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Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft
The story behind the technology that revolutionized both aeronautics, and the course of history
On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen airplanes appeared in the skies over Baghdad. Or, rather, didn't appear. They arrived in the dark, their black outlines cloaking them from sight. More importantly, their odd, angular shapes, which made them look like flying origami, rendered them undetectable to Iraq's formidable air defenses. Stealth technology, developed during the decades before Desert Storm, had arrived. To American planners and strategists at the outset of the Cold War, this seemingly ultimate way to gain ascendance over the USSR was only a question. What if the United States could defend its airspace while at the same time send a plane through Soviet skies undetected? A craft with such capacity would have to be essentially invisible to radar - an apparently miraculous feat of physics and engineering. In Stealth, Peter Westwick unveils the process by which the impossible was achieved.
At heart, Stealth is a tale of two aerospace companies, Lockheed and Northrop, and their fierce competition - with each other and with themselves - to obtain what was estimated one of the largest procurement contracts in history. Westwick's book fully explores the individual and collective ingenuity and determination required to make these planes and in the process provides a fresh view of the period leading up to the end of the Soviet Union. Taking into account the role of technology, as well as the art and science of physics and engineering, Westwick offers an engaging narrative, one that immerses readers in the race to produce a weapon that some thought might save the world, and which certainly changed it.
On a moonless night in January 1991, a dozen airplanes appeared in the skies over Baghdad. Or, rather, didn't appear. They arrived in the dark, their black outlines cloaking them from sight. More importantly, their odd, angular shapes, which made them look like flying origami, rendered them undetectable to Iraq's formidable air defenses. Stealth technology, developed during the decades before Desert Storm, had arrived. To American planners and strategists at the outset of the Cold War, this seemingly ultimate way to gain ascendance over the USSR was only a question. What if the United States could defend its airspace while at the same time send a plane through Soviet skies undetected? A craft with such capacity would have to be essentially invisible to radar - an apparently miraculous feat of physics and engineering. In Stealth, Peter Westwick unveils the process by which the impossible was achieved.
At heart, Stealth is a tale of two aerospace companies, Lockheed and Northrop, and their fierce competition - with each other and with themselves - to obtain what was estimated one of the largest procurement contracts in history. Westwick's book fully explores the individual and collective ingenuity and determination required to make these planes and in the process provides a fresh view of the period leading up to the end of the Soviet Union. Taking into account the role of technology, as well as the art and science of physics and engineering, Westwick offers an engaging narrative, one that immerses readers in the race to produce a weapon that some thought might save the world, and which certainly changed it.
251 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2020
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658 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
June 29, 2020
I was hoping to learn a few things about stealth technology and I did. I was also hoping to enjoy a good story but I did not. A general internet search about stealth technology would have been a better choice for me.
This book was so dull and dizzying I can't keep straight which planes were produced by Northrop or Lockheed or the principal employees of either company (and I just finished the book five minutes ago). Chapters 2 and 3 were some of the worst chapters I've read in a long time; they had no flow, they moved back and forth in time jarringly and some parts were so incoherent I think the editor deleted every third sentence.
I read on hoping the book would improve as it got closer to current times. It didn't but at least it was consistently dense and uninteresting throughout. I gave it an extra star for consistency.
Not recommended.
This book was so dull and dizzying I can't keep straight which planes were produced by Northrop or Lockheed or the principal employees of either company (and I just finished the book five minutes ago). Chapters 2 and 3 were some of the worst chapters I've read in a long time; they had no flow, they moved back and forth in time jarringly and some parts were so incoherent I think the editor deleted every third sentence.
I read on hoping the book would improve as it got closer to current times. It didn't but at least it was consistently dense and uninteresting throughout. I gave it an extra star for consistency.
Not recommended.
