Industry Leaders Reflect on Lessons of Gulf War : Defense: Among other things, the war validated the costly, high-technology approach to weaponry and showed that Stealth aircraft work, they say.

The Persian Gulf War is almost a distant memory now, even within a defense industry that reveled in the success of its weapons and received a sorely needed boost to its collective morale.

After the smoke cleared, however, there was precious little new business. And instead of ticker-tape parades for the engineers and aircraft mechanics who produced the weapons used so effectively against the Iraqi forces, there were pink slips.

Indeed, the fortunes of the aerospace industry in the past year turned almost entirely on the demise of the Soviet Union and the prospect for unending cutbacks to the Pentagon budget.

“The major thrust is not over the Desert Storm confrontation,” Northrop Chairman Kent Kresa observed. “It’s the fact that we don’t see a major threat from the Warsaw Pact in the way we did a year ago.”

But the Gulf War did leave a legacy, according to interviews with top executives of five major aerospace corporations.

From their viewpoint, it validated the costly, high-technology approach to weaponry of the past two decades, gave an impetus to a “Star Wars” missile defense system, fortified the political fortunes of the C-17 cargo jet program and showed that Stealth aircraft work.

Others say the war demonstrated little more than that a superpower’s weapons can crush a badly outclassed foe. America’s overwhelming victory, industry critics argue, showed the nation need not develop even more powerful, high-cost weapons.

The Times asked the executives to assess the lessons and the outcome of the Gulf War. Their comments have been condensed.

Malcolm Currie, chairman of El Segundo-based Hughes Aircraft:

A lot of positive things were accomplished. No. 1, the industry achieved a great deal of credibility for its performance during the war.

The fact is the industry, with all the criticism over the last 10 years, has produced an amazing array of extremely reliable and superior systems. So we’ve achieved credibility.

I think another positive fallout here is that the Department of Defense now realizes that industry can produce--that industry is not the conniving, criminally fraud-oriented thing that had been created by the media, largely in Washington.

And they realized that the industry has been in trouble, and so they are doing a lot of positive things--none of them extremely large, but they all add up. It’s a much more constructive environment working with the Department of Defense.

I think in the next couple of years there’s going to be some major consolidations in the industry and some major writeoffs.

Also, there’s a general attitude that we can rest on our laurels and we can afford to really cut back defense and place it in second or third priority for a number of years. In other words, nobody can catch up with us, so why spend any more money on it? So in that sense, yes, there’s been a kind of an adverse effect.

Daniel Tellep, chairman of Calabasas-based Lockheed:

Our primary benefit from the Gulf War was the morale boost we received in our employee ranks as they saw that the whole spectrum of products worked just as planned--electronics, airplanes, space systems and so on.

We had some advanced shipments of a lot of electronic countermeasures. But other than that, it’s very difficult for us to point to immediate upswing or upsurge in business. It did spawn an interest in additional orders of the F-117 (Stealth fighter). But when that process played out in the Congress, those orders did not materialize.

Long term, I think the lessons from the Gulf create opportunities not just for Lockheed but the entire industry. It wasn’t just that technology worked. It was that technology saved lives. And it showed the powerful leverage of technology. We really can’t afford in the kind of conflicts we expect in the future to get into protracted wars of attrition. You need that decisive, quick, massive victory with a tremendous (force superiority) in your own favor. And that’s exactly what technology provides. That is kind of an overarching issue.

As we look at the lessons from the Gulf, we also recognize some shortfalls. I think the need for wide areas of synoptic coverage (a reference to photographic intelligence gathering) was evident. I also think that our data dissemination ability was not what it could be with the technology we have on hand today.

And as we saw those Patriots and Scuds in their nighttime duels, that really woke up the nation to the missile threat. I think that is one area in which the nation is very likely to move forward with some vigor--defensive missile systems.

