Steve Trimble, Tony Osborne The photo and job advertisements offer a rare glimpse inside the Skunk Works’ typically secretive plans to harness the so-called “digital revolution” in design and manufacturing to deliver new military aircraft in cycles of months or a few years rather than decades.
Steve Trimble, Tony Osborne
A groundbreaking ceremony in December 2019 launched construction of the first new manufacturing facility on the Skunk Works campus since the 1980s. Credit: City of Palmdale
A photo taken from within a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility reveals the existence of four previously undisclosed projects, including one linked to recent job advertisements for a manufacturing program within the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) portfolio.
The photo and job advertisements offer a rare glimpse inside the Skunk Works’ typically secretive plans to harness the so-called “digital revolution” in design and manufacturing to deliver new military aircraft in cycles of months or a few years rather than decades.
The possibly inadvertent disclosures suggest the Advanced Development Programs division of Lockheed has launched production of multiple new aircraft or missile projects simultaneously. The manufacturing projects have appeared nearly 18 months after Lockheed broke ground on the Low Bay Advanced Manufacturing Facility, the first new building erected on the Skunk Works campus since the 1980s.
Lockheed has not explained the purpose for the new manufacturing plant, but the answer may involve a series of projects that have come before and after a highly publicized new aircraft development program funded by NASA’s aeronautics branch.
The previously undisclosed, proprietary projects appear on a chart shown in a released photo marked “unclassified,” along with the well-publicized X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology aircraft that Skunk Works is building for NASA.
The chart is headlined “Digital Transformation Journey,” and shows the progression of the Skunk Works’ digital engineering and design capabilities over the course of the five projects.
The y, or vertical, axis of the chart is titled “Maturity,” and the x-axis is marked “Time.”
The earliest and least mature project on the chart is called the “P-225,” with “P” as the Skunk Works’ standard nomenclature for a new aircraft or missile project. The most recent project on the chart, which is positioned on the y-axis to show the highest level of maturity, is designated as the “P-731.”
The NASA X-59 project, which began five years ago, falls in the middle of the five projects in terms of maturity and start date, with the “P-727” and “P-95X” projects coming just before and after, respectively.
The Skunk Works released the photo to Jim Goodall, the author of the newly published book, “75 Years of the Skunk Works,” as well as previous books about the Lockheed SR-71 and stealth aircraft.
Goodall published the photo to his Facebook page on July 3, which came shortly after he received a VIP tour of the Skunk Works facilities in Palmdale, California.
The photo shows Goodall inside a Skunk Works assembly building. He is shown standing between a large floor model of the X-59 and a tooling jig for a section of the supersonic jet’s fuselage.
The chart showing the five Skunk Work projects appears on the side of the photo, perched on an easel about 10 ft. to the right of and slightly behind Goodall. The chart includes bulleted descriptions of each of the five projects, but the letters are not legible in the released photo.
A Skunk Works spokeswoman declined to provide additional details about the four previously undisclosed projects, citing the company’s policy on withholding proprietary information even if the information has not been classified as secret by the military.
Since August 2020, Lockheed has released a series of job advertisements to support the P-95X project, with a requisition dated as late as April 20 for a manufacturing engineer with an active secret clearance. Another advertisement that expired last month for a Material Program Integrator described the “P95X” program office as falling within Skunk Works’ ISR & UAS portfolio.
Another advertisement, which is dated May 10, searches for an experienced manufacturing manager at Skunk Works, to support four programs, including the P-727. The same advertisement also references three other programs called the P-26, P-28 and P-47.
The chart’s headline — Digital Transformation Journey — likely refers to the Skunk Works’ adoption of a digital design and engineering process, which is branded as the StarDrive.
Skunk Works officials revealed the StarDrive initiative last September. The process was used to create an air-launched UAS called the Speed Racer.
In February, the Air Force Research Laboratory included Speed Racer in a list of topics that would be discussed during the Armament Industry Roundtable panel about options for introducing more autonomous capabilities in low-cost cruise missiles.
