AVIATION: Electronic Chicks

Of all the defense plants spotted around the U.S., few have been more tightly cloaked in secrecy than the Hughes Aircraft Co.’s sprawling (74 acres) layouts at Los Angeles, Culver City, Calif., and Tucson, Ariz. The Air Force was as close-mouthed as Howard Hughes, who makes Cal Coolidge sound loquacious. About all people heard was that the plants were doing vital work on electronic fire controls for jet fighters. What little, else they heard was disquieting. Two years ago, five of Hughes’s top executives left in protest (TIME, Oct. 5, 1953); rumors buzzed that the Culver City plant was in chaos. The Air Force first tried to get Hughes to sell out, then wanted someone else to go into the business. But, rightly or wrongly, as Hughes himself says, the Air Force had put all its eggs for fighter fire controls in his basket.

Fighters -& Falcons. Last week the Air Force and Howard Hughes threw open the mammoth plants for the first time, and gave the public a look at how the eggs were hatching. Some electronic chicks:

¶ The Hughes airborne fire-control unit, which today is the eyes and ears of the U.S. and Canadian jet interceptors guarding the continent against atomic attack. As complex as 200 TV sets, the unit is a combination radar set and electronic brain which can find enemy planes day and night in any weather. While the defending and enemy planes are approaching each other at speeds up to 1,400 m.p.h., the fire-control system computes the exact instant when the defending plane must fire its rockets or guns for the kill.

¶The supersecret C.S.T.I. (Control Surface Tie-in), an even more complex device currently in production at Culver City for the Air Force’s new crop of interceptors. C.S.T.I. will not only find an enemy plane by radar, but also takes over flying the fighter during the attack, fires its rockets, all automatically, without the pilot’s laying a hand on the controls. Now a new set is under development, which will take over every maneuver except take-off and landing, automatically fly the fighter to the target and back.

¶ The air-to-air Falcon guided missile, in full production at Tucson as one of the Air Force’s principal defensive weapons against enemy fighters and bombers. Six feet long, with an electronic brain packed behind its baseball-size nose, the Falcon has brought down fast flying jet drone planes. Says Air Force Assistant Secretary Trevor Gardner: “The Falcon will be one of the most important contributions to defense since the development of radar.”

Carte Blanche. Flyer-Financier Howard Hughes has been in the electronics business in a big way only since 1948. But, just as he does everything else, he went into it with a swoop, with a top staff that included Lieut. General Harold George, wartime boss of the Air Transport Command, and a handful of crack scientists. To find human brains to make his electronic brains, he sent out scouts to comb U.S. industry, handed them checkbooks and a carte blanche. Hughes’s men promised scientists higher positions at higher salaries, new research opportunities, almost anything to lure them to Hughes Aircraft. Says a rival: “One Monday we had 42 draftsmen; by the following Friday, we had only five and Hughes had the rest.”

General George and four other executives went out in the 1953 flare-up, forcing Hughes to move in fresh executive talent. In as general manager ten months ago went Laurence Hyland, an able onetime Bendix executive with plenty of drive to push both research and production, keep building up the staff. Since 1949, Hughes Aircraft’s payroll has jumped from 750 to over 20,000; the research and development division alone has 2,000 topflight men against less than 100 seven years ago; one out of every ten scientists and engineers holds a Ph.D., one of every four a master’s degree. With his talent monopoly, Hughes has repeatedly outbid some of the biggest U.S. firms for contracts, and been able to deliver. On the fire-control system, for example, the Air Force gave Hughes a year to develop the project from scratch; nine months later, an Air Force pilot flying a jet fitted with the prototype unit shot down an unseen target plane automatically.

“What’s the Measure?” Today Hughes Aircraft is one of the nation’s ten biggest defense suppliers. The company has produced 8,000 fire-control units, is engaged in heavy production of C.S.T.I. sets and Falcons. The company’s military output currently averages $200 million annually; it has a solid backlog of orders worth $313 million. Still another supersecret Air Force contract has just been awarded Hughes that will add millions more to the backlog, expand his Tucson plant far beyond its current capacity. All told, Howard Hughes now runs an empire of four companies (among them: Hughes Tool Co., 74% of T.W.A.) with more than 50,000 employees, an income of some $700 million annually and sizable profits. (Profits from Hughes Aircraft go into the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for research.)

With it all, Howard Hughes remains as elusive and secretive as ever. He still operates like a cross between a phantom and a whirlwind, dropping out of sight for days, suddenly reappearing to call executives at any hour, day or night. But as Hughes says: “I know about the important things. What’s the measure of this outfit? Our internal problems? Me and the way I operate? Or is it the customer’s satisfaction?” By all signs, the U.S. Air Force, Howard Hughes’s biggest customer, was eminently satisfied.