Kent Kresa, chairman of Los Angeles-based Northrop:

One of the lessons learned is: Don’t give the U.S. six months to build up. And that argues for air power--both long-range, like the (Northrop) B-2 but also for the (McDonnell Douglas) C-17. Stealth saving lives, I think, is a message that has come out. There’s a strong belief that Stealth programs are still high priority.

The arguments are very strongly in favor of the need for technology, the need to stay ahead, the need for Stealth, which needs to be put into a lot of new systems. Without those kinds of things, we couldn’t have done as well. The need for precision munitions--without them we couldn’t have done as well. I think the training that we had for all our forces was extremely important.

The defense industry lesson is that high-technology and quality equipment that works in the hands of the users is very important. And I think that’s what the industry produced. We’ve got to continue to do that. The Stealth airplanes could go in harm’s way and into a very formidable defense and accomplish (their) task. (We) didn’t lose any.

It’s really demonstrated that the investments that we made in the ‘70s and the ‘80s really paid off. Much of what the naysayers--who were talking about the gold-plated equipment of the of the ‘80s and the ‘70s--had a different view of it when they actually saw the the results of Desert Storm.

(Nonetheless,) I think what we’re seeing here is that the major shifts in the world are not associated with Desert Storm, they’re associated with the Soviet Union.

The major pressures that are on the defense industry today are caused by the East-West relaxation of tension. And so we’re seeing a major downturn in the procurement budgets. We won the war. But as people came back and got saluted and celebrated, they’re also disbanding their unit.

So, how do you feel? I don’t know quite how to to say what that means. Maybe it’s that we’ve succeeded.

Timothy Hannemann, executive vice president and general manager TRW Space and Defense Sector:

It seems much more than a year ago that the thing has taken place because so many events on the world scene have affected us. In general, I think the war had really little immediate impact on our business or programs.

But there have been evolving changes to some of our programs to focus on the tactical needs that came out of the war, in terms of using strategic systems to satisfy the needs of the commander in the field.

(As) somebody said, it was the first space war that we have had--data distribution and computer-based command and control. A number of our systems were really very effective during the war from a space point of view--our defense support program was quite successful and really became a major factor in observing and reporting the launch of Scud missiles.

I have to tell you that we are we are really quite proud of what we did, because in our industry you don’t get a lot of feedback. A lot of people, heck, for their whole careers have been devoted to some of these systems, and to see them work and to see them save lives was really quite a boost in morale for our people here at TRW.

In a general sense, the technology that was utilized was just absolutely mind-boggling--some of the things that were done and that we accomplished. What the industry said it could do really was performed--outperformed.

If that war would have went on for 60 days instead of six, you could imagine what would have happened. Technology saved the day.

Rockwell International Chairman Donald Beall:

There were many examples in our company, and I’m sure throughout this country, where people said, “Hey, let’s let’s do the right thing first and worry about the paperwork later.”

One day a general called me from the Army tank command and he said, “Beall, you produce the axles on the heavy equipment transporter system (trailers used to haul M-1 tanks).” And he said, “We need some more of those in a hurry.” I said we will not hold you up and we’ll worry about the paperwork later.

There was some replenishment of stock during the war and some afterward. And the success of things like (Rockwell’s) Hellfire missiles will probably result in significant foreign military sales to our allies over the years.

So, in that sense you could say it’s positive. I think that’s relatively small, compared to the reduction in defense just due to the budget situation.

Wherever this budget ends up, we should keep the technology efforts going so that we’re in a position for the unpredictable events of the future--whenever that situation might occur.

SDI (strategic defense initiative) has become a higher priority to make sure we’re not the victims of the flashes of light next time. Rockwell is one of the leading contractors in SDI, with $1 billion in contracts, and long before the Gulf War we were promoting the concept of defense against limited strikes.

As we sit here today, after the Gulf War, (those strikes) look more credible as a threat--a Third World country that somehow gets its hand on a ballistic missile and God forbid a nuclear weapon.