman has asked me and I wanted to put up this chart. This is a chart that shows the letter that was written by seven former Secretaries of Defense, including Harold Brown, who is the father of stealth technology, and let me read it to my colleague.

Mr. DICKS. Right. Let me read this letter. I think the American people need to know what the President received on January 4. I want to tell the names here: Mel Laird, Jim Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Harold Brown, Caspar Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, and Dick Cheney. Dear Mr. President: We are writing you to express our concern about the impending termination of the B-2 bomber production line. After spending over $20 billion to develop this revolutionary aircraft, current plans call for closing out the program with a purchase of only twenty bombers. We believe this plan does not adequately consider the challenges to U.S. security that may arise in the next century, and the central role that the B-2 may play in meeting those challenges. At present the nation's long-range bomber force consists primarily of two aircraft: the B-52 and the B-1. The 95 B- 52's are all over thirty years old, and their ability to penetrate modern air defenses is very doubtful. The 96 B-1's were procured as an interim bomber until B-2's were available. Even after all twenty B-2's are delivered, the inventory of long-range bombers will total barely 200 aircraft. This is not enough to meet future requirements, particularly in view of the attrition that would occur in a conflict and the eventual need to retire the B-52's. As the number of forward- deployed aircraft carriers declines and the U.S. gradually withdraws from its overseas bases, it will become increasingly difficult to use tactical aircraft in bombing missions. It therefore is essential that steps be taken now to preserve an adequate long-range bomber force. The B-2 was originally conceived to be the nation's next generation bomber, and it remains the most cost-effective means of rapidly projecting force over great distances. Its range will enable it to reach any point on earth within hours after launch while being deployed at only three secure bases around the world. Its payload and array of munitions will permit it to destroy numerous time-sensitive targets in a single sortie. And perhaps most importantly, its low- observable characteristics will allow it to reach intended targets without fear of interception. The logic of continuing low-rate production of the B-2 thus is both fiscal and operational. It is already apparent that the end of the Cold War was neither the end of history nor the end of danger. We hope it also will not be the end of the B-2. We urge you to consider the purchase of more such aircraft while the option still exists.

Mr. DICKS. I will be glad to do it. Melvin Laird, former member of the Subcommittee on Defense of the Committee on Appropriations; Jim Schlesinger, former Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy, head of the CIA; Donald Rumsfeld; Harold Brown; Caspar Weinberger; Frank Carlucci, and our good friend and former colleague Dick Cheney who was involved in the decision with Les Aspin to go to 20. He has now written us a letter saying he only did it because the political realities of the time were such. But he signed this letter that we need to keep this low-rate production. There is a major industrial base problem. I come from the State of Washington. The great Boeing Co. is in my State. I went to them and I said, ``Tell me, if the Congress kills this, and we have to do it again, how long do you think it would take us to build a B-3?'' They said, ``It would take 15 years, from start to finish.'' I said, ``How would it differ from the B-2?'' They said, ``It wouldn't differ from the B-2. We would have basically built [[Page H 7985]] the same airplane. We build a plane that has long-range, enormous carrying capability and is stealthy and would look a lot like the B- 2.''