Skunk Works

The Strategic Air Command was thinking of going instead with an updated version of the General Dynamics F-111, the swing-wing tactical fighter-bomber, which in its development phase as the TFX had been mired in political controversy and cost overruns of horrendous proportions. General Richard Ellis, who now headed SAC, looked favorably on the idea. Since the Air Force bought airplanes by the pound, Ellis wanted a smaller bomber that would cost less and be bought in large numbers in spite of tightening defense budgets. It was far from a perfect solution to SAC’s need to update its bomber command, but at that point most blue-suiters were struggling to find an alternative to being stuck with squadrons of B-1s that seemingly had a decade’s worth of problems to solve before they could become operational.

“If you guys are eager for a small bomber,” I told Fubini and Perry, “look no further than our basic design for the stealth fighter. All we’ve got to do is make it larger and we have an airplane that could carry the payload of the F-111, but with a radar cross section at least ten orders of magnitude better. We’ll hit the most heavily defended target on your list. Can the F-111 make the same claim?”

Both Perry and Fubini knew damned well I wasn’t just blowing sales smoke. They were both privy to the extraordinarily low radar results we were achieving with the early models of our fighter. Perry had also recently signed off on a study contract for us to begin designing a stealth naval vessel. He was practical and hard-nosed and demanded results, but he considered us the industry leader in the new stealth technology. Still, Perry had no intention of granting us a monopoly on stealth.

But canceling the B-1 bomber—rendered obsolete by stealth—was a major political mess. It would cost Rockwell millions of dollars and more than ten thousand jobs at its Palmdale, California, plant, and was certain to stir an explosive protest by California’s large and powerful congressional delegation. But before our lunch broke up, I had the clear impression that Perry was going to suck up his courage and push Harold Brown and Jimmy Carter to cut their losses and shelve the B-1, which had been designed principally to nuke the Russians by coming in low on the deck to make its bombing run, avoiding radar detection. The Air Force had completed a disturbing study of the airplane’s survivability against the latest Soviet ground and air weapons that indicated that 60 percent of the B-1 attack force would be shot down before reaching its target. That loss rate was intolerable. By contrast, the Skunk Works had commissioned an independent study by a defense think tank showing that a bomber employing our stealth technology would achieve a survivability rate over the most heavily defended targets of greater than 80 percent.

A few days after my Washington lunch with Fubini and Perry, I received a call on my secure line from Major General Bill Campbell, who was head of planning at SAC. Bill was no stranger to the Skunk Works. He was a former SR-71 pilot, and I knew him well. “Ben,” he began, “General Ellis would be very receptive to a stealth bomber. I want to send out to the Skunk Works a couple of our most senior bomber pilots to sit down with you and your people and work up for General Ellis’s approval the requirements for a deep-penetration stealth attack bomber.”

I was delighted. SAC’s needs and our technology would be in perfect sync from the earliest planning stages. And ever mindful that the final decision rested with General Ellis, I nicknamed our stealth bomber project after Ellis’s wife, Peggy, and I hoped he would remain happily wedded at least until we had the contract in hand.

The SAC pilots, both colonels, worked with us in Burbank for two months, helping to draw up a requirement description for a small tactical bomber with a range of 3,600 nautical miles, carrying a payload of 10,000 pounds. Our airplane was configured to supplant its potential rival, the F-111.

General Ellis quickly approved the program. And we received funding for a two-year development study. So I had every reason to believe that the Skunk Works was going to stay busy for many years to come. We would soon be building squadrons of stealth fighters, maybe as many as 150 of them, and almost simultaneously begin producing a similar number of stealth bombers—and I was anticipating more work than even Lockheed’s main plant could possibly handle.

The bomber project alone would be enormous. And it never crossed my mind that we might still lose the bomber project after Bill Perry convinced President Carter to kill the B-1. We were the logical choice to replace the B-1.