Skunk Works

The Skunk Works has always been perched at the cutting edge. More than half a dozen times over the past fifty years of cold war we have managed to create breakthroughs in military aircraft or weapons systems that tipped the strategic balance of power for a decade or longer, because our adversaries could not duplicate or counter what we had created. That must continue to be our role into the next century, if we are to preserve what we have accomplished and be prepared for the hazards as well as the opportunities for the uncharted, risky future.

EPILOGUE THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

Harold Brown

(Secretary of Defense from 1977 to 1981)

I have thirty years’ worth of memories involving the Skunk Works, beginning in the late 1950s while I was at Livermore Laboratories helping out with interpretations of the Soviet nuclear program, which I based in significant part on information available to me that had been obtained by those historic U-2 overflights of Russia. I remember with much less relish May 1, 1960, and the following difficult days during which the story of the U-2—or at least a part of it—became public knowledge because of the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers. I remember coming to Washington early in 1961 as Director of Defense Research and Engineering and being briefed on the intelligence bonanza achieved by the earlier U-2 missions over Russia. I was amazed by the quantity and its strategic importance.

I was at the Pentagon when the U-2 again played a decisive role, this time during the Cuban missile crisis, obtaining photographs detailed enough to convince first the U.S. decision makers and then our allies of what the Soviets were up to in Cuba. Even though the credibility of our government was much higher in those days than it subsequently has become, I think it would have been extremely difficult for President Kennedy to carry the public and the allies along with him on the blockade and all its grave implications for nuclear war in the absence of the proof supplied by the U-2 photos.

It was during the mid-1960s that the Blackbird, the SR-71, as the successor to the U-2 began bringing us intelligence information both photographic and electronic. During my watch as Secretary of Defense, we relied on overflights of Cuba by Blackbirds to obtain vital national security information involving the Soviets. These flights enabled us to determine that the Russians were indeed shipping in their latest attack fighters in violation of their 1962 pledge not to deploy offensive weapons in Cuba. Armed with photographic proof, we obtained Soviet assurances that these aircraft were for defensive purposes only. Another overflight in 1979 revealed Soviet troops and armor deployed in Cuba. Caught by our cameras, the Russians claimed they were merely staging maneuvers with their Cuban allies. To counter this, we staged our own training exercise in the vicinity that dwarfed theirs in both size and strength. So in its ability to be dispatched quickly anywhere in the world, the Blackbird proved to be invaluable.

Finally there is the F-117 stealth fighter, which began in development stages during my last years in office. It was a remarkable achievement and excited the imagination of operational planners who finally had the good sense to come up with a workable doctrine and operational concept, combining the airplane’s invulnerability with high-precision bombs. The airplane’s success in Desert Storm was unprecedented and overwhelming, justifying all our early enthusiasm about the new technology and my decision to pin a medal on Ben Rich’s chest during my last days in office.

Caspar Weinberger

(Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1986)

Airplanes produced by the Skunk Works made enormous contributions to our winning the cold war, and the whole idea of putting money into such a splendid R & D operation for extremely advanced aircraft must continue to be a vital part of our national defense into the next century. So I have very strong views about the Skunk Works. In fact, one of the concerns I have about the current administration is the cuts in R & D funding, because our great strength is the variety and degree of sophisticated weapons that enabled us to do the kinds of things we achieved in the Gulf War. You don’t get those kinds of systems the morning after the war starts: you have to spend seven years in development, as we did with the stealth fighter, which performed so flawlessly and with such devastating effect.