May 23, 2020
A well researched and written treatment of the development of stealth technology. The volume is unusual in that it captures the personalities of the various players quite well, but also provides an excellent treatment of the technical essence of stealth at the layman’s level. The author concentrates on the efforts of the two major stealth houses, Lockheed and Northrop, for the most part. This does allow him to drill down to a quite detailed level, but is limited in scope in some cases. For example, a key aspect of stealth is the synergism between the technology itself and the tactics used to employ it. Northrop management constantly drilled this into their staff, and in fact recognized its importance by setting up its organization to ensure this relationship was carried out. Thus the heart of stealth was the Weapons System Engineering group, which included departments focused on mission and systems analysis as well as the classical observables shops.
One other shortcoming is the lack of treatment of the other observables. While it is certainly true that reduction of radar cross section is the crowning technical achievement in stealth, a key aspect of the overall stealth design was to ensure that there was no vulnerability to reactive technology development in other sensor domains. For example, the rapid development in electronics meant that infrared detectors were likely to become very much more sensitive during the operational lifetime of the aircraft, and counters to this needed to be developed. As the author points out, there is not a great deal that can be easily done to control skin temperature of an aircraft, but the reflectance (or emissivity) of the plane’s coating can be modified to achieve very low contrast signatures. Design of these coating requires understanding of radiation transport in an optically thick medium, and required both laboratory measurements and complex computer simulations, just as with RCS reduction. None of this is discussed here, nor exactly how the contrails were controlled.
Note: this reader worked at Northrop during the 1980’s.
One other shortcoming is the lack of treatment of the other observables. While it is certainly true that reduction of radar cross section is the crowning technical achievement in stealth, a key aspect of the overall stealth design was to ensure that there was no vulnerability to reactive technology development in other sensor domains. For example, the rapid development in electronics meant that infrared detectors were likely to become very much more sensitive during the operational lifetime of the aircraft, and counters to this needed to be developed. As the author points out, there is not a great deal that can be easily done to control skin temperature of an aircraft, but the reflectance (or emissivity) of the plane’s coating can be modified to achieve very low contrast signatures. Design of these coating requires understanding of radiation transport in an optically thick medium, and required both laboratory measurements and complex computer simulations, just as with RCS reduction. None of this is discussed here, nor exactly how the contrails were controlled.
Note: this reader worked at Northrop during the 1980’s.
October 4, 2020
I have to admit that this book surprised me with its depth and quality of research. I did not have very high expectations of it as I was already familiar with the early histories of the F-117 and B-2 programs, and I was relatively confident that most of the interesting stories behind these two programs would be kept under a heavy veil of secrecy for many more years to come.
Westwick's book has an excellent balance of technical details and an engaging story of the human costs of the enormous effort to design and build aircraft that would be invisible to Soviet radar. Starting with the early efforts to build RCS (radar cross section) computational software and the impact of Ufimtsev's (a Soviet scientist whose openly published work was critical to the birth of steath aircraft) paper, the coverage of the F-117 project is excellent and features a lot of interesting stories that I have not read anywhere else. Similarly, the story of Northrop's top secret "Tacit Blue" and the subsequent B-2 program is full of fascinating details. The B-2 still forms very much the tip of the spear of the USAF part of the US nuclear triad, and its operational history is well documented. However, Tacit Blue was secret for a very long time and I knew very little about it until I read this book.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in modern military aviation and low observable (stealth) aircraft.
Westwick's book has an excellent balance of technical details and an engaging story of the human costs of the enormous effort to design and build aircraft that would be invisible to Soviet radar. Starting with the early efforts to build RCS (radar cross section) computational software and the impact of Ufimtsev's (a Soviet scientist whose openly published work was critical to the birth of steath aircraft) paper, the coverage of the F-117 project is excellent and features a lot of interesting stories that I have not read anywhere else. Similarly, the story of Northrop's top secret "Tacit Blue" and the subsequent B-2 program is full of fascinating details. The B-2 still forms very much the tip of the spear of the USAF part of the US nuclear triad, and its operational history is well documented. However, Tacit Blue was secret for a very long time and I knew very little about it until I read this book.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in modern military aviation and low observable (stealth) aircraft.
April 16, 2020
This is one of the better aviation history books I’ve read in years. The author keeps technobabble pretty minimized and has paced the story well. It’s nice to read an airplane book that doesn’t get stuck on one minute detail which can dump the reader into a rabbit-hole of a stalled story.
