The Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger

Author:Sharon Weinberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Top Secret Flying Machines

On Christmas Day 1979, Soviet airborne forces landed in Kabul, paving the way for the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. In Iran, a onetime base for the U.S. military—and DARPA—students loyal to the Iranian revolution were holding fifty-two American hostages, a nightmarish spectacle played out nightly on television. In April 1980, a daring rescue attempt of those hostages authorized by President Jimmy Carter ended in an embarrassing failure. After a series of mishaps that forced the military to abort the mission, a departing helicopter collided with a parked C-130 aircraft in the desert of Iran, killing eight American servicemen.

The Carter administration’s clumsy attempts to bolster its image of military prowess, such as publicizing development of the stealth aircraft, were ineffective. Approaching an election year, the country was facing a trifecta of inflation, unemployment, and recession. The price of oil peaked in December 1979 at more than $100 a barrel. Abroad, the United States was doing little better, as one by one, from Iran to Nicaragua, countries that had been bulwarks of American support fell to insurgent movements. The Soviet Union’s influence, on the other hand, seemed to be expanding, from Cuba to Afghanistan.

Facing allegations of military weakness and economic decline, a charismatic former actor and governor of California stepped onto the political scene, promising to reinvigorate America through military strength. The United States is “already in an arms race, but only the Soviets are racing,” Ronald Reagan told an audience of veterans, in one of his seminal campaign speeches. “They are outspending us in the military field by 50 percent and more than double, sometimes triple, on their strategic forces.” Reagan promised to reverse that trend, reinvigorate the military, and America. It was a message that resonated with voters; Reagan carried forty-four states in a landslide election.

Shortly after Reagan’s victory, Richard DeLauer, the new administration’s pick for undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, called his friend Bob Cooper, a defense scientist, with big news: the White House was going to double the Pentagon’s budget over the next five years. “Sure, Dick, yeah, I know, I’ve heard that story before,” Cooper replied.

DeLauer insisted it was true. Reagan was adamant that the United States should increase its defense spending to send a strong signal to the Soviet Union. DeLauer wanted Cooper, a former football player known for his forceful personality, to return to the Pentagon and take over two jobs. Cooper would work directly for DeLauer, as an assistant secretary of defense, while also heading DARPA, which, following the success of the stealth aircraft, was regarded as a hotbed of innovation, a sort of corporate lab that could quickly push out military technologies. And with Reagan in the White House, there was going to be a huge demand for new military weapons. Cooper agreed to take the job.

When he arrived at the Pentagon in 1981, he was appointed to sit on the Defense Resources Board, which made funding decisions on major weapons. The powerful board consisted of

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