Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

by Ben R. Rich

Before the F-117A flew on the first night of combat in Operation Desert Storm, we had been forced to ponder how many days and sorties it would require before we could grind down enemy air defenses to the point where we could conduct a full-scale air campaign. The combination of stealth with its high-precision munitions provided an almost total assurance that we could destroy enemy defenses from day one and the air campaign could be swift and almost devoid of any losses. In the past, you would have been betting your hat, ass, and spats on a lot of wishful thinking to conceive a battle plan that would eliminate most of the highest-value enemy targets over the most heavily defended city on earth on the opening night of the war.