by Ben R Rich
The leader-follower concept was an absolute outrage and a debacle. Fortunately, the Pentagon has since abandoned the idea, after admitting that there had to be fairer ways to lower costs, stimulate competition, and spread around new business among winners and losers.
In the so-called New World Order, defense-related procurements will undoubtedly continue to sharply decline into the foreseeable future, rendering the mountains of regulations and the battalions of inspectors and auditors irrelevant. Obviously, we will need continual defense spending and new technologies for as long as the world remains dangerously unstable. But now more than ever, I believe, the Pentagon and industry need to adapt the kinds of specialized management practices that have evolved out of the Skunk Works experience over the past half century.
My years inside the Skunk Works, for example, convinced me of the tremendous value of building prototypes. I am a true believer. The beauty of a prototype is that it can be evaluated and its uses clarified before costly investments for large numbers are made. Prior to purchasing a fleet of new billion-dollar bombers, the Air Force can intensively audition four or five, learn how to use them most effectively on different kinds of missions and how to maximize new technologies on board. They can also discover how to best combine the new bombers with others in the inventory to achieve maximum combat effectiveness.
One of the problems with our stealth fighter was that because it was hidden for years behind a wall of tight security, most Air Force tactical planners didn’t even know it existed and thus had no way of integrating the airplane into overall combat planning and strategy. By the time the F-117A arrived on station for duty in Operation Desert Storm, the airplane was largely a cipher to the high command in terms of its performance capabilities. After the war ended, Lt. General Charles Horner, in charge of Air Force operations, stated frankly that before the F-117A’s first combat mission, he was apprehensive about the effectiveness of stealth in combat. “We had a lot of technical data, but I had no way of knowing that we would not lose the entire fleet that first night of the war. We were betting everything on the data proving the technology—but we had no real experience with the airplane to know for certain how well it performed under fire. We sent those boys in naked and all alone. As it turned out, the data was right on the mark. But we should’ve known that before the first attack.”
As another streamlining improvement in the years ahead, the government should adopt the Skunk Works’ proven procedures for concurrency in manufacturing new airplanes or weapons systems. That is, new weapons systems or airplanes need not be endlessly perfected before production begins, provided that development proceeds carefully, avoiding the messes that both the B-1 and B-2 bombers got into when it was discovered that their avionics and weapons systems, independently produced, just didn’t fit into the strategy and design concept of the new bombers. Fixing it cost a fortune. The bottom line in concurrency development is cost savings, provided it is done right. Our experience on the stealth fighter proves it can be cost effective to build in improvements from production model to production model and keep within the budget and time frame contracted for. By the time we built stealth fighter number ten, we had enhanced many features that we were able to quickly install into the first nine models, because we had planned for concurrency from the beginning by keeping detailed parts records on all the production models and designing easy access to all onboard avionics and flight control systems.
Procurement should be on a fast track basis with a minimum of meetings, supervision, reviews, and reports. Whenever possible all parts on a new airplane should be commercially available, not specially made for military specs that are most often overkill and unnecessarily costly.
Another sound management practice that is gospel at the Skunk Works is to stick with reliable suppliers. Japanese auto manufacturers discovered long ago that periodically switching suppliers and selecting new ones on the basis of lowest bidders proved a costly blunder. New suppliers frequently underbid just to gain a foothold in an industry, then meet their expenses by providing inferior parts and quality that can seriously impair overall performance standards. And even if a new supplier does produce quality parts according to the specifications, his parts will not necessarily match those furnished by the previous supplier: his tooling and calibrations might be different, causing the major manufacturer extra costs to rework other system components.
For these reasons Japanese manufacturers usually form lasting relationships with proven suppliers, and we at the Skunk Works do the same. We believe that trouble-free relationships with old suppliers will ultimately keep the price of our products lower than if we were to periodically put their contracts up for the lowest bid.
Still another area of potential cost reduction is security. A classified program increases a manufacturer’s costs up to 25 percent. I believe in maintaining tight perimeter security to guard the plant site and keep sensitive materials under lock and key. If we don’t allow our people to take out sensitive papers, then we don’t have to worry about it. We need to safeguard technologies and weapons systems, but we don’t need to hide behind secrecy as a means to cover up mistakes or to block oversight by outside agencies. In the past, the government has slapped on way too many security restrictions in my view. Once a program is classified secret it takes an act of God to declassify it. We should limit its use and be tough about periodic declassification reviews. What was secret in 1964 often is probably not even worth knowing about in 1994. I would strongly advocate reviews every two years of existing so-called black programs either to declassify them or eliminate them entirely. We could save millions in the process.
