Skunk Works

I just finished Skunk Works by Ben Rich. Rich was the second director of Lockheed's Skunk Works division, which was responsible for the U2 spy plane, the SR-71, and the F-117A stealth fighter, among other neat airplanes. This is a really interesting look at what the aerospace industry looked like before all the regulation and red tape in the acquisitions process - the director of Skunk Works went in with an idea for an airplane at one point, and the director of the CIA wrote him a personal check to get his assembly line started. Everyone involved would go to jail if that happened today. Seeing how these guys wee able to develop stealth technology with essentially the equivalent of pocket calculators is fascinating, and honestly, and incredible story. Also, the way you hear it, our brave, brilliant American scientists came up with stealth ex nilo. As it turns out, the key idea of stealth (the faceted surfaces that reflect radar off away from the receiver) was developed by a Russian scientist and published in an obscure journal that a Skunk Works employee happened to read. Of course, the Soviets ignored the original developer, and Skunk Works went on to develop stealth, and the rest, as they say, is history.

From a managerial perspective, the Skunk Works model is really interesting. They worked on high risk, high payoff projects that revolutionized aerospace design. They had virtually no oversight from upper management, and the only reason they were allowed to do what they did was because they were incredibly good at it. You have to hire the absolute best and give them a lot more rope than you are probably comfortable with. They also have to have a parent organization to borrow tools, people, and production lines from (and return to after they finish a product). It's a model that a lot of people have tried to emulate and very few have recreated successfully, which should tell you something about how easy it is. Also, the current acquisition process basically prohibits this kind of development, which is kind of an important difference.

Well worth a read. The technical stuff is fascinating, and the personal dynamics are very interesting.