DoD News Briefing

Tuesday, April 1, 1997 - 1:30 p.m.

Mr. Bacon: Good afternoon.

It's April Fool's Day, and of course I'm very glad to be with you on this day.

I'd like to start off with an April Fool's Day question. Everybody knows that April is the month named after the Greek Goddess Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and love. If that's the case, why is the first day "fool's day"? That's the question.

Q: Women have been making fools of men for all eternity, right?

A: There's probably no right answer to that, but we can start with that. Anybody else have an answer?

Q: Only fools fall in love.

A: That's certainly a good answer. Any other answers?

Q: You're not going to provide us with...

A: No, I don't have an answer. This is a philosophical question here. This is a do-it-yourself briefing. You guys come up with the answers, and so far, it's been pretty short.

Secondly, I want to demonstrate our technology here. Technology in two ways. First, our technology to show you new technology on the Internet. That's the second part. This is GulfLink. As you can tell, GulfLink today is going interactive, which means that for the first time now, people who log onto GulfLink to get information about Gulf War Illness programs, for treating it, researching its causes, and making information available to the public, can send e-mail messages back and get answers. They may not always get the answers they want or they think they deserve, but they will get responses quickly, and as fully as we can give the responses.

So Bryan Whitman is going to illustrate the program here. There is the form, actually, that you use for reporting back in on medical conditions. You can actually make a medical report to the Department of Defense to get included in the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program, seek information about either your medical condition, or to request information about documents or other types of information that we might be able to provide.

[Laughter]

Bryan has always lived a charmed life, as you can tell from his address.

We think this will help us in two ways. First, it will help us get more information from people; and two, it will help us get information out to people. As you know, we're still trying to assemble as much information as we can about certain Gulf War incidents.

There it is, a demonstration of how it works. Any of you can try this.

Q: I have this question about April Fool's Day.

A: Send it in and see what happens. Is it about Aphrodite?

Q: Yes, exactly.

A: Good. I thought you were going to ask that.

I don't know how many people, do you know how many people are set up to respond to these questions?

Voice: We have seven people replying to all correspondence, whether it be in written form, whether it's e-mail, and then we have approximately, as of today, 16 operators--telephone operators--that actually phone back, either calls coming into the hotline, or we'll call back people on e-mails that come in, also.

A: Seven people answering mail and e-mail and 16 people dealing with the incident hotline.

Q: So what's the answer? What's causing the problem?

A: We're hoping you'll find that out for us.

Let me make one other announcement.

As you know, today the B-2 bomber is beginning its initial operational capability. A wing of B-2s becomes operational today at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. There are, right now, 13 B-2s which have been delivered to the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman. There will be a total of 21 B-2s in operation, or 21 B- 2s delivered by the year 2000. As you know, this is a stealthy bomber designed to increase our air dominance. Air dominance is basically freedom from attack and freedom to attack. As a stealth plane this advances both those missions -- freedom from attack and freedom to attack.

With that, I'll take your questions.

Q: Can you give us the details you have on the crash in Tegucigalpa, the C-130?

A: I do not have extensive details on that, but let me walk you through what I do have.

A U.S. Air Force C-130H, Hercules cargo aircraft, crashed at about 9:45 a.m. local time in Honduras -- that's 10:45 EST. It crashed at the very end of the Tegucigalpa International Airport. Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras. It was enroute from Howard Air Force Base in Panama to the base in Honduras on a routine resupply mission. It was assigned to the Air Reserves 440th Airlift Wing at General Mitchell International Airport in Wisconsin.

There were ten people on board. We, so far, have confirmed that three are dead. The other seven are injured. We will appoint a board to investigate the accident, as always, and we will also provide additional details as soon as we get them.

Q: A Reserve aircraft, Reserve flight?

A: Yes.

Q: From where?

A: This was from the 440th Airlift Wing at General Mitchell International Airport in Wisconsin, I assume that's Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Q: The plane was flying out of Howard. They were on temporary assignment.

A: It was flying out of Howard. They had been assigned temporarily to Howard, and they were resupplying either troops or embassy personnel in Tegucigalpa.

Q: It crashed on approach?

A: Yes. It crashed on approach at the edge of the runway. I don't believe there were... So far we have received no reports of collateral damage.

Q: Do we know who was on the plane? Were they all military personnel?

A: I believe so, but I don't know that for sure. We'll be checking that. We have not, I believe, released the names of any people in the crew yet. We'll check on that. You should stay in touch with DDI on that, or I can also give you a contact down at Howard Air Force Base if you want to call directly down there. It would be Captain Mike Murk, and he is at 507-284-5459.

Q: Had there been any indication the aircraft was in difficulty?

