Skunk Works

There are three or four other small R & D operations doing advanced work other than the Skunk Works. Northrop, for instance, has an able group working on advanced aircraft and missiles; Martin Marietta has a group focusing on short-range tactical missiles. As for the Skunk Works itself, it has specialized in developing surveillance aircraft, and there is a need for a tactical reconnaissance vehicle to supply real-time eyes in combat theaters. I doubt that these will be manned airplanes. The Skunk Works has done some significant work on drones over the years, and I would see this as more economically and militarily feasible than the older U-2 and Blackbird series. I don’t see those kinds of aircraft in our future: between unmanned satellites and unmanned drones, piloted reconnaissance airplanes will be squeezed out within the next five to ten years.

I don’t want to compare the small R & D operations, but they all consist of similar close-knit, can-do, highly technical groups working on advanced and complex problems. They are all self-contained and do not require many people or big budgets, and as far as I am concerned, I am confident that the administration is well over the critical pass in keeping all of them afloat. I would be very concerned otherwise—if we were ignoring them or neglecting them—because I consider them to be vital to the national interest, in both the short and long term.

The Skunk Works’ strength is the autonomy they have enjoyed from management and their close teamwork and partnership with their customers—both unique situations in aerospace. I have been amazed at their ability to focus technical skills in the most effective ways that really counted to problem-solving. They are the best around.

About the Author

Ben R. Rich died from cancer on January 5, 1995. Ben died as he had lived—with courage, good humor, and resolve. At his request, his ashes were scattered from an airplane near his beachfront house on the California coast in Oxnard. At the moment his ashes were released, a Stealth fighter appeared out of the clouds and dipped its wings in a final salute to its creator.

Photos

The Stealth fighter being loaded with laser-guided bombs at its Saudi Arabian air base during Operation Desert Storm. (Lockheed)

^{The first production Stealth fighter at the Skunk Works assembly plant in 1980. (Lockheed)}

^{Stealth fighter rolling out of its hangar at its secret base on the Nevada desert on the Tonapah Test Range. (Denny Lombard and Eric Schulzinger)}

^{A pair of Stealth fighters preparing for takeoff at their Tonapah base on the Nevada desert. (Eric Schulzinger)}

^{Colonel Al Whitley, Stealth wing commander. Photo was taken at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on April 1, 1995, after his return from Saudi Arabia. (Eric Schulzinger)}

^{Model of the Stealth fighter undergoing radar testing at White Sands, New Mexico. The test results were so spectacular that the Air Force tamped on the tightest security lid since the atomic bomb. (U.S. Air Force)}

^{Skunk Works crew celebrates the first successful test flight of the Stealth fighter on June 18, 1981. Ben Rich is sixth from the right in the third row (to the left of man in dark T-shirt). (Skunk Works)}

U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who worked as a Skunk Works test pilot following his release from Soviet prison. (Lockheed)

^{Four downed Taiwanese U-2s on display in Peking public park in 1966. (Life Magazine)}

^{A U-2R being assembled at Palmdale (Plant 42, Site 7) in the late 1960s. (Lockheed)}

^{U-2 spy plane. (Lockheed)}