7 Quotes by Ben R. Rich

I said, 'General, I believe in the well-known golden rule. If you've got the gold, you make the rules. Call it whatever you want.

My years inside the Skunk Works, for example, convinced me of the tremendous value of building prototypes. I am a true believer. The beauty of a prototype is that it can be evaluated and its uses clarified before costly investments for large numbers are made.

Frankly, I don’t think you could have driven a needle up my sphincter using a sledgehammer.

He told me later that he was surprised to learn that with flat surfaces the amount of radar energy returning to the sender is independent of the target’s size. A small airplane, a bomber, an aircraft carrier, all with the same shape, will have identical radar cross sections.

We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else.

Control is the name of the game and if a Skunk Works really operates right, control is exactly what they won’t get.

Over the years we had developed the concept of using existing hardware developed and paid for by other programs to save time and money and reduce the risks of failures in prototype projects.