Skunk Works

We don’t need to be ruthless to save costs, but why build the luxury model when the Chevy would do just as well? Build it right the first time, but don’t build it to last forever. Why must every aircraft be constructed to fly for twenty thousand hours and survive the stresses and strains of a thousand landings and takeoffs? Why not lower the endurance requirements for the majority of airframes? Wars are now planned to last ninety days because after that time ammunition reserves run out. In battle, most airplanes will be deployed for a few hundred hours at most. It would be cheaper to dispose of them once they’ve seen combat than to stockpile vast quantities of replacement parts and engines. We could make a small number of aircraft to last for years in training flights. But produce the majority—the ones destined for a relatively short spurt of combat flying—with less expensive materials. This same sort of Skunk Works’ cost-reduction thinking could extend to airplane tires arid other parts. Why, for example, must tires last for one thousand landings? If we mass-produced them at somewhat lower standards, we could throw away airplane tires after ten landings and still save money.

We cannot enjoy total product perfection and really don’t need it. The only areas where the final result must be 100 percent are safety, quality, and security. That final 10 percent striving toward maximum perfection costs 40 percent of the total expenditure on most projects.

General Electric’s jet engine plant at Evendale, Ohio, sells its engines to the commercial airlines for 20 percent less than to the Air Force. Price gouging? No. But the Air Force insists on having three hundred inspectors working the production line for its engines. The commercial airlines have no outside inspectors slowing down production and escalating costs. Instead, the airline industry relies entirely on GE’s engine warranty, a guarantee that the engine will function properly or GE will be required to pay a penalty as well as all costs for replacement, repairs, and time lost. Why can’t the Air Force operate with similar guarantees and save 20 to 30 percent on engine costs and eliminate three hundred unnecessary jobs to boot?

One of the biggest cost items in defense is logistics management and maintenance. We should reevaluate the design of many components and make them throwaway or limited-shelf-life items. Batteries, brakes, servos, modular avionics, should all be replaced on a definite schedule, not wait for them to wear down. This would reduce the accumulation of large spare part inventories in city-size warehouses, cut down repairs and maintenance, and lower supply pipeline costs. Savings could run in the hundreds of millions.

One area in particular where the Skunk Works serves as a paragon for doing things right is aircraft maintenance. We have proven time and again that the Air Force would be much more efficient using civilian contractor maintenance on its air fleet whenever possible. Fifteen years ago, there were so many mechanical breakdowns on the flight lines at air bases around the world that it took three airplanes to keep just one flying. The reason: lack of good maintenance by inexperienced flight crews. We in the Skunk Works are the best in the business at providing our own ground crews to service and repair our own aircraft. For instance, two Air Force SR-71 Blackbirds based in England throughout the 1970s used Skunk Works maintenance. We had on hand a thirty-five-man crew. By contrast, two Air Force Blackbirds based at Kadena on Okinawa relied on only blue-suiter ground crews, which totaled six hundred personnel. Contractors can cross-train and keep personnel on site for years, whereas the military rotates people every three years, and valuable experience is lost.

Currently, two U-2s are stationed in Cyprus with twelve Lockheed maintenance persons, while two other U-2s stationed at Taif, in Saudi Arabia, in support of the UN mission in Iraq, have more than two hundred Air Force personnel. And when the U-2s at Taif need periodic overhauls, they are flown to Cyprus, where our crews do the job.

Another relatively easy cost-reduction scheme would be to rethink aircraft design so that all parts are “no-handed.” That is, there would be no left and right hinges or wing flaps or other control surfaces. The cockpit controls would likewise be no-handed. Production learning curves in manufacturing these items would be twice improved by not having to devote half to left and half to right and would reduce significantly spares and storage parts requirements.