Skunk Works

The Soviets had great trepidations about that stealth fighter. It was one of three key items on their counter-strategy agenda: the first was NATO and their efforts to decouple us from Europe and see us pull out; the second was to do all in their power to stop work on the Star Wars defense initiative, and the third was to uncover our secrets about stealth. They knew we were working on it because Mr. Carter announced it a few months before the 1980 election in order to pick up some votes. From there on in, their espionage and spy satellite activities directed against the Skunk Works increased tenfold. They were panicked because there was no way they could counter this technology. Just like the Blackbird, that was so far ahead of its time that to this day it could still outperform anything else around, the F-117 was an attack system the other side simply could not find a way to stop. It was designed for surgical strikes against heavily defended targets—get in and out very quickly and not be vulnerable.

I had a stubborn determination to keep that airplane under wraps for as long as possible. I didn’t want to use it prematurely, as in our strike against Kaddafi, because I didn’t want to risk having a plane go down and having its technology explored. Our military advantage has always been the variety and degree of the sophisticated weapons systems we have been able to produce—systems far ahead of the other side’s capabilities. On this score, the Skunk Works is without peer in the world—the airplanes they produced were decades ahead of then current capabilities. To this day, no airplane can begin to outperform their incredible Blackbird. And as for the F-117A stealth fighter, not one of them suffered a single bullethole despite undertaking hundreds of tough combat missions in the Gulf War. This was a very intense conflict, and I was frankly surprised by its tremendous performance, because it was not precisely the kind of mission that the stealth fighter had been designed for.

The stealth program was a classic example of an R & D triumph of historic proportions. We could use the stealth fighter to take out the other side’s most effective and dangerous missile sites in a series of quick surgical attacks, leaving them defenseless against our main force of attack aircraft. Stealth changed all the dimensions and equations for planning future air campaigns.

The Skunk Works has been extraordinarily impressive over the years and absolutely vital to the national interest. Every administration since Eisenhower’s has counted on them to help keep us in the technological forefront in a dangerous world. So it is against this background that I view with alarm the problem of downsizing our defense industry to the point where the Skunk Works will lose valuable workers and be allowed to dangerously atrophy. The cold war may be over, but the world is certainly not benign. More than ever, it seems to me, we need to continue developing new generations of surveillance aircraft to replace the Blackbirds and U-2s—airplanes that are the hallmarks of the Skunk Works’ genius—to attempt to deal with regional conflicts, or to find out whether anxiety-causing military maneuvers in some trouble spot are not actually a prelude to a full-scale military engagement, or just to keep a sharp eye on what North Korea is really up to. And we can’t do this vital job effectively just with overhead satellites. We need spy planes—whether manned or ground-controlled drones.

But I am frankly concerned that Lockheed and other companies are looking to new civilian areas because there is no future in defense. General Dynamics is already out of the military aircraft business, and we might be down to two or three main contractors. That means we will have an incredibly hard time trying to hold on to our best and most skilled aerospace engineers and shop workers. Clearly we need a president with the political courage to continue fielding a strong defense and fund it, instead of drastically cutting back and then using the savings for politically popular programs. The Skunk Works has kept us preeminent, and we have got to keep them preeminent.

William J. Perry

(Secretary of Defense for President Clinton)