Kelly (27 page)

The role of satellites operating in space will be vital. Especially important are the navigation satellites fundamental to our guidance of submarine-launched missiles, the Polaris and Trident. They will provide the same accuracy for submarine-launched missiles as for firings from a fixed point on earth. Within just a few years, well before the year 2000, we expect to be able to fix a position any place in the world within ten feet. Both lasers and particle weapons will be a necessary defense of these satellites.

What will be the importance of aircraft in the year 2000? For defense? For commerce?

It may seem traitorous from an aircraft designer, but I see a diminished role for the manned military aircraft and more reliance on remotely piloted vehicles and missiles. When you can put 20Gs of maneuverability in a missile while a man can pull only 9Gs at most—nine times the gravity of his own weight; when you can provide a missile with the search capability to find its target; and when television and other relay links from a high-flying U-2 or space satellite can give rapid readout in real time to a man at controls in Washington, why send a man over enemy territory at all?

If we do use manned fighters and bombers against ground targets they darned well better be invisible at any flight altitude because of vulnerability to ground-to-air missiles as well as other fighter aircraft.

“Stealth” is the technology that will change the character of aerial warfare. If the enemy can’t see the aircraft with radar he can’t hit it. The capability of fighters and bombers will be enhanced greatly when the flight crews do not have to worry about ground forces except possibly to destroy them.

“Stealth” technology still is being invented daily. We developed and introduced it on the first Blackbird, and the actual shape of that series of aircraft is fundamental to their reduced
radar reflection. Also, 20 percent of the surface of the aircraft is made of “stealthy” material. But those planes still rely on other elements of design to avoid detection—altitude, speed, and electronic jamming capability.

The technology no longer is entirely Lockheed proprietary. This industry is no worse nor better than others in competition for business. The number of unsolicited proposals for which the Skunk Works has been awarded sole-source contracts has aroused a good deal of envy. I’m proud of our record, we’ve earned it. And government policy is to maintain competition among aerospace companies. That is understandable, because it keeps us on our toes to try to stay ahead of the others.

So, despite the strict security imposed by the Skunk Works and the military on its employees, recent retirees from our company and certain key agencies now are enjoying exceptional job opportunities elsewhere in the industry; sometimes with as much as 60 percent more salary, stock options, an automobile, or other bonus, for part-time work as consultants. What do these high-paid retirees have in common? They all worked on “Stealth” technology.

The year 2000 is less than 20 years away, and I personally do not try to project much farther ahead than that. Who would have predicted in 1938, for example, that we would be flying three times the speed of sound by 1958? Of course, this was developed in great secrecy and there still were those at the time who said it couldn’t be done. Or who would have anticipated that in only five years, from 1977 to 1982, the cost of a jet transport would rise 300 percent? Or that jet fuel would skyrocket from seventeen cents to $1.50 a gallon?

In retrospect, this country was wise not to have gone ahead with its supersonic transport in the 1960s. And Lockheed was fortunate to have lost that design competition. The SST would have hit the fuel crisis head on. And the noise would have been unacceptable. It is not an airplane we can afford to fly today in commercial use. The Concorde, of course, enjoys government subsidies by Great Britain and France.

The Lockheed SST proposal basically was a three-times
scale of the SR-71 design, already proven in flight. We did not use the wide fuselage so beloved by the airlines for the variety of interior arrangements it can accommodate because of what we knew about the importance of weight and drag to attaining triple-sonic speeds.

The airlines opted for the wider fuselage of the Boeing design. And the contract, later cancelled, went to a company that had never fired an afterburner nor made a sonic boom—that is, had never had any supersonic experience. We made our design studies available, and the Boeing plane came to resemble more and more the losing Lockheed proposal. But their design at the time of contract cancellation lacked transatlantic range by 700 miles. I wanted the concession to pick up the passengers from mid-ocean.