Just one very practical problem about classification that any reader would immediately understand: how do you transport from Burbank to Washington highly sensitive blueprints or performance studies stamped top secret? Do you call in Federal Express? Do you send them by registered mail? No. You use a special courier, who carries the material in a locked case handcuffed to his wrist. If the material is extremely sensitive, the means of transportation is usually government-chartered flight or use of multiple couriers. So, secrecy classifications are not inconsequential but a burden to all and horrendously expensive and time-consuming. If necessarily in the national interest, these expenses and inconveniences are worthwhile. But we ought to make damned sure that the secrecy stamp is absolutely appropriate before sealing up an operation inside the security cocoon.
Sunset laws on security are an important first step toward real dollar saving. But government has a long list of needed reforms in the area of imposing sunset provisions on dozens of unnecessary regulations. Companies with solid track records should be rewarded with less supervision and outside interference, while companies that fail to meet performance requirements should be penalized severely.
Under existing laws if a company actually brings in a project at considerably less cost than called for in the original contract, it faces formidable fines and penalties for overbidding the project. Not much motivation to save time and money, is there?
All of us in the defense industry would benefit from multiyear funding. The laws require that all procurement allocations be on a strict annual basis, so that when the Air Force reopened the production line on the U-2 back in the early 1970s, for example, and I knew that I would be building about thirty-five U-2s—five a year for the next seven years—I still was prohibited from tooling up for five-years’ worth of parts or materials. Not only might the blue-suiters cancel the program, forcing me to eat all those parts for breakfast, but it is against the law for a manufacturer to spend money that has not actually been appropriated. I could be severely fined or penalized by losing the contract entirely if I tried to stock up for several years’ worth of materials and parts and tools. But by doing so, I could probably reduce my production costs if I were allowed to purchase in volume tooling and materials for, say, three years at a time, rather than doing so annually and incrementally.
Frankly, I think the government p
refers this annual funding system because it can then promise a company the moon and the stars in order to get it to put up significant development capital, then later sharply reduce the procurement, as in the case of the F-22.
One of the bitter lessons of failure that Rockwell learned while building the ill-fated B-1 bomber was that in retrospect they surrendered too much authority and responsibility to the customer. The Air Force allowed Rockwell to build the airframe of the bomber, but the critical onboard avionics, both offensive and defensive, were in the hands of blue-suiters and were uncoordinated and out of sync with the airframe builders. Ultimately, it would cost millions to undo their mistakes. The lesson is that there is no substitute for astute managerial skills on any project. In the absence of effective managers, complex projects unravel. And, by the way, there is an even greater shortage of skilled managers than of effective leaders in both government and industry nowadays. Leaders are natural born; managers must be trained. When Noah designed an ark and gathered his family and a pair of male and female animals of all species to avoid the Great Flood, he demonstrated his leadership. But when he turned to his wife and said, “Make certain that the elephants don’t see what the rabbits are doing,” he was being a farsighted, practical manager.
I will leave it to historians to debate the effects of our own astronomical defense spending, particularly during the Reagan administration, on the demise of the Soviet Union. Did we really spend them into self-destruction, or did their own corruption and an almost nonexistent functioning economy do the job irrespective of military outlays? Or is the truth somewhere in between? There is no doubt that we ran up enormous debts ourselves that have almost wrecked our own free enterprise system by chasing after enormously costly technologies that were simply beyond our creative grasp. The Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative is a case in point. This was the so-called Star Wars concept of employing an impenetrable defensive shield capable of destroying all incoming enemy missiles launched against us. In an actual all-out nuclear attack, hundreds of missiles would be raining down on us, including many decoys. SDI would instantly acquire them all, distinguish between real and decoys, and save our bacon by knocking out all those nuclear warheads at heights and ranges sufficiently far removed from our own real estate. Some of us thought that SDI stood for Snare and Deception with Imagination, even though it was supposedly the brainchild of Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, who sold the concept to President Reagan. The trouble was that the technologies to make this system function as advertised were not even on the horizon and would ultimately cost trillions of dollars to develop over many, many years. The administration allocated about $5 billion annually in R&D, which did result in some advances in laser and missile research.
Its apologists justify these costs with the claim that the Russians really believed in the seriousness of the administration’s intent and were panicked into disastrous spending to try to overcome SDL If so, we spent a hell of a lot of money in deception and very little in behalf of worthwhile technology. And that will always be the result unless the new technology we are attempting to create is really within practical reach of our current abilities and achievable with reasonable expenditures.
Lockheed’s Skunk Works has been a dazzling example of American aerospace at its best, setting the standards for the entire U.S. industry in developing aircraft decades ahead of any others in performance and capability. Fifty years is a long time for a very small development company to stay in business, much less to maintain its unusual competence and morale. But if we are to survive a future every bit as uncertain and turbulent as the past, we will need many more skilled risk-takers like the ones first brought together on the initial Skunk Works project during World War II, to build the first U.S. jet fighter.
