Skunk Works

But schemers never sleep and there are always counters to every new technology. Currently, the French and Germans are trying to create a missile that can shoot down our stealth fighter. It might well take them twenty years to succeed, but ultimately they will find a way. And then we will find a way to counter their way, and on and on—without an end.

Lockheed’s Skunk Works will find useful and productive ways to stay in business for years to come. But a Skunk Works is no panacea for much that ails American industry in general or the defense industry in particular. I worry about our shrinking industrial base and the loss of a highly skilled workforce that has kept America the unchallenged aerospace leader since World War II. By layoffs and attrition we are losing skilled toolmakers and welders, machinists and designers, wind tunnel model makers and die makers too. And we are also losing the so-called second tier—the mom-and-pop shops of subcontractors who supplied the nuts and bolts of the industry, from flight controls to landing gears. The old guard is retiring or being let go, while the younger generation of new workers lucky enough to hold aerospace jobs has too little to do to overcome a steep learning curve any time soon. I’ve recently seen young workers install hydraulic lines directly over electric wires—oblivious to the dangers of a hydraulic leak that could spark a fire. We are not producing enough airplanes for workers to learn from their mistakes.

During the 1980s an incredible $2 trillion was spent on military acquisitions alone, with new aircraft receiving the largest share of the defense budget, about 43 percent, followed in distant second place by missiles and electronics. The development costs of fighters have increased by a factor of 100 since the 1950s, and unit procurement costs have risen 11 percent every year since 1963! Small wonder, then, that there were only seven new airplanes introduced in the 1980s, compared to forty-nine in the 1950s. Only three new airplanes have been produced so far in this decade. Correspondingly, the aerospace industry has lost more than a quarter of its workforce since 1987.

New technology cannot be put on a shelf. It must be used. And the desperate need is to try to find ways to drastically reduce costs that would allow new generations of aircraft to evolve within the parameters of extremely modest defense expenditures. That will be the great challenge facing the Pentagon and the defense industry in the years to come.

I would like to share a few cost-saving ideas, but with the following caveat: in some ways I really do think that aerospace has gotten a bum rap from its critics. For example, General Motors spent $3.6 billion giving birth to the Saturn automobile, and it doesn’t even go supersonic. We spent $2.6 billion creating the stealth fighter and were able to keep costs down by incorporating the flight controls of the General Dynamics F-16 fighter and using the engine from the McDonnell Douglas F-18. We didn’t start from scratch but adapted off-the-shelf avionics developed by others. Avionics is the killer expense, costing about $7,000 a pound in a new airplane. A case in point is our own F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter, which we designed at the Skunk Works in 1988, to replace the F-15, which has been the primary tactical fighter for the blue-suiters since 1972. In answer to the question, do we really need the F-22, comes another question: do we really want our combat pilots putting their lives on the line in a fighter now more than twenty-two years old?