Very high fuel consumption still is a problem for commercial operation. To be economically sound, an SST will require development of another series, or two, of jet engines with much greater thrust-to-weight ratio that can achieve supersonic speed without afterburner. Whether we develop these improved engines by the year 2000 is dependent on availability of development funds.

And for successful commercial airline use, the supersonic transport first must overcome the noise problem. This, too, will yield to advanced engine development.

There is a technique, not a solution, that could be used right now to reduce takeoff noise but I have not been able to persuade others that it would be acceptable to passengers. The passengers wouldn’t even know when it was taking place. I refer to mid-air refueling. We had done it with the Blackbirds more than 18,000 times by the early 1980s.

Sitting in the second seat of a YF-12 in flight, I have been amazed at the speed and skill of refueling from a KC-135 tanker, even when the aircraft made turns, climbs, or other maneuvers. This mid-air refueling process I believe to be one of the most important developments in the history of aviation. Why? Without it we could not send our bombers over Russia—and back, for example. We could not send great payloads over-ocean
as we now do with the C-5. Nor could we send our fighters halfway around the world. Nor cross 7,500 miles of the Pacific Ocean in five hours with the SR-71. And the mid-air refueling capability eliminates the need for many foreign air bases.

Using the technique, an SST could take off lightly loaded with fuel, take on enough fuel in the air for the flight, and land conventionally. The present Concorde, for example, could take off from Los Angeles with a full load of passengers but light in weight and therefore not requiring the noisy afterburner, refuel over Hudson’s Bay from a 707 or other obsolete transport used as an aerial tanker, and fly nonstop to London. Realistically, I do not expect that to happen.

But this is an area where I do not expect the Russians to surpass us. There was an amusing incident involving the Russian SST at the Paris Air Show in 1973—before its tragic crash. Visitors were invited to inspect the airplane on the ground and in flight. Other Lockheed people were allowed to go aboard and even to fly in the airplane. I was escorted around the outside by eight of their engineers. They didn’t seem to hear when I said that I’d like to go inside. So I had a good view of the exterior.

While I have been impressed with the Russians’ forging capacities with their big presses, presses we need and do not have, I found that manufacturing techniques applied to the airplane skin were quite crude. Rivets were not flush with the surface. The fuselage was as well made as it needed to be, but the infinite pains routinely taken by U.S. manufacturers to get the skin smooth had not been taken.

We have been surprised to learn of the lack of concern for safety in some Russian designs. Their standards—certainly in military aircraft and even commercial airplanes—do not meet those of the U.S. Many of their airliners could not pass an FAA test for engine-out takeoff.

Military aircraft in the Korean conflict did not have an abort speed. A four-engine bomber would be so loaded as to require the entire runway length for takeoff. If an engine were lost there
would not be enough extra runway for takeoff on only three engines. It is not that the Russians could not improve in this area, it is that they have chosen not to do so and have their priorities elsewhere.

The HST, hypersonic transport, would be the next step technologically. Practically, it really is difficult to make a case for going to Mach 4 and 7 in a transport airplane. It takes too long to get up to speed and then throttle back for landing. Less than one-third of the flight duration would be spent hypersonically.

The HST would seem to have no place at all in the commercial airline field. Even on very long flights—the only flights on which this airplane would be used—our best knowledge today indicates that about 37 percent of the flight distance would be spent in climbing to altitude and accelerating to design speed, where the plane would cruise for about 30 percent of the flight distance before starting its descent.

Fuel consumption for the hypersonic engine, as we know it today and anticipate it for tomorrow, really is out of this world.

As a passenger airliner, the HST would not be economically feasible. In military applications, it probably would be unmanned. And the SR-71 already exceeds Mach 3 and altitudes above 100,000 feet.

