Former defense chief raps B-1 bomber plan

Reagan administration plans to go ahead with the building of an updated B-1 bomber rather than wait for the radar-evading Stealth aircraft to be perfected could waste as much as $30 billion, former Defense Secretary Harold Brown told the Washington Post.

In his first public comment on the Reagan policy since he left office in January, Mr. Brown said the Soviet Union has been developing defenses for the B- 1 which would outdate it by the time development is completed in the late 1980s.

A better strategy, he suggested, would be to develop the Stealth, bomber, forcing the Soviets to invest in an entirely different air defense system and divert funds from other programs more threatening to the US.