We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else. Our design engineers had the keen experience to conceive the whole airplane in their mind’s-eye, doing the trade-offs in their heads between aerodynamic needs and weapons requirements. We created a practical and open work environment for engineers and shop workers, forcing the guys behind the drawing boards onto the shop floor to see how their ideas were being translated into actual parts and to make any necessary changes on the spot. We made every shop worker who designed or handled a part responsible for quality control. Any worker—not just a supervisor or a manager—could send back a part that didn’t meet his or her standards. That way we reduced rework and scrap waste.
We encouraged our people to work imaginatively, to improvise and try unconventional approaches to problem solving, and then got out of their way. By applying the most commonsense methods to develop new technologies, we saved tremendous amounts of time and money, while operating in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation both with our government customers and between our white-collar and blue-collar employees. In the end, Lockheed’s Skunk Works demonstrated the awesome capabilities of American inventiveness when free to operate under near ideal working conditions. That may be our most enduring legacy as well as our source of lasting pride.
A successful Skunk Works will always demand a strong leader and a work environment dominated by highly motivated employees. Given those two key ingredients, the Skunk Works will endure and remain unrivaled for advancing future technology. Of that, I am certain, even in the face of dramatic downsizing of our military-industrial complex. Prudence demands that the country retain a national capability to design and develop both new technologies and weapons systems to meet threats as they arise, especially better and improved surveillance of unstable, hostile regimes.
Nuclear proliferation is a growing menace: a bomb in the hands of the North Koreans, the Pakistanis, or the Iranians makes the world infinitely dangerous and demands the closest surveillance, which only the most advanced technology can provide. At last count there were about 110 local wars or potential trouble spots around the globe to keep a close eye on. Human conflicts may be smaller in size and scope in the post–cold war era, but certainly not in nastiness. Littoral confrontations—local conflicts caused by political, religious, or ideological differences—will probably monopolize international tensions and concerns for at least the remainder of this century. Increasingly, we will be facing small hostile countries armed to the teeth with the latest weapons technologies purchased from irresponsible outlets in Western Europe or from Russian, Chinese, or North Korean sources. A small country firing high-tech weaponry can do as much damage on the battlefield as a major power. Just remind the Russian high command of the tremendous losses of Hind helicopters they sustained in Afghanistan to a bunch of ragtag peasants firing shoulder-held Stinger missiles, supplied to them by our CIA.
Small localized conflicts are going to be played out on the ground by highly mobile strike forces requiring air superiority, overhead surveillance, and surgical air strikes with high-precision guided ordinance; and a Skunk Works that is expert at low rate production of startling new technologies will undoubtedly serve important national security purposes in the future as it has in the past.
Given current contractions in defense spending and needs, the mountainous inventory of big-strike weapons like intercontinental missiles will be sharply reduced and much of it scrapped. The remaining systems will need updating with the latest technologies, improved to reduce maintenance and manpower utilizations—perfect tasks for Skunk Works operations.
As regions of the world become increasingly unstable, the U-2 fleet might undergo its third reconfiguration in its five decades of service to the nation as our preeminent spy plane. And while that is happening a future successor of mine at the Skunk Works will undoubtedly be peddling ideas for solving technological problems arising out of nonuse of weapons—for example, how to keep silo-based missiles reliable and effective after years of sitting inert in the ground. In some cas
es reliability has dropped below 50 percent. Another big problem that a Skunk Works would be eager to try to solve is eliminating battlefield deaths caused by accidental friendly fire. Twenty-six percent of our battlefield deaths in Desert Storm resulted from our own shells and bullets. What is needed is some sort of foolproof technology, which the Pentagon has designated IFF—Identify Friend or Foe. The Army plans to spend nearly $100 million developing exclusive radio frequency signals that troops can use in the field at night (our GIs may give off a definite buzz), as well as infrared devices and paints on trucks and tanks that only our side can see using special lenses.
As the only remaining superpower, the United States will be wise to resist being drawn into any military intervention on the short end of public support or lacking a clear threat to our own national security. But even a leader able to whip up sentiment for “sending in the Marines” will find it dicey to undertake any prolonged struggle leading to significant casualties. New technologies will focus increasingly on developing non-manned fighting machines by using reliable drones, robotics, and self-propelled vehicles. As we proved in Desert Storm, the technology now exists to preprogram computerized combat missions with tremendous accuracy so that our stealth fighters could fly by computer program precisely to their targets over Iraq. A stealthy drone is clearly the next step, and I anticipate that we are heading toward a future where combat aircraft will be pilotless drones. On the ground and at sea as well, remote-controlled tanks and missile launchers and unmanned computer-programmed submarines and missile frigates will provide the military advantage to those possessing the most imaginative and reliable electronics and avionics. Field commanders can conduct battles and actually aim and fire weapons systems from the safety of control centers thousands of miles away—their targets sighted by the high-powered lenses aboard drone surveillance aircraft which they remotely control. This is not a Buck Rogers scenario; this is around the corner. Tomorrow’s most prized military breakthrough may be in the form of a dazzlingly new and powerful microchip.