Washington Calling
                Days may be limited for Stealth bomber
   A weekly view of events by the Scripps Howard Washington bureau
     Look for the bat-winged Stealth bomber to crash and burn when
 Congress returns next month.
     The military's prized B-2 has yet to live up to billing, and
 House and Senate negotiators are wrangling over whether to pony up
 another $300 million down payment on nine more of $1 billion planes.
 Twenty-one of the planes are flying or being built. The House wants
 nine more. The Senate doesn't.
     Senators are so determined to prevail that Armed Services Com-
 mittee staffers leaked an internal Pentagon report that shows that,
 even after pumping $15 billion into the supposedly undectable
 plane, the B-2 still shows up on radar. And it costs a fortune to
 keep the thing flying.
     Look for the Senate to prevail, but, if it doesn't, the White
 House has promised a veto.
 Knoxville News Sentinel 10 Aug 1997
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 The excuses and guessing begins -- Jim
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         AGANA, Guam (CNN) August 10, 1997 - 10:34 a.m. EDT
     A radar system that could have warned the Korean Air jet that
 crashed in Guam last week that it was flying too low was hobbled by
 a software error, investigators said Sunday.
     The system, called an FAA Radar Minimum Safe Altitude Warning,
 issues an alert to officials on the ground who then tell the pilot
 that the plane is flying too low.
     But federal agents investigating the crash said the system --
 located at a U.S. military base on the island -- was modified
 recently and an error was apparently inserted into the software.
     U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the
 error could not be pinpointed as the culprit in the crash, which
 killed 225 people, but it could have alerted the pilot to pull the
 jet to a higher altitude.
     "This is not a cause -- it might have possibly been a preven-
 tion," said George Black, an NTSB member.
     Investigators were drawn to look into the system after an
 approach control operator told them he had not received an alert
 before the crash. The Federal Aviation Administration detected the
 error.
     The altitude warning system is designed to cover a circular area
 with a radius of 55 nautical miles (102 kilometers). However, since
 the software was modified, the system only covered a mile-wide cir-
 cular strip that ran the circumference of that area. Flight 801 was
 not covered when it crashed.
     Black said the software was modified to stop the system from
 giving too many false alarms.
     "The modification modified too much," he said.
     It was not immediately clear how long the error has existed or
 how many airplanes have landed at the airport since the modification
 Investigators noted they were looking into whether other airports
 might be affected because the FAA supplies similar software equip-
 ment to airports throughout the U.S.
                         Airline defends pilot
     News of the software malfunction came as Korean Air officials
 defended the pilot of the doomed Boeing 747 as a veteran who was
 more than capable of flying the plane. News reports have pointed
 to the possibility of pilot error.
     "Park Yong-chul was a veteran pilot with almost 9,000 hours of
 flight time," Korean Air said in a statement. The statement also
 showed Park's flight schedule and rest time in the week leading up
 to the accident. He had 32 hours and 40 minutes of rest before his
 last flight.
     Investigators have said the pilot had full control of the jet
 at the time of the crash, and are examining mountains of data and
 flight recordings to figure out why he was flying so low.
     Even without the warning system, investigators said, the pilot
 had several other instruments on hand that could have told him that
 the plane was too close to the hillside.
     "This is just one piece," said lead investigator Gregory Feith.
 "Yes, it would have helped, but this is not as we know it the cause
 of the crash."
                    Other problems existed
     The warning system was not the only malfunctioning piece of FAA
 equipment at the airport. The "glide slope," a portion of a landing
 instrument that guides planes to the runway, was out of service for
 regular maintenance. The airline has said it was aware of the
 absence of the instrument.
     In issuing its statement, the airline said the combination of
 various equipment problems and bad weather could have caused the
 crash.
     "We are not yet ruling out the possibility of a sudden change in
 altitude caused by torrential rains, the breakdown of the glide
 slope or other elements, which combined, could have caused the acci-
 dent," Korean Air said.
     On Saturday, an airplane overshot the runway upon approaching
 the Guam airport, but managed to steady itself and land safely on
 a second attempt. It was not clear why the plane missed the runway
 on the first approach.
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