AVIATION: Electronic Chicks

Of all the defense plants spotted around the U.S., few have been more tightly cloaked in secrecy than the Hughes Aircraft Co.'s sprawling (74 acres) layouts at Los Angeles, Culver City, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz. The Air Force was as close-mouthed as Howard Hughes, who makes Cal Coolidge sound loquacious. About all people heard was that the plants were doing vital work on electronic fire controls for jet fighters. What little, else they heard was disquieting. Two years ago, five of Hughes's top executives left in protest (TIME, Oct. 5, 1953); rumors buzzed that the Culver City plant was in chaos. The Air Force first tried to get Hughes to sell out, then wanted someone else to go into the business. But, rightly or wrongly, as Hughes himself says, the Air Force had put all its eggs for fighter fire controls in his basket.

Fighters -& Falcons. Last week the Air Force and Howard Hughes threw open the mammoth plants for the first time, and gave the public a look at how the eggs were hatching. Some electronic chicks:

¶ The Hughes airborne fire-control unit, which today is the eyes and ears of the U.S. and Canadian jet interceptors guarding the continent against atomic attack. As complex as 200 TV sets, the unit is a combination radar set and electronic brain which can find enemy planes day and night in any weather. While the defending and enemy planes are approaching each other at speeds up to 1,400 m.p.h., the fire-control system computes the exact instant when the defending plane must fire its rockets or guns for the kill.

¶The supersecret C.S.T.I. (Control Surface Tie-in), an even more complex device currently in production at Culver City for the Air Force's new crop of interceptors. C.S.T.I. will not only find an enemy plane by radar, but also takes over flying the fighter during the attack, fires its rockets, all automatically, without the pilot's laying a hand on the controls. Now a new set is under development, which will take over every maneuver except take-off and landing, automatically fly the fighter to the target and back.

¶ The air-to-air Falcon guided missile, in full production at Tucson as one of the Air Force's principal defensive weapons against enemy fighters and bombers. Six feet long, with an electronic brain packed behind its baseball-size nose, the Falcon has brought down fast flying jet drone planes. Says Air Force Assistant Secretary Trevor Gardner: "The Falcon will be one of the most important contributions to defense since the development of radar."

Carte Blanche. Flyer-Financier Howard Hughes has been in the electronics business in a big way only since 1948. But, just as he does everything else, he went into it with a swoop, with a top staff that included Lieut. General Harold George, wartime boss of the Air Transport Command, and a handful of crack scientists. To find human brains to make his electronic brains, he sent out scouts to comb U.S. industry, handed them checkbooks and a carte blanche. Hughes's men promised scientists higher positions at higher salaries, new research opportunities, almost anything to lure them to Hughes Aircraft. Says a rival: "One Monday we had 42 draftsmen; by the following Friday, we had only five and Hughes had the rest."