Skunk Works

The Air Force, like a shopper, bought by the pound: the lighter the cheaper. The rule of thumb was that the airplane’s structure cost roughly a thousand dollars a pound, while its avionics were prime cut—four thousand dollars a pound at 1970s prices. Had Perry immediately pushed for a stealth bomber, General Slay would probably have done all in his considerable power to kill it. Not because he opposed stealth, but he was then up to his eyeballs trying to make Rockwell’s troubled B-1A bomber live up to its advance billing as the successor to the B-52 long-range bomber. The B-1 was his number one priority. He very quickly got word sent to me via a subordinate: “Tell Ben Rich not to lobby around about a stealth bomber.” He was one tough hombre.

In early June, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s NSC chief, whom I had never before met, decided to fly out to see Have Blue for himself. Brzezinski flew in an unmarked private jet to the remote base where I awaited him inside a tightly guarded, closed hangar. We spent several hours together. I let him kick Have Blue’s tires and peer into the cockpit. Inside a secure conference room next to the hanger, I briefed Brzezinski on the stealth program and he began to question me: “How much stealth is enough stealth?” “Could stealth be applied to a conventional airplane without having to start from scratch?” “How long would it take the Russians to duplicate our stealth diamond shape if a model fell into their hands?” “How long before the Russians are likely to produce counter-stealth weapons and technology?”

Brzezinski scribbled my replies on a small pad. Then he asked me about the possibilities for developing a stealthy cruise missile that could be air-launched from a bomber and overfly unseen two thousand miles or more inside the Soviet Union to deliver a nuclear punch. I told him our preliminary design people were already at work on developing such a missile, which would be basically the same diamond shape as Have Blue. But without a cockpit in the configuration, the stealthiness was almost an order of magnitude better than even Have Blue—making our cruise missile design the stealthiest weapon system yet devised.

I showed him a copy of a threat analysis study prepared for us by the Hughes radar people, who were the best in the business, predicting near invulnerability for a stealthy cruise missile attacking the most highly defended Soviet target versus only a probable 40 percent survivability rate for the B-1A bomber. He asked for a copy of the study, a photo of the Have Blue airplane, and design drawings of the cruise missile to show to President Carter.

As he was leaving, Brzezinski asked me a bottom-line question: “If I were to accurately describe the significance of this stealth breakthrough to the president, what should I tell him?”

“Two things,” I replied. “It changes the way that air wars will be fought from now on. And it cancels out all the tremendous investment the Russians have made in their defensive ground-to-air system. We can overfly them any time, at will.”

“There is nothing in the Soviet system that can spot it in time to prevent a hit?”

“That is correct,” I replied with confidence.

Three weeks later, on June 30, 1977, the Carter administration cancelled the B-1A bomber program. I had no doubt there was a direct cause-effect relationship between our stealth breakthrough and scrubbing the new conventional bomber. When I heard the news, I knew there would be at least one powerful Air Force general hopping mad and looking for someone to blame. I buzzed my secretary and told her, “If General Slay calls, tell him I’m out of the country.”

It would be several months before I received any definitive word from the government on how they would proceed on stealth. During this long silence, I would later learn, a behind-the-scenes debate raged among the top echelons of the Air Force and the Defense Department on the best uses of stealth to provide us with the maximum strategic advantage against the Soviet Union. Within the Air Force the debate was between the Strategic Air Command, furious at losing its B-1 bomber, and the Tactical Air Command, eager to add a stealth fighter to its inventory. The referees in the middle were Secretary of the Air Force Hans Mark, an atomic physicist and former director of NASA’s Ames laboratory, who was skeptical about stealth and a strong advocate of promoting missiles over manned bombers, and General David Jones, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who kept his powder dry and his opinions to himself until he was asked to make a decision. In the end it was General Jones who displayed the wisdom of Solomon: he gave SAC the green light to proceed with developing our cruise missile, and he approved the stealth fighter.

General Bob Dixon, head of the Tactical Air Command, flew out to see me in Burbank. “Ben,” he said, “we want you to build us five silver bullets for starters. We’ll take twenty more down the line.”