Magazines: The Big Sky Beat

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Covering the Moscow air show last month, most of the Western press reported that Russia had unveiled six new military aircraft—not a remarkable showing. U.S. and British intelligence made the same estimate. But in 35 pages of text and photos, McGraw Hill's Aviation Week & Space Technology proved them all wrong. The magazine's eagle-eyed reporters had spotted twelve new Soviet planes, some of them comparing favorably with U.S. models. The findings led Editor in Chief Robert B. Hotz to warn that the Soviets are "devoting an increasingly large effort to developing hardware and tactics for fighting non-nuclear limited war.''

Such precision has come to be expected of Aviation Week, the biggest and most proficient of the aerospace-industry publications. Since Hotz became editor in 1955, circulation has risen from 60,000 to 102,000; advertising revenue from nearly $4,000,000 to $7,000000 last year. The magazine's editorial staff has grown from 17 to 40; trained engineers and literate newsmen provide the magazine with technical accuracy and readable English. Its influence is indisputable. Last April, when the magazine noted that MIG fighter jets were enjoying a sanctuary at some North Vietnamese airfields, members of Congress used the piece to bolster their argument that the fields should be attacked. They soon were. When the British government seemed on the point of withdrawing from the Anglo-French supersonic-transport program, Aviation Week warned that such a decision could reduce Britain to a "second-rate techno logical power." Many M.P.s praised the article, and it helped persuade the British to stay with the program.

Finding Trouble. Though it sometimes leaps to premature conclusions, Aviation Week has always shown a knack for getting the news even when attempts are made to conceal it. The magazine was the first to reveal that U.S. radar had been installed in Tur key to eavesdrop on Soviet ICBM tests. The troubles of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter were first noted in its pages. The first suggestion that the Russians were installing ballistic missiles in Cuba was published by the magazine. Three months ago, it broke the news that the Soviets were shipping surface-to-surface missiles to North Viet Nam to be fired across the demilitarized zone. Russia's top military officers scan every issue. Soviet Aircraft Designer Andrei Tupolev told Hotz at a Paris air show: "Your pictures of my airplanes are better than the ones I get back home."

For a business publication, Aviation Week is surprisingly independent of the industry it covers. Hotz has repeatedly questioned the ethics of aerospace manufacturers' lavishing free travel and entertainment on military people who control defense contracts. "Neither the aerospace industry nor the military," he wrote, "have exhibited much sense in their blatant exhibitions of how they can squander the taxpayers' dollars in public saturnalia designed to make a pitch for individual service." He has also urged commercial airlines to lower their fares and pay better wages to their maintenance crews. Occasionally a company indignantly pulls its ads; sometimes a disgruntled advertiser complains to Publisher Robert W. Martin