LIMESTONE — An Air Force colonel who was one of two test pilots on the controversial B-2 stealth bomber’s maiden flight said Monday he wouldn’t be the least bit hesitant to fly the bat-wing plane in combat.

“The airplane has been designed for that,” said Col. Richard S. Couch.

The B-2 would replace the B-52 and keep the United States in manned bombers into the next century, Couch said before addressing the Eastern Region Company Grade Officers Council at Loring Air Force Base.

“We would have (with the B-2) the ability to keep the Soviets guessing if they ever got cocky about our ability to retaliate a strike,” said the 43-year-old veteran of 199 combat missions.

Meanwhile, the commanding general of the 9th Air Force Tactical Air Command said that man is not close to reaching the maximum speed at which humans can safely pilot vehicles hurtling through the skies.

“Look at what the astronauts did,” Lt. Gen. Charles A. Horner said before the Loring dinner where he was a guest of honor. “They were going at awesome speeds, and they could control their vehicles. It’s a question of the rate of change, not the ultimate top speed. I don’t think we’ve begun to reach man’s limits.”

Col. Couch took issue with a recent report on the CBS program “60 Minutes” that program development costs for the B-2 might exceed $100 billion and that the plane is unable to avoid all types of radar — one of its design goals.

“I think that (television) program was very unbalanced,” said Couch. “The airplane has not been tested against radars yet.”

The CBS program also criticized the B-2 for having a top speed of only 580 miles per hour, for lacking defensive weapons and for not being very maneuverable. But Couch called the B-2 “aerodynamically very efficient.

“It’s more automated than most airplanes. Functionally, it flies like any other airplane. Airplanes are quite simple. You pull back and the houses get small, you push forward and the houses get big…It’s a good-flying airplane.”

Couch is vice commander of a test wing at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was a pilot on the first four of eight B-2 flights that have taken place, including the first two-man flight last July 17 from the Northrop Aviation factory in Palmdale, Calif., to Edwards AFB, a distance of 23 miles.

A major surprise on the plane’s maiden flight, Couch said, was “how smoothly things went. We spent months and months practicing the flight, going through emergency procedures… We had thought about every possible thing that could happen, and none of them did.”

Just because the major powers are talking peace doesn’t mean peace is guaranteed, Couch cautioned. “If anything, our guard needs to stay up. We have to be prepared should peace overtures in Europe change. We should be prepared to defend ourselves the same as if peace wasn’t breaking out all over the place.” Even though world tensions are starting to lessen, the requirements for the B-2 haven’t changed much, he said.

Sen. William S. Cohen said recently that building the B-2 is too costly, apparently ranging from $70 billion to more than $100 billion for development. Cohen said that with improvement of political conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe the current triad of sea and land missiles and manned bombers is sufficient to defend the country. With one B-2 built and a dozen more in production, per-plane cost estimates for the future have ranged from $500 million to $1 billion.

Couch said he does not know what the latest cost estimates for the B-2 are. But he said the Air Force “would be foolish not to promote the B-2 at this time.”

He said he has no idea whether the B-2 might one day be stationed at Loring AFB.

Gen. Horner recalled 25 to 30 years ago when commentators such as Edward R. Murrow had erroneously predicted that there would never be a fighter plane faster than the F-104 because the plane was expected to be “too hot for anybody to handle.”

Today, America’s premier spy plane — the SR71 Blackbird — has been mothballed, not because it is “too hot to handle,” but because it is seen as too expensive, he said. Satellites will do similar work more cheaply.

Horner, however, said he doesn’t foresee manned fighters of the Tactical Air Command being totally replaced by unmanned planes. “I think we’ll have a mix…I think you need both. I think we’ll develop both.”

At the same time, the three-star general said the role of fighter aircraft hasn’t changed greatly. “Our primary role is to provide deterrence — to show that we are ready to support our national policy,” he said.