Norman D. Dicks: “I have had the opportunity of going down to the factory, going down on the floor, seeing the assembly lines and seeing…”

“I have had the opportunity of going down to the factory, going down on the floor, seeing the assembly lines and seeing what is being done. A lot of people do not understand that that plane is built differently than any other plane. It is built from the outside in. It has a wingspan of 170 feet, and from one end of that wingspan to the other end, it cannot be off one-thousandth of an inch. We cannot afford to lose this technology. The people that have been trained, the tools that have been put together, all of that is already now starting to unwind. Originally, the assembly line was built for 20 planes; we are down to 6 planes. They have already closed up part of the assembly line. We are losing the people that have been trained, that have put in the time and effort, have the skill to learn how to do this. We are losing that. I think it is very important that we keep our economic base there, our industrial base to build the B-2, but the second and probably even more important reason to me is defense.”