How Lockheed’s Skunk Works Got into the Stealth Fighter Business

How do you conceal an airplane behind a shuttlecock ? Very skillfully . Lt . Col . William B. O’Connor ( ret . ) flew the F-117 Nighthawk during the Bosnia Conflict , and in Stealth Fighter , he explain the history , performance , and soul America ’s most advanced stealth super C .

While the United States had never embrace a defensive mentality and had only fielded one strategical SAM system to that point , the Nike - Hercules dating from the 1950s , and one real medium - range tactical organisation , the HAWK ( homing all the way killer ) , the Soviets had field over fifteen dissimilar system . One Soviet SAM system was even armed with atomic payload .

It had become clear that there had to be a effective means . So in 1974 , the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ) initiate a program have a go at it as Project Harvey ( named after the 6 foot 3 1/2 inch tall invisible blank hare from the dramatic play of the same name ) . The ultimate goal was to develop a combat aircraft with as low a microwave radar signature as potential . Five aerospace corporations had been contracted a million dollars each to give it their right shot . Surprisingly , Lockheed had n’t been among them . It was only an inadvertent tip - off that allow Lockheed ’s Ben Rich to buttonhole for inclusion . Rich had been an applied scientist on the secret U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft and had by then advanced to become Lockheed ’s successor to the notable Kelly Johnson as theatre director of the Skunk Works . The “ Skunk body of work ” is the official alias for the department responsible for all of Lockheed ’s extremely secret forward-looking development projects . It was formed in 1943 to build America ’s first blue jet attack aircraft , the P-80 , and numerous other projects that belong to to the darkness Earth of military operations .

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By the time Rich had gotten wind of Project Harvey , there was no money allow for for another developmental contract . So Lockheed was offered a shot - for a buck . But Rich want in and wisely turned down the nominal buck . He knew that any raw engineering science produce with company funds would then be proprietary . Lockheed was famous for building humble fleets of extremely advanced aircraft - often used for extremely secretive missionary work . During World War II , they had built the United States ’ first operational subsonic jet paladin , the P-80 . They skipped the Mach-1 era entirely and jumped right to field the United States ’ first fighter capable of speeds in excess of Mach 2 , the F-104 Star Fighter . Along the way came the high up - fly U-2 , the higher - flying SR-71 , the hypersonic D-21 drone ( which would ride piggyback on an SR-71 until released ) , and other thing not yet named .

In Rich ’s own word , the unknown hero of Lockheed ’s endeavor was an anonymous stave mathematician and electrical engineer named Denys Overholser . Overholser and his mentor , another mathematician named Bill Schroeder , had discuss the possibilities of utilizing some of the equations connect with optical scattering ( how electromagnetic Wave bounce off diversely mould target ) on this projection . Both had the rather singular hobbyhorse of read obscure Russian mathematics paper and had made the ultimate “ nerd ’s grind ” discovery . They had stumbled across a paper publish in Moscow a decade to begin with titled “ Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction . ” It had been indite by Pyotr Ufimtsev , the Soviet ’s primary scientist at the Moscow Institute of Radio Engineering and the last in a long line of descent of scientists develop a prospicient series of wave equations in the first place gain centuries ago by the Scotch physicist James Clerk Maxwell .

The U.S. intelligence residential district had helped translate this inquiry and brought it to the West . The paper was in no way classified or related to weapons exploitation at all . It was strictly theoretical math . yr later , Ufimtsev immigrated to the United States to teach at the University of California , Los Angeles , and only then discovered his inadvertent donation to the development of stealth aircraft .

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The equations that Ufimtsev had grow made the reflections of radio waves off hard surface predictable . Not invisible , pellucid , or tactical in any way - just predictable . The trouble for Lockheed was that the calculations were so ferociously hard that the most advanced supercomputer in the universe at the time could only cypher results for bland surface . Any attempt to perform the calculations for the curved aerofoil you would find on a formal aircraft - well , those machine would still be grate away toward a solution today .

Schroeder recognized how these equations could be applied to Lockheed ’s current project . The solution was not even to attempt to design an aircraft with any curving surfaces , but to build one with dozens , or perhaps hundreds , of individual flat triangular and orthogonal plates . Then the challenge was to work out the reflection from each and every flat open before summate them all together to build a picture of the aircraft ’s total radar signature . Once you get laid where every bit of radar mirror image was coming from , you could then reorientate those individual plates so that the reflection would go off in a counsel off from the radar look at it .

The process became known as “ faceting . ” And that became the substantial arcanum - not to absorb all the microwave radar or make the planer somehow transparent , but to make the sheet ’s signature predictable . That predictability could then be used to forge a tactically useful aircraft . The jet would also be covered in slender weather sheet of RAM , but the bulk of the stealth result was achieved by its flesh .

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Traditionally , a individual engineering science specialty will take the lead during the design of a raw aircraft . An aerodynamicist may be in bang of advertize through a Modern wing or fuselage shape , as happened with the early delta wings and area - predominate fuselage of the “ Century Series ” of interceptors . Sometimes it may be the major power - works cat : “ Here ’s the locomotive we ’re going to use , build us a jet fighter for it . ” This is how the P-80 number about . Occasionally it may be the arming people- the A-10 is essentially a massive 30 millimeter Richard Jordan Gatling cannon with a plane built around it . In this fussy case , this was the first clock time the lead was owned by an electric applied scientist .

The computer program designed by Overholser ’s squad to make these calculation was called Echo- 1 . fortify with that prick , the first test guinea pig , the Hopeless Diamond , was make . It was described as a ball field for obvious reasons and “ hopeless ” for its flowing qualities ( or rather , its complete lack thereof ) .

Early radiolocation testing of the Hopeless Diamond turned out to be staggeringly successful . The White Sands observational microwave radar range near Holloman AFB was used . When the microwave radar was fired up for the initial testing , the only thing that showed up was the rumination of the pole on which the trial example was theorise to be mounted . accept that the model had fallen off the pole , the radio detection and ranging operator sent technician downrange to fasten the trouble . To their surprisal , the ten - fundament model was still in place .

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To test the model at all , Lockheed then had to design an invisible “ stealth pole ” to mount the model utilizing the same technology as the proposed fighter . The results were once again astounding , and incredulous USAF officials were call in to find and swear the data point .

The first opportunity to affect these officials almost resulted in embarrassment . When the radars were turned on , the reflection , while still very humble by airplane standards , were orders of order of magnitude large than what the USAF official had been lead to expect . They could still understandably see a small radar issue from where the model was mount .

While the Lockheed engineers were trying to explain this discrepancy , a tuner call descend in from a technician downrange . He describe that a skirt was perch on the ten - foot model . The speedy response was an order to blow the trumpet of the pickup truck truck the guy was sitting in . As the startled bird flew aside , the radio detection and ranging reflection on the test scope disappeared .

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The very idea that a armed combat aircraft could be made so invisible as to enshroud behind a razzing was an opportunity that could n’t be give up . Everything assort with the program became classified at the highest levels . The program was channel from DARPA to the USAF special projects office . The Holy Scripture “ stealth ” was forbidden to be mentioned in any unclassified document . And in April 1976 , the Ford disposal gave Lockheed the go - ahead for a full - scale of measurement aircraft . The Skunk Works was officially in the stealth fighter business .

Stealth Fighter : A class in the Life of an F-117 Pilot by Lt . Col . William B. O’Connor USAF ( ret . ) is usable fromAmazon .

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