April 8, 2020
In "Skunk Works," Ben Rich gave his recollections on the development of stealth warplanes at Lockheed. "Stealth" gives a slightly broader perspective on the story, covering the competition between Lockheed and Northrop. It has at least as many funny anecdotes and factoids. The narrator is a bit more remote, there is some repetition, but it is still an interesting and readable story. Westwick actually goes into more technical detail on a number of points, clarifying Rich's story.
> on the one hand, the sharply angular [Lockheed] F-117; on the other, the smoothly rounded [Northrop] B-2. … In a fantastically fertile five-year period in the mid- to late 1970s, engineers at the two firms arrived at different solutions to achieve the same breakthrough: aircraft essentially invisible to radar
> The primary approach to detect incoming aircraft, involving giant concrete acoustic mirrors, could at best pick up bombers at 15 miles
> No sweat … until American planes started dropping from the skies over North Vietnam. Soviet-made SA-2s decimated American planes at high altitudes, and when the US shifted to low-altitude raids, shoulder-fired SA-7s proved surprisingly effective. Electronic countermeasures helped but often required support aircraft to fly alongside; over North Vietnam, the US averaged a ratio of four radar-jamming aircraft to every strike aircraft. … The 1973 Arab-Israeli War confirmed the lesson, as Soviet-built radar systems dealt high losses to the Israeli Air Force, downing over a hundred aircraft in eighteen days.
> The CIA could simply aim radar receivers at the moon to pick up the reflected signals from Soviet early-warning antennas. These data, supplemented by spy planes carrying radar receivers, mapped the location and strength of the Tall Kings
> The radar equation states that the cross section varies with the fourth power of the distance. Say that a Soviet early-warning radar could pick up an American aircraft at 200 miles, which gave the Soviets twenty minutes to alert their antiaircraft missile batteries and scramble interceptors. Cutting the detection distance in half, to 100 miles, required cutting the radar signature not by 2 but by 2^4, or 16
> If the surface has straight edges, the radar waves bounce back perpendicularly, as if from a mirror, so you get a spike, like a glint of light, in one direction. If the surface has curved edges, you get a smaller return but in all directions. The Lockheed and Northrop philosophy was that it was better to have one single spike and then make that spike go the wrong way, away from the radar antenna. The McDonnell Douglas approach was to avoid a spike altogether and scatter the reflection in many directions.
> add cesium salt to the jet fuel; the cesium ionized the exhaust gas, creating a plasma plume to absorb radar and shield the exhaust ducts. Thus, although the A-12 and SR-71 included some radar-reducing features, the design was dictated primarily by aerodynamics, and most of the radar reduction came from materials
> Ufimtsev’s breakthrough was to separate the surface currents into uniform and nonuniform components. The uniform current was the same as that expected on a flat surface by standard physical optics. The nonuniform current was what appeared at irregularities in the surface: edges, tips, cracks, or curves. Ufimtsev called these nonuniform components “fringe currents,” since they appeared along the edges of bodies. By showing how to calculate the fringe currents and the radiation they generated, he accounted for the diffracted waves in the missing region. He published his theory in a 1962 report—in Russian, of course—whose title translated as “Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction.” … Even after Ufimtsev and his institute tried applying the theory to airplanes, in effect pursuing the concept of Stealth, the Soviet military showed no interest. On the contrary, they met outright resistance. The aircraft design bureaus insisted that aircraft design was a matter of aerodynamics, not electromagnetism—and that aeronautical engineers, not physicists, designed planes. Thus the aircraft designers’ standard response to Ufimtsev: “Go away.” … Ufimtsev, for his part, shrugged and returned to his equations. He was completely unaware that his theory had sparked a revolution in the other camp.
