Titanium Trouble

After listening to testimony from both industry and Government experts, a Senate Armed Services subcommittee last week issued a sharply critical report on the U.S. titanium program. The much-touted miracle metal for jet engines, said the committee, is not living up to its advance billing. Though planemakers need titanium badly, the metal is so costly (current price: $7,000 to $8,000 a ton) and so difficult to fabricate that "production is running far ahead of demand." As a result, the General Services Administration has already stockpiled 4,000 tons of excess titanium at a cost of $36 million, may have to buy another 5,100 tons over the next year.

The big trouble, said the committee, is that the U.S. rushed headlong into titanium production without first laying out a centralized, carefully detailed program. As many as eight Government agencies from the Defense Department to the National Research Council all had a hand in titanium, sometimes worked at cross purposes. By funneling $55 million into new plants for Du Pont, Titanium Metals Corp. and Cramet, Inc., the Government managed to jump production from 1,000 tons of titanium sponge (i.e., titanium pig) in 1952 to an estimated 10,000 tons this year. But manufacturers complain that titanium is pesky to fabricate, needs special machines, and the quality of the metal fluctuates. As a result, the industry is now selling only an estimated 17% of production, and the U.S. Government has contracts to buy the rest at market prices.

Concluded the committee: "More money should be spent on research and development and . . . relatively less money should be expended in the production of titanium sponge ... It is evident that the Government, by assuming substantial risk in obtaining heavy production of a product not yet commercially acceptable has cost the taxpayer many millions of dollars -- and may cost him a great deal more."

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