Skunk Works

The Skunk Works enjoys a preeminence in aerospace development based largely on unbounded enthusiasm and a willingness to tackle just about anything. That was amply demonstrated to me back in the 1970s, during my first tour of duty at the Pentagon as undersecretary, while working with Ben and the Skunk Works to develop the stealth fighter. Those guys showed the most extraordinary confidence in their willingness to take on projects that most other companies would avoid because the chances to succeed were too small or too difficult. But the Skunk Works applied their formidable technical skills in very practical ways that no other company was able to match. That, plus their tremendous energy and willingness to work around the clock until a problem was solved, enabled them to enjoy a very close and trusting relationship with the customer that was unique between government and industry.

Without question, my work with the Skunk Works on developing the stealth fighter is the most significant project I have ever been involved in. Back in the seventies, I never would have been able to predict in detail about where we would be in stealth developments in the 1990s. But I did have a vision that what the Skunk Works had produced was the most important military aerospace technology since the invention of radar in World War II. And like radar, stealth would change the way that all subsequent air wars would be fought. I believed then that it was only a matter of time before every new airplane and missile that we built would incorporate stealth features and that stealth would provide our Air Force with a highly leveraged capability to wage air wars. All of that was very clear to me twenty-two years ago, and I can remember the precise moment when I became certain about the real significance of our stealth work—a specific summer day in 1977, when the Have Blue stealth prototype built by the Skunk Works first flew over a radar-measurement test range. The results were just stunning. Have Blue proved that the incredible low radar cross section previously achieved by a wooden model sitting on top of a pole could be duplicated by a combat aircraft.

That was a very dramatic moment for me, and within days we in the Defense Department had set in motion the entire stealth fighter program. First, we put the program under the heaviest possible security. Second, we set in motion a large budget to ensure adequate funding all the way through. When I left office in 1981, that program was secure. We had solid funding for two squadrons of F-117s, and I knew what it could do. I had less faith that the Air Force would be able to successfully develop the tactics and armaments to maximize the stealth’s tactical advantages—but the Air Force proved me wrong. They did a superb job in developing smart bombs designed just for the F-117, and they spent many months evolving the kinds of tactics that made the aircraft so extraordinarily successful in Desert Storm.

Basically, the F-117s were the enablers. They went in and destroyed or neutralized most of the Iraqi command and control centers so that nonstealth attack aircraft like the F-15s and F-16s could operate at will against targets where normally they could expect to suffer substantial losses. The F-117s made the job of our conventional aircraft infinitely safer and much easier.

So I know what the Skunk Works can do and is capable of doing, and now on my second tour at the Pentagon, I have new and greater responsibilities than the first time around and a whole new set of challenges that are, in many ways, far more complex than those we faced in the seventies. I am well aware, for example, of the overwhelming need to keep alive in an era of diminished budgets our capability for rapid development of new, experimental aircraft, which has been the forte of the Skunk Works since its inception. This is a capability I will strive to maintain in the face of broad-scale defense cutbacks. In fact, continued support of such research and development funding is uppermost among my concerns, and we have been able to maintain a reasonable level of funding despite the cutbacks and downsizing generally underway in the defense establishment.

The administration is determined to maintain the kinds of advanced prototyping and advanced testing in building experimental aircraft or weapons systems that can actually be used in small numbers in combat situations—to learn how to most effectively use them and improve them—before larger investments are made. The Skunk Works, in part, pioneered many of these techniques while building the stealth fighter.