The decision to go public with Skunk Works, albeit modestly, reflects the unprecedented pressures Lockheed faces from tight budgets, nimble smaller competitors and shareholders who prefer dividends and share buybacks to long-term projects.
Challenging Skunk Works are such newcomers as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, which operate more like commercial firms than legacy weapons makers. Their costs are lower due to a younger staff - the average age of SpaceX's engineers is 27, while Lockheed expects half its employees to retire in the next five years - and their ability to leverage commercial orders.
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What We Know About Lockheed's Secret Weapons Unit - Business Insider
Got its start in 1943 when Kelly Johnson and his engineers designed the first fighter jet for the U.S. military in a rented circus tent next to a manufacturing plant, whose strong odors permeated the place. Under orders to keep silent about their work, even when they answered the phone, an engineer responded to a phone call one day by referencing a stinky place called the "Skonk Works" featured in the popular Li'l Abner comic strip.
While focused mainly on aircraft, it has developed other weapons, including the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile that entered service in 2009, and nuclear fusion energy that grabbed headlines several weeks ago.
Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the world’s insatiable demand for power.
Dubbed the compact fusion reactor (CFR), the device is conceptually safer, cleaner and more powerful than much larger, current nuclear systems that rely on fission, the process of splitting atoms to release energy. Crucially, by being “compact,” Lockheed believes its scalable concept will also be small and practical enough for applications ranging from interplanetary spacecraft and commercial ships to city power stations. It may even revive the concept of large, nuclear-powered aircraft that
virtually never require refueling—ideas of which were largely abandoned more than 50 years ago because of the dangers and complexities involved with nuclear fission reactors.
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