National Affairs: A Nuclear-Powered Plane?

• Share

In Deputy Defense Secretary Donald Quarles's office in the Pentagon last week a group of high-level Navy and Air Force officers got together to ponder a serious decision: whether the U.S. ought, in the age of the missile, to speed up a nuclear-powered airplane project, and, if so, what kind of plane, to perform what kind of mission, at what cost, and when. The Navy argued hard for a subsonic nuclear turboprop seaplane for antisubmarine warfare and long-range radar-warning patrol. The Air Force argued not quite so hard for a more advanced supersonic nuclear jet bomber. All believed that the Russians might soon have an atomic plane ready for testing.

The U.S.'s atomic-plane project has been slowed down three times since 1946 because critics argued that it was too complex, too costly (one flash estimate: $1 billion minimum), that new missiles would make the new atomic plane obsolete before it could fly. In 1953 Defense Secretary Wilson called the atomic plane "a shitepoke*—a great big bird that flies over the marshes—you know—that doesn't have much body or speed to it, or anything, but can fly."

Last week the argument revolved around whether the U.S. ought to design and build an entirely new aircraft for nuclear power (time estimate: four to six years) or install a reactor to power an existing-type plane (time estimate: three years). The Navy said that it could adapt several of its seaplanes, including the experimental Martin P-6M multijet Sea-master or the old Mars, now up for sale, added that it would be safer to test a nuclear plane over sea than over land areas, where a crash might expose civilians to explosion and radiation. The Air Force said it could adapt its operational B-52 intercontinental jet bomber or its KC-135 jet tanker, but added that it was much more interested in getting a supersonic nuclear jet that would provide a new operational weapons system than it was in winning a round in psychological warfare. In the end the meeting agreed only that 1) the atomic-plane project needed more study, and that 2) the group would get together again to consider the results of that study soonest—"but not next week."