> Locus was in the habit of browsing translated Soviet journals. He ran across an article by Ufimtsev that seemed interesting and urged Northrop’s resident diffraction theorist, Kenneth Mitzner, to read it. … Ufimtsev’s nonuniform currents filled the crucial gap in existing theory about radar scattering. No American scientist had ever met him, but the Soviet physicist, known only as a name and theory, became a legendary figure in Stealth design rooms. Northrop’s team liked to interrupt their work with choruses of “Go Ufimtsev!” to the tune of “On, Wisconsin!” … To the US intelligence community, meanwhile, Ufimtsev’s name became equally mythical, but as a source of concern. They already knew that Soviet physicists and mathematicians were top-notch. Here was a crucial advance made in 1962, and the US only translated it in 1971. The Soviets had about a decade’s head start.
> Stan Locus had the simple inspiration to drive a nail into the model on the test stand. If the radar reached the nail, it would reflect and light up like a beacon on the radar screen. When the nail showed up on the radar, they pried it out and hammered it in again, this time a bit farther back around the curve; when they reached the point where it didn’t show up on radar, they knew how well that particular curve performed.
> The pole had to get the model high enough off the desert floor to avoid backscatter from the ground; it was originally made of Styrofoam, a nonconducting surface that scattered few radar waves. A crucial problem was that both Lockheed and Northrop’s airplane models promised cross sections far below what RATSCAT or any other test range could measure. Substantial effort thus went into improving test ranges, to lower the background radar clutter to the point where the test range radars could measure the model cross sections. In particular the Styrofoam pole reflected far more radar than the model, so Lockheed supplied a stealthy pole
> Groundwater could affect the radar tests: Scherrer once recorded scattering from a target over the course of an entire day and found that it varied by several decibels, which he eventually traced to the tidal rise and fall of the underground water table.
> For some of them, however, the main competition was not the Soviets but rather their engineering colleagues at the other firm. As Cashen put it, “It’s just like we were playing with the best in the Super Bowl every year.”
> The full-scale models were made of either plywood or foam and fiberglass, coated with conductive silver paint to mimic the radar behavior of a metal plane. … During one test Lockheed’s radar signature bloomed by about 50 percent. It turned out a flock of birds had lit on Lockheed’s model and proceeded to do what birds do, and the bird turds blew up the signature. … The tests used four-tenths scale models, but those models were still big: four-tenths of the Northrop design’s wingspan was still almost 70 feet. The sheer weight of Northrop’s model on the pole was causing it to flex, creating tiny cracks in the paint. The web of cracked paint was reflecting the radar and thus blowing up the signature.
> the 7/16-inch ball bearing that Lockheed engineers rolled across briefing tables represented only the cross section of their XST design when viewed nose-on and level and for a particular radar frequency.
> Generally, big early warning systems like the Tall Kings used lower frequency, while antiaircraft radars used higher frequencies to provide the resolution needed for precise tracking and targeting
> if an antiaircraft radar saw a plane from the side, the plane would be moving too fast to track. So that left the front and the back. Damaskos’s formula defined the nose and tail sectors as anything within 45 degrees of the airplane’s centerline, either forward or aft … Northrop immediately protested. Radar would light up most attacking aircraft, speeding toward enemy territory, from the front. Northrop’s engineers had thus designed their plane assuming a wider radar threat in the front, 60 degrees from centerline, or a 120-degree wedge in all. They similarly assumed that radar hitting the back of the plane was a lower priority, since that meant the airplane was speeding away from the antiaircraft site and therefore presented a harder target to hit. So for the rear of the plane Northrop designed around a zone only 35 degrees from centerline, meaning a 70-degree wedge.
> To save money the Skunk Works had skimped on Have Blue’s brakes, and the first plane had a drag chute to help it slow down. Nevertheless, at the end of every rollout after landing, the ground crew found the brakes were literally red-hot and glowing. The crew had to station big fans at the end of the runway and run them out to the plane to cool off the brakes before they caught fire.
> The committee’s report, entitled Discriminate Deterrence, urged that the US military make Stealth a top priority, touting its potential, in combination with precision-guided munitions, to replace nuclear weapons.
> Two parallel edges essentially provided a single radar spike in the same direction, the same as would reflect from a single edge. So the Northrop team embraced what they called parallel planforming. A simple, boxy airplane with parallel edges—in the fuselage, the wings, and the nose and