Dim LANTIRN

Questioning another weapon

For a time, Air Force generals thought they had the answer to a pilot's prayer. Using on-board computers, the Low Altitude Navigation, Targeting Infra-Red Night system, known as LANTIRN, was touted as the new technology that could guide pilots of F-16s and A-10s close to the ground during bad weather or at night. Then, while helping U.S. aces dodge hills and other obstacles, LANTIRN would spot enemy targets and automatically program air-to-ground missiles on an instantaneous search-and-destroy mission. To be sure, the LANTIRN program's price tag was $1 billion, but if it did what its designer, the Martin Marietta Corp. in Bethesda, Md., said it could do, it might have been worth the big bucks. Such a gadget would, for instance, have brought a speedy end to World War II's Battle of the Bulge, when three days of bad flying weather prevented Allied planes from rescuing outnumbered U.S. troops from the clutches of Hitler's panzer tanks.

But LANTIRN, it seems, cannot hack it. According to a task force report of the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, it appears to be another example of questionable Pentagon practices. The weapons program fell two years behind its development timetable while its price rose sharply. The task force report says the system has not worked, will not work, and should never have been expected to work. Dated June 1983 but circulated last week by the Project on Military Procurement, a nonprofit defense sector watchdog, the report analyzes the computer system that was supposed to seek out the infrared "signatures" of enemy targets. In fact, the computer would have run up, in the report's words, "a monumental false alarm rate," and might be fooled by even the most primitive measures, like camouflaging tanks with branches of trees.

The Air Force responded to the task force's criticism by asserting that it was lowering its sights and now expected LANTIRN only to help pilots navigate at low altitudes and find targets. The original justification for LANTIRN was that a jet pilot flying low in poor visibility is too busy navigating his plane to identify and fire at individual enemy targets.

Pentagon critics say the costs of the new, lower-technology LANTIRN may reach $4.7 billion, or $7 million apiece, half the price of a single A-10 aircraft. ·