The nuclear-powered airplane is another concept considered for the future. Under contract to the Strategic Air Command shortly after World War II, we investigated design of a nuclear-powered bomber. It was even before our first Skunk Works was established. I was chief engineer then for Lockheed’s California Company.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, then SAC commander, wanted a plane to fly high and supersonically. It was the NEPA project, nuclear energy for propulsion of aircraft. Six or seven other companies were involved. James Douglas was Secretary of the Air Force at the time, and 30 years later when I saw him in Washington, he came over and thanked me for “cutting up” the nuclear airplane.

We had been asking nuclear power to do something it was
not suited for, and I said so. The airplane design became mammoth in size to carry the big nuclear powerplant. The cockpit alone weighed 40,000 pounds. A lead shield was required between the cockpit and rear of the airplane where the reactor was carried in order to reduce the radiation enough to allow pilot and flight crew to fly the plane for about 30 hours a year.

It was so “hot” from a radiation point of view that if you had to change a generator on one of the engines—either four or eight in the design study—it had to be by remote control, by a robot. The plane really didn’t like to get off the ground, so jet fuel afterburners were necessary. It got to be a great big cumbersome unwieldy system.

Funds had been approved to continue the work, but I argued against it. After some strong discussion, others reluctantly came to agree with me that the project should be abandoned.

I do not foresee the nuclear airplane in the year 2000 either.

The Space Shuttle is an exciting concept with lots of popular appeal. Philosophically, putting a man in space and bringing him back down means a great deal to our belief in ourselves. Whether the Shuttle will pay off economically, commercially, I do not know. The number of flights per year and realistic pricing for customers are yet to be determined.

Its continued safety concerns me on these early flights. It was not all easy going on the second flight when the crew was down to the last of three power sources for electrical needs.

We can do so many things with an unmanned cheap launching device. Communications satellites have been orbiting for several years and do a marvelous job. They are a very good business proposition.

On a more mundane level, except for development of second-generation jet transports, commercial passenger, and cargo aircraft in service today—or planes much like them—will be what we have in the year 2000. The emphasis will not be on bigger and bigger as it was for some years, but on what is realistic, practical, and commercially viable using present technology.

One of my favorite ideas for a number of years has been a method of sinking capital ships without using a nuclear or even a gunpowder bomb. It would be truly a “clean bomb.” I thought of it when the
Pueblo
was captured, and the
Mayaguez
. We could have sunk the things without hurting a soul once our people were off.

If a 2,500-pound highly streamlined shape made of tool steel—which would not shatter—were to be launched from altitude by an SR-71 it would hit sea level at speeds well above Mach 3. Its penetration power would take it right through any ship, and it would generate so much heat that it would set fire to or sink the ship. It would be a clean kill, and much cheaper than a conventional weapon.

Such a bomb could go through 300 feet of earth. It could, for example, plug the tunnels through the Ural mountains. It could penetrate 33 feet of reinforced concrete.

We know the airplane could carry and launch such a bomb because of our earlier missile-firing work with the YF-12.

The bomb must be made of tool steel to be very hard and not break apart on impact. The trick is in the guidance, and we would expect the bomb to hit well within a thirty-foot target area when dropped from 85,000 feet. It is quite easy to figure the penetrating force—with the weight and drag and the force of velocity. Design of the weapon itself is quite simple. And I’m not giving away an idea to the Russians, because they haven’t anything that can fly high enough or fast enough to launch it.

There is promise of resource development beneath the oceans with new techniques in ocean mining. We know the resources are there including the chromium, vanadium, platinum, and other scarce materials that now must be imported from Africa. The techniques are known, too. It would require only the investment of funds, hundreds of millions of dollars, to make it a practicality.

The
Glomar Explorer
, a project of Hughes Aircraft, Global Marine, and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, was designed for ocean mining. A sort of vacuum sweeper reaches down two or three miles to pick up nodules from the ocean
floor. This has been done in test operations under ocean west and southwest of Hawaii. A processing plant aboard ship can reduce the nodules to ore. The technology is there, although to be settled, of course, is the ongoing argument about which nations reap or share the benefit of products from international waters.