[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 125 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H8029]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              DO NOT BE DETERRED: CONTINUE B-2 PRODUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Ensign). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California [Mr. McKeon] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker I do not know exactly what you had talked 
about before I came in.
  Mr. DICKS. Do not be deterred.
  Mr. McKEON. The B-2?
  Mr. DICKS. The B-2.
  Mr. McKEON. What do you know? I think it is a very important vote, 
and it is a lot of money; I think that people need to understand.
  I am a businessman. This is my second term in Congress. I came here 
to make cuts, but I also came here to carry out our constitutional 
responsibility which is to provide defense for this country. Defense is 
one of the most important things that we need to do. It is our 
responsibility, as the Congress, to look out for that.
  Mr. DICKS. If the gentleman would yield on that point, I have served 
for 17 years on defense appropriations subcommittees since the winter 
of 1979. We build up until 1985, but since 1985, the defense budget has 
been reduced by $100 billion a year. Today's defense budget would be 
350; it is 250 now in fiscal year 1995, so we have made a big cut, 37 
percent in real terms.
  We have a smaller Army, a smaller Navy, a smaller Air Force, Yet, 
here is a technology, a revolutionary technology that would help us 
still have an enormously effective and capable military. But we have 
got to have enough of it so that it can have the sortie rates, in and 
out, in and out, to do the job. Every expert who has looked at this and 
said, 20 of these is not enough; we have got to have somewhere between 
40 and 60.
  It is value. Sometimes we forget when it is right in front of us that 
some things are more important than other things. Some things can do 
things that no other system can do. And that is why this is so 
important.
  The B-2 offers us a revolutionary conventional capability that nobody 
else has in the world. Think about It. If somebody else had the B-2, we 
would be in deep trouble. We would be very, very concerned about it. We 
would be probably cheer if they made a decision to cut it off at 20 and 
only have a very limited capability. We would be saying, ``Thank God 
they made that decision, because if they had 50 or 60 of these, and we 
did not have a way to counter it.'' Think if our adversary, Russia, had 
developed this stealth technology. We would be deeply concerned. I 
think sometimes we forget things that are so obvious. They are right in 
front of us and we still do not see it.
  It reminds me of the battleship debate where they said that 
battleships are not vulnerable to air power. Finally, Billy Mitchell 
flew over one and dropped a bag of flour and everyone had to wake up 
and say, ``Oh, my God. These things are vulnerable.'' And some day they 
are going to say the same things about the B-52's, the B-2's and the 
planes coming off the carriers. They are all vulnerable to these 
surface-to-air missiles.
  Mr. HUNTER. If the gentleman would yield briefly, Billy Mitchell did 
sometimes. He showed that technology had moved on and we had entered 
the era of air power. But he did not drop a sack of flour; he dropped 
enough munitions to totally sink and destroy three major ships, 
including one captured German battleship. He carried out his task
 with a little more enthusiasm than the people who have invested all 
their political capital in battleships or warships cared for him to do.

  In a way we are doing the same thing here. We are in an era in which 
we can avoid radar because of the great technology that freedom has 
brought us in this country and we are about to forgo that technology 
for some pretty silly reasons. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. McKEON. Reclaiming my time, I think you make a good point on the 
technology. A lot of my friends here in the Congress have asked me, 
``Well, is there technology out there, or will there be in the next few 
years, to make it possible to see the B-2 to make it obsolete?''
  I was talking to our ex-Secretary of the Air Force about a month ago, 
before we had the last vote, and he was going over that with us. He 
said that all during the development phase of the B-2, we had our best 
minds working to see if they could come up with a way to detect it. So 
that we, if the other side had it, so that we could defend against it. 
We have not been able to find that; it is not available.
  Mr. DICKS. The gentleman makes a point too. Remember one thing, a 
plane can be seen. That does not mean you can vector weapons against 
it. That is the thing that you have to remember about stealth.
  People say, ``Well, I can see it. It is there on the field.'' But 
when you have that thing up in the air at 45,000 feet, and it has got 
that incredible design which is very hard to see, even when you are 
just a few miles away from it. But it is the fact that the enemy cannot 
vector weapons with their radars and the systems that they have to have 
to take a weapon to the plane. That is why it is so revolutionary. So 
we do not want anybody to be misled, because you can see it.

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