The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.

Isolated, a Skunk Works team is protected from the corporate bureaucracy that often freezes innovation. Google’s skunk works division brought to life the space elevators, the robotics projects, and the self-driving car; Skunk Works, meanwhile, is also making big bets on hypersonic weapons development, such as the AGM-183 Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon that failed a flight test in July. And it’s also chasing the Next Generation Air Dominance program for the Air Force and Navy to replace F/A-18s and F-22s. As such, skunkworks projects focus on disruptive innovation versus incremental improvements to an organization's existing product line or processes. Digital engineering is the big new trend in weapons development. The move sets up Skunk Works to create aircraft at a low price by owning a project from birth into adulthood, Babione said.And there’s more to the book than the story of technical achievements. For one thing, it includes some of the more interesting failures. We also get to hear the dramatic stories of men who flew these planes, like the U-2 pilot who accidentally flew into the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly sparking WW3, to the stealth bomber pilot whose bomb bay doors didn’t close after he dropped his payload in Iraq. With the doors open he was uncomfortably exposed to enemy radar, and he had to crank the doors shut by hand as a missile streaked towards him (once the doors were shut he became invisible again and the missile missed).

Military aircraft were so expensive and complex and represented such a sizable investment of taxpayers’ money that no manufacturer expected to win a contract without first jumping through an endless series of procurement hoops, culminating in the flight-testing phase, that under normal circumstances stretched nearly ten or more years. From start to finish, a new airplane could take as long as twelve years before taking its place in the inventory and become operational on a flight line long after it was already obsolete. But that was how the bureaucracy did business." Johnson's pragmatic approach is credited with the speed and success of the project. Origins of the Skunk Works term The result? They built a laser-fast fighter jet in only 143 days (7 days ahead of schedule). It was called the P-80 Shooting Star and it won history’s first jet-versus-jet dogfight in 1950. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.

🍪 Privacy & Transparency

Skunk Works is one of those phrases which sets aviation fans' hearts a-flutter. The secretive engineering team from Burbank was responsible for some of the most incredible planes of all times. The SR-71 was built in the 1960s, and it remains the highest flying, fastest plane in aviation. It's a marvel of engineering built with slide rules. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program.