WASHINGTON — Sen. William S. Cohen came up eight votes short Thursday in his drive to halt production of the B-2 stealth bomber.

With a 53-45 vote, the Senate defeated an amendment sponsored by Cohen and Sen. Patrick Lahey, D-Vt., that would have halted production of the super-secret bomber at 15 planes.

The 15-plane cap was a position adopted by the House Armed Services Committee earlier this week.

The debate pitted Cohen, a senior Republican member of the Armed Services Committee, against Committee Chairman Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., the most influential member of Congress on defense issues.

Cohen said the price tag of the B-2 — $865 million per plane — is too costly when the Cold War has ended and the budget deficit has grown. The overall cost of the B-2 program would total $65 billion.

Nunn claimed that the B-2 would be a much more effective weapon to carry out a bombing mission to punish Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait than other aircraft.

Cohen asserted that the United States has a wide range of other weapon systems that could perform that mission without using billion-dollar aircraft.

Nunn won the argument.

With a 97-2 vote, the Senate left intact President George Bush’s 1991 budget request for the B-2 bomber, but imposed restrictions on the $4.6 billion until critical tests on the stealth aircraft have been conducted.

After the debate, Nunn and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the senior Republican on the Armed Services panel, praised Cohen for “waging a tough, but fair fight against the B-2.”

Nunn’s amendment would force the B-2 to pass 13 requirements before $2 billion authorized for procurement of the aircraft can be spent.

The administration is seeking $4.6 billion for two B-2 bombers in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

Nunn said that the Air Force already has invested more than $26 billion, and terminating the program at 15 planes would increase the per unit cost to more than $2.3 billion per plane.