FUTURE WATCH

This Week March 28, 1990. Page M7

| 1990 :

fC he

Stealth bomber’s Achilles’ heel:
The Aussies have found it

e have all heard, read and seen
stories on the vaunted Stealth
bomber, that halfbillion dollar bat-
like superplane developed for the

U.S. military. Here was the greatest vehicle

>

that any warlord could put on his Christmas
list. With this new found invisibility he would
be invincible. Guess who has just ruined his
day?

A team from the Radar Division of Australia’s
Defense Science & Technology Organization
(DSTO). And, they made obsolete another
military “toy” that cost U.S. taxpayers a repor-
ted US $11 billion in development funds, by just
thinking creatively and, perhaps, watching TV.

We have all seen the late night TV Westerns
with Indians racing across the desert, stirring
up dust clouds. You couldn't always see the
Indians but you could clearly see their dust
cloud. These Australians decided if you couldn't
track the Stealth bomber by conventional radar
then track that what you could not also see, by
weather radar

that look down, not up, to track Stealth, to cover
anything that might get missed by Jindalee.
With glasnost working with Jindalee it looks
like it doesn’t matter which way they fly. It isn’t
needed.

Governments today are not in control. Once a
program gets rolling it takes on a life of its own,
free from government or public observation but
strongly supported by those who have a vested
interest in the program and who profit along
the way:

Governments are unable to keep up with the
vast and rapid changes occuring all around the
world. Changes that can make their most
studied plans obsolete between sunset and
sunrise.

Governments no longer can do what govern-
ments set up during the industrial age did in
the past. Almost all of us remember when if a
British citizen was bruised in Cairo, the Royal
Navy would steam into the Mediterranean and

when if a U.S. citizen got bumped the marines:

would effec-

— the turbul-
ence that fol-

tively invade
the offending

lows any mov- country.

ing vehicle. == Today that

The Indian =) af a = has changed.

dust. — er F Ol l Ord Can any
Using a : government in

modified By FRANK OGDEN the world pro-

weather over-
the-horizon radar, named Jindalee (an aborig-
ine term meaning bare bones), they knew that

although the Stealth bomber did indeed absorb ~

standard aircraft tracking radar (which detects
solid objects) with its microwave absorbing
foam cover, such protection did not extend to
the “wake” created as the bomber ploughed
‘through the air. Even at high altitudes where
the air is much thinner, there is sufficient
turbulence to register on weather radar. After
all, that is why it was designed — to check
turbulent weather ahead so modern airliners
could divert and avoid danger and inconven-
jence to their passengers.

The developed system, with one unit already
based at Alice Springs in Central Australia, will
serve to monitor some three million square
kilometres of land and open ocean north of
Australia, when it ties in with two similar units
to be installed at other Australian locations by
the mid-1990s. The technique uses the bounce
capability of the ionosphere (that gave Marconi

P the basis for his wireless radio signal sent from

Cornwall, England, to Signal Hill, Nfld. in
1901).

Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? How
could a government allow such monumental
military developments to spend so much money,
to allow the Stealth bomber design to advance
to its final stages, only to be reduced to
aluminum foil by another group thinking differ-
ently? Admittedly, there was one angle the U.S.
claimed still gave the Stealth limited use.
Jindalee radar, at the moment, works best
when it is pointing towards the equator. Intend-
ed use of the Stealth by the U.S. was to be over
the North Pole against Russia. The Russians
are experimenting with satellite-borne systems

Next Course
Starts
| Victoria |
April 5th
9:30 am. & 6:30 p.m.

April 7th
9:30 a.m.

[Sidney]

April 17th
6:30 p.m.

April 5th
6:30 p.m.

tect its citi-
zens at home or abroad from terrorists?

Can any government protect currency from
fluctuations? Or the jobs of citizens, not only
from job loss due to better quality imports, but
now from electronically imported labor?

What country can control its border against
illegal and unwanted immigrants? None. Can
any country throw up a protective shield
against the environmental and cultural degra-
dation sweeping across its borders? Not likely.
Need I go on? Laws effective in a slower-moving
environment cannot hold up when communica-
tions move at the speed of light and are
available to almost anyone who troubles to look.

If you can’t see the demise of the North
American car manufacturing industry then you
aren't looking through clear lenses. Asian car
manufacturers have already taken more than
one-third of the car market in this hemisphere.
They are just starting. Even after five years of
continual strong Asian auto developments,
Oshawa and Detroit still don’t think this is
something they can’t handle.

Up to 25 per cent of those highly paid North
American auto workers are not manufacturing
automobiles — they are repairing defects! A
January 1990 report by Mortimer B. Zucker-
man, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World
Report, points out — from a recent Harvard
Business School study — “that, on average, 70
defects show up in American assembly-line
products for every one from a Japanese assem-
bly line.” Quite an “improvement.” My last
figures on this subject showed only 20 Ameri-
can defects for every one made by the Japanese!
I haven’t purchased a North American-made
car for 25 years. My present Japanese car is 13
years old and is just getting broken in. A North
American car would probably just be broken.

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