"The High Cost of Secrecy." by Steven Aftergood and John E. Pike, Air & Space; October/November, 1992. ISSN 0886-2257 Today, seemingly credible reports suggest the existence of a new generation of classified aircraft. Numerous eyewitness accounts and even videotape footage indicate that one or more types of stealthy or hypersonic surveillance airplanes - successors, perhaps, to the recently retired SR-71 Blackbird - may be undergoing flight tests over the California desert. There are cases to be made both for and against the development of such aircraft. They could bring unique advantages to the reconnaissance arena by providing continuous coverage of a battlefield, where satellites offer only brief snapshots. And hypersonic aircraft could provide imagery of a crisis area as rapidly as do satellites but with greater flexibility. However, a stealth reconnaissance airplane probably wouldn't match a satellite's speed in delivering information, and a hypersonic aircraft, unable to loiter, could not provide the long-term coverage a satellite can. There is no legitimate reason why questions about the need for these new aircraft cannot be debated in public. The new programs' mission requirements, priority among competing needs, and costs are all proper subjects for public consideration. Yet these programs are kept hidden from public scrutiny. Programs whose cost, purpose, and very existence are withheld from the public are known as "black" programs: they've included the development of cruise missiles and stealth technology, propulsion research, and other types of weapons systems and components. The biggest and best known of these, however, are the aircraft programs. Over the last several decades, many of the nation's most advanced military aircraft have been developed in secrecy. From the U-2 spy plane to the B-2 bomber and beyond, critical programmatic and funding decisions have been made beyond the sphere of public awareness and debate. As the history of these black aircraft programs has come to light, it has become possible to achieve a new perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of secrecy in this field. While classified aircraft programs have yielded some of the most remarkable technological achievements of our time, the secrecy surrounding them has become both ineffective over the long term and counterproductive. The mystique of the Lockheed Skunkworks, for example, is based on a public perception of an unbroken string of successes, including, notably, the U-2 and the SR-71. What is much less well known is that in the 1950s these successes were punctuated by a notably unsuccessful effort, the CL-400 Suntan. The Suntan, intended to surpass the U-2 in high-altitude, long- range reconnaissance, consumed over $1 billion (in 1992 dollars) before engineers concluded that it could not meet its mission requirements and the program was canceled. More recently, excessive secrecy was identified as an important cause of the collapse of the Navy's A-12 attack aircraft program. The House Armed Services Committee reported in 1991 that "special access restrictions on the A-12 program and the lack of appropriately cleared auditors...prevented the program from receiving adequate management control and oversight," leading to its cancellation that year. The resulting loss to the taxpayers was in the billion-dollar range. Secrecy in military aerospace, as throughout government generally, has exceeded all reasonable justifications. No one would dispute that advanced military technologies require some degree of protection. But it is clear that the secrecy surrounding classified aircraft programs has reached the point of absurdity. According to an _Air Power Journal_ report, F-117A stealth fighters were not called upon in the 1986 air strike on Libya because using them in the raid would have made denial of their existence more difficult. In matters of science and technology, secrecy is at best of limited effectiveness and is more often an obstacle to development. In the best of circumstances, secrecy can offer some lead time over competitors or adversaries who, sooner or later, are bound to duplicate or independently achieve the desired goal. But even such lead time may be far more limited than is commonly assumed. A task force from the Defense Science Board, an independent body that advises the Department of Defense, reported in 1970: "Never in the past has it been possible to keep secret the truly important discoveries, such as the discovery that an atomic bomb can be made to work or that hypersonic flight is possible...In spite of very elaborate and costly measures taken independently by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to preserve technical secrecy, neither the United Kingdom nor China was long delayed in developing hydrogen weapons." More importantly, secrecy tends to obstruct technological development by inhibiting communication of useful information, undermining peer review, increasing costs, generating public mistrust, and, all too often, promoting fraud and abuse. Excellence in science and technology does not always correlate with professional credentials, much less with security clearances. Excessive secrecy also renders some of the nation's most talented engineers economically sterile, as it insulates their product from the marketplace. At a time when economic security is more at risk than military security, government restrictions on dissemination of technical information are mounting. A reversal of this trend might have important economic benefits, since some black program achievements may have useful commercial applications, particularly in the fields of propulsion, remote sensing, and materials science. Finally, the cost of keeping secrets is becoming intolerable. According to a defense department estimate, the bureaucracy of government secrecy has exploded to the point that the cost of protecting classified information in industry reached a stunning $13.8 billion in 1989 alone. Classification extends so far beyond the genuinely sensitive details of advanced military technologies that one might conclude it is being used to protect controversial programs more from public awareness than from hostile intelligence services. For years, the Pentagon refused to disclose projected costs of the B-2 bomber program, claiming that to do so "would provide information which might be of assistance to the Soviets." At the same time, some Pentagon officials privately acknowledged that such cost information would be of little use to the Soviet Union. And of course it would be of even less use to technologically lagging nations such as Libya, Iraq, or North Korea. Yet approximately 15 percent of the defense department budget for weapons acquisition is classified. The way this money is spent is withheld not only from the public but even from the overwhelming majority of members of Congress. The "special access" classification system imposes restrictions on information that go above and beyond the "need to know" requirements of the ordinary classification system. It's worth emphasizing that oversight of aerospace programs does not necessitate disclosure of all technical details, many of which are likely to be properly classified. But special access restrictions undermine the most minimal level of independent oversight and accountability, as in the case of the A-12 program. In fact, it appears that black aircraft programs are designed only to penetrate Congressional airspace. That is, wasteful, dangerous, or highly speculative programs will have a much better chance of being funded by Congress if they are highly classified. While some military programs of the past were justifiably hidden from public view - most notably the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb - the diminished strategic threat to the United States and increasing budget pressures now dictate a new attitude of increased openness and accountability in the hyper-classified field of military aerospace. In a democracy, after all, the public has the ultimate need to know. [Steven Aftergood, Director of Project on Government Secrecy; John E. Pike, Director of Space Policy Project, Federation of American Scientists.]