A: We don't have those details yet. This just happened several hours ago, and the authorities have been concentrating more on taking care of those who are injured. As those details become available, we'll get them to you.

Q: Do you know whether the plane crashed at... Which end of the runway? Was it a missed approach, or the end of the runway or the beginning of the runway?

A: I believe it crashed on approach, but I don't have full details of this yet. More details, I'm sure, will become available in the next few hours.

Q: Just to follow up on the B-2, the plane has been criticized by some because of its expense; by others because of the fact that it was originally designed for a different mission, that it might be a Cold War relic. Can you assure the U.S. taxpayers that the B-2, that they're getting their money's worth with the B-2 bomber that now assumes operational capability?

A: I can assure the U.S. taxpayers that this is the most up-to-date heavy bomber flying in the world today. It has stealth capability. As you know, it has a very unique, pioneering shape. It's a flying wing made out of composite materials. It's designed to be able to evade enemy defenses and to zero in on its targets. General Fogleman, the Air Force Chief of Staff, has said that in the past we talked about how many aircraft we needed to destroy a target. With the B-2, we talk about how many targets we can destroy with one aircraft. In fact during some recent tests--using the Joint Direct Attack Munition, the JDAM, which as been cited many times from this podium as an example of saving money through procurement reform, and something else called the Global Positioning Satellite Aided Munition, both very highly accurate, pinpoint bombs--three B-2s destroyed 16 targets using 16 bombs, so they were able to destroy 16 different targets with 16 bombs. That, I think, illustrates General Fogleman's comment that we've changed the calculus of warfare with planes that can (1) evade enemy air defenses; and (2) deliver highly precise modern munitions.

Q: If it's such a good plane, why doesn't the Pentagon want to buy any more of them?

A: We've said many, many times that this is a wonderful plane but it's a very expensive plane. It was built, as you know, it was designed before the end of the Cold War when we maintained on alert a nuclear bomber, long range aircraft carrying nuclear bombs. We no longer maintain those planes on alert any more, on runway alert as we used to.

This is a plane that has both a conventional and a nuclear mission and will be able to, I think, give us full spectrum dominance in any type of heavy bombing that may be required today or in the future. But it is a costly plane. One of the things we learned when we used the F-117 fighters in Desert Storm was that when you have a stealthy aircraft that can evade air defenses, you don't need nearly as many of them as you did conventional planes. Therefore, the planners felt that we were able to get by with a far smaller fleet than we would have had to 40 years ago building heavy bombers. We're doing that. As you know, we only have 50 F-117s, and that fleet performed brilliantly during the Gulf War.

Q: The B-2 is now certified to carry nuclear weapons. Is it countable under the START rules? Does that limit its availability for conventional missions?

A: Sorry, does it limit its availability?

Q: If it's counted under START rules...

A: I'm afraid I'm not an expert on the details of that. We'll get you an answer to that.

Q: I just wanted to be clear on your answer to my question, and make sure I didn't quote you out of context. Basically what you're saying about why you don't want more of them is that while it's a wonderful plane, in your words, it's very expensive. So is the cost factor why you don't want to buy any more of these planes?

A: The Air Force has made the decision that 21 planes will be enough for them to meet their needs in conjunction with other heavy bombers we already have. We've got nearly 100 B-1 bombers and we have several hundred B-52 bombers still in operation. So we have a diverse, heavy bomber force built over a number of decades, but as you know, the B-52s, some of which are 40 or more years old, are still flying and performing very, very well. In fact B-52s were used to launch cruise missiles against targets in Iraq several months ago. So they're still very much in use.

Q: Can B-2s launch cruise missiles?

A: B-2s can launch a variety of ordnance. I don't know whether these have been outfitted to launch cruise missiles.

Q: We have it from a highly reliable source that these 13 B-2s are now in modification to have their wings folded and operate from carriers. Could you comment on that?

A: Since they are a wing, I think it would be hard to fold the wing. It would be like folding a butterfly.

Q: The mass suicide in California has aroused the American public's growing interest once again in UFOs to the point where some of the public believes that the government can substantiate their existence--that the government houses remains of these spacecraft and aliens. Would you address those two issues, please?

A: Yes. We cannot substantiate the existence of UFOs, and we are not harboring remains of UFOs. I can't be more clear about it than that. We cannot substantiate that they exist and we are not harboring remains.

Q: When citizens call with sightings of UFOs, where are those calls routed to now?

A: That's an interesting question. Let me talk a little bit about UFOs.

For 22 years, from 1947 to 1969, the U.S. Air Force investigated reports of UFOs. It was called Project Blue Book, and that project was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. They investigated 12,618 sightings during that 22-year period, and they reached three conclusions based on those investigations.

The first was that no UFO reported, investigated or evaluated by the U.S. Air Force posed any threat to United States of America national security. That was the first conclusion they reached.

The second conclusion they reached was that there was no evidence submitted to the Air Force or uncovered by the Air Force that sightings called "unidentified" represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of our scientific knowledge. In other words, there was nothing outside the realm of our scientific knowledge, our ability to build aircraft, understand aircraft, etc.

The third conclusion they reached was that there was no evidence indicating that sightings of these so-called UFOs were extraterrestrial vehicles. A vast majority of those sightings were explained by meteorological phenomena -- lightning, etc. -- or they were explained by planes in the area, etc.

Of the 12,618 sightings, virtually all of them were explained. There were, however, 701 "unidentified" sightings. Those are the ones that I referred to in the second point I was making, which is, of the sightings identified or categorized as unidentified. Nothing represented technological developments beyond the realm of our knowledge.

So many of these we believe might have just been sketchy reports that couldn't be tracked down totally; they couldn't be nailed down because we didn't have enough facts.

Q: So the calls are routed to where now?

A: Now the calls are routed to private organizations. There are a number of private organizations that look into UFOs. You can get these names off the Internet if you enter UFO you can get names off the Internet. But there's also something called Gale's Encyclopedia of Associations, which lists associations by interest or subject matter, and it has a list of UFO-interested organizations, and people can call those organizations.

You might ask why did the United States Air Force stop after 22 years investigating? Why did it stop investigating reports of UFOs? It did so primarily because it didn't find that there was any threat to the nation's security, and it didn't find that any of these were extraterrestrial vehicles as claimed by many of the people who made these calls. It just was not a good way to use the taxpayers' money.

Q: A question on the future of NATO command. How high ranking on the agenda of General Clark is the expansion of NATO?

A: The expansion of NATO will be one of the major topics on his agenda. He will not get there probably until July of this year.

As you know, there will be a summit in Madrid in July where it's anticipated that the leaders of NATO will announce the countries who will be asked to join NATO. It will take several years, probably, until they're actually into the alliance because it requires a unanimous vote by all of the current NATO members, all 16 members.

General Clark, or the SACEUR--whether it's General Clark or now General Joulwan--is intimately involved in making the military side of NATO expansion work. The decision to expand NATO and whom to invite into NATO will be made by political leaders, by Presidents and Prime Ministers. That's mainly a political authority made by elected officials. The military commanders will make the military side of that work, which is making the military forces of the new NATO members as interoperable as possible with the forces of the existing NATO members. Does that answer your question?

Q: There's a piece in the Washington Times about evidence that Moscow has had an aggressive underground bunker-building program going on with four separate projects in and around Moscow, and also a related story about there having been at least four alerts during the 1990s when Russian nuclear weapons were placed on a higher-level alert. Can you shed any light on either of those reports? Is the Pentagon aware of it? Concerned about it?

A: The Russians are building--and have been for some time- -various underground facilities in Russia. These were done in the Soviet Union and they're being continued by Russia today. We also have hardened structures to protect our leaders in the event of nuclear war, and we also have other ways to protect our leaders, by moving them, by putting them in the air, etc., from nuclear attack. So this is something that both the United States and Russia have done.

Russia is continuing the program. We do not regard the program as a threat. It is not an offensive program. It's a program to protect their officials. We don't understand why they're continuing to do this, but they are.

Q: This doesn't bother you in light of Russia talking about not having the funds to go with further reductions of START? Yet they're putting all this money into that kind of...

A: First of all, Russia has agreed, President Yeltsin has agreed to bring START II up before the Duma, so the Duma will have a chance to vote on the START II Treaty. The Russian leadership, led by President Yeltsin, thinks that this is an important treaty and it's a necessary precondition to further arms reductions which both Russia and the United States want.

Secondly, Russia has been reducing its nuclear arsenal in compliance with the START I agreement. That takes arsenals down from 10,000 or more nuclear weapons down to about 6,000 as defined by the START I agreement. They've been doing that and they've been doing it quite aggressively. Just in recent weeks they've destroyed 19 submarine launched ballistic missiles, in the last 7 to 14 days they've destroyed those. So they are moving forward with their weapons destruction as required under the START I Treaty and we fully anticipate that they will under the START II Treaty, after the Duma ratifies it.

Q: You said they destroyed 19 missiles. Do you mean submarines or missiles?

A: No, they destroyed 19 submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the last week or so.

Q: You don't think that the resources they're using could be used in a better way?

A: Every country makes decisions about how to defend itself and how to defend its people and its leaders. We make those decisions every day and Russia makes those decisions, and this is how they decided to do it.

As I pointed out, we do have facilities for protecting military/civilian leaders, for protecting our national command authority.

Q: Does the United States discuss this issue with Russia? About maybe these funds would be better spent elsewhere?