Ben Rich - Skunk Works

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.

There are three or four other small R & D operations doing advanced work other than the Skunk Works. Northrop, for instance, has an able group working on advanced aircraft and missiles; Martin Marietta has a group focusing on short-range tactical missiles. As for the Skunk Works itself, it has specialized in developing surveillance aircraft, and there is a need for a tactical reconnaissance vehicle to supply real-time eyes in combat theaters. I doubt that these will be manned airplanes. The Skunk Works has done some significant work on drones over the years, and I would see this as more economically and militarily feasible than the older U-2 and Blackbird series. I don’t see those kinds of aircraft in our future: between unmanned satellites and unmanned drones, piloted reconnaissance airplanes will be squeezed out within the next five to ten years.

I don’t want to compare the small R & D operations, but they all consist of similar close-knit, can-do, highly technical groups working on advanced and complex problems. They are all self-contained and do not require many people or big budgets, and as far as I am concerned, I am confident that the administration is well over the critical pass in keeping all of them afloat. I would be very concerned otherwise—if we were ignoring them or neglecting them—because I consider them to be vital to the national interest, in both the short and long term.

The Skunk Works’ strength is the autonomy they have enjoyed from management and their close teamwork and partnership with their customers—both unique situations in aerospace. I have been amazed at their ability to focus technical skills in the most effective ways that really counted to problem-solving. They are the best around.

Ben R. Rich died from cancer on January 5, 1995. Ben died as he had lived—with courage, good humor, and resolve. At his request, his ashes were scattered from an airplane near his beachfront house on the California coast in Oxnard. At the moment his ashes were released, a Stealth fighter appeared out of the clouds and dipped its wings in a final salute to its creator.