Lockheed Martin produces a range of military platforms including aircraft, maritime, space, and cyber-based systems. They are, of course, known for cutting-edge aircraft, which include the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II jet fighters, while its Sikorsky division remains an innovator in vertical lift platforms.
But it was also 80 years ago this past June that aviation pioneers Ben Rich and Clarence “Kelly” Johnson set up what was to be Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Known by the official pseudonym “Skunk Works,” it has been responsible for a number of aircraft designs, highly classified research and development programs, and exotic aircraft platforms.
Known locations include the United States Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, CA, and the United States Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, TX. Most notably, a majority of classified testing is also believed to be conducted at far more secret locations such as the Nevada Test Site.
The P-80 Shooting Star and the Birth of the Skunk Works
The Skunk Works had its very “unofficial” origins with the P-38 Lightning in 1939, but it officially came into existence eight decades ago this year when Lockheed was tasked with developing what would become the P-80 Shooting Star.
Chief Research Engineer Kelly Johnson enlisted an elite team of engineers and mechanics to build a new airplane prototype under strict secrecy and a seemingly impossible deadline. And it was made worse by the fact that the team didn’t actually have a place to work. According to the long-told story, Kelly’s team was forced to rent a circus tent, where they developed the aircraft.
In just 143 days, 37 days ahead of schedule, the team at Lockheed’s Burbank facility – working in that tent no less – was able to deliver the XP-80 Lulu Belle prototype, which evolved into the P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first jet fighter.
That effort not only delivered an advanced aircraft in near record time, but it also gave birth to a small and agile team that would serve as the foundation of the Skunk Works. According to popular legend, the name was taken from “Skonk Oil” factory that was in the popular comic strip Li’l Abner as the tent was set up next to a plastics factory in Burbank.
For a while, the facility was even known as “Skonk Works” until the comic strip’s copyright holders requested the name be changed.
It has come a long way since then.
The new Skunk Works facility, which had a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2021, sits on what Politico.com described as “a table-flat square of land surrounded by sun-bleached highways,” and that “Skunk Works is actually a collection of 58 buildings spread out over 2.4 million square feet.”
It is no wonder that Palmdale, 62 miles north of Los Angeles, has become known as America’s Aerospace Valley. The new Skunk Works facility was also designed not to build a single aircraft and it has no fixed machine or tooling. Instead if can be reconfigured to host new projects as they come.
The U2 Dragon Lady and the SR-71 Blackbird
Two of the most famous – and once super secret – aircraft to come out of the facility were the U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird.
As Lockheed Martin noted, “The U-2 went on to capture critical intelligence deep into the heart of the Soviet Union, giving President Eisenhower the information he needed to avert a massive arms build-up and potential war. Initially projected to have an operational life of just two years, the U-2 went on to see service in every subsequent American conflict.”
The SR-71 was arguably one of the most complex aircraft ever produced by the Skunk Works. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and United States Air Force called for a new plane that could operate at extreme altitudes, speeds, and temperatures. That meant that everything from the tires, oil, fuel, and even paint had to be created from the ground up.
The SR-71 project was headed up by Johnson, who explained in his autobiography, “Everything had to be invented. Everything.”
And he truly meant everything, as it even included that aforementioned paint!
The Blackbird achieved a record top speed of 2,193 mph – and still holds the record for a cross-country flight, traveling from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. in just 64 minutes, 20 seconds.
Stealth Developed at the Skunk Works
Today, a core tenet of fifth-generation aircraft is the stealth capability. This was also developed at Skunk Works back in the 1970s with the F-117 Nighthawk, which was the first aircraft coupled with a powerful flight computer to maneuver despite its unstable configuration with extreme survivability through its revolutionary stealth design.
Lessons learned have since been applied to the aforementioned F-22 and F-35.
What’s Next For the Skunk Works?
While Lockheed Martin can’t share what might be underway at the Skunk Works, it is known that the facility has been working on the Lockheed Martin X-59 Quesst (“Quiet SuperSonic Technology”), an American experimental supersonic aircraft being developed for NASA’s Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator project.
Moreover, it is suspected that the SR-72 Darkstar could be among the aircraft located behind the top-secret doors. In fact, the Skunk Works had even helped with the fictionalized version seen in last year’s Top Gun: Maverick. The scale prop made for the movie even caught the attention of Beijing, which reportedly retasked one of its spy satellites to get a better view.
We can only expect more to come.
“The Skunk Works program made the U.S. Air Force a superpower in the sky and helped win the Cold War as the USSR could never compete with it,” Harry Kazianis, senior director of national security affairs at the Center for the National Interest, told ClearanceJobs. “From the SR-71 Blackbird to the F-117 Nighthawk and maybe soon the SR-72, simply stated: Skunk Works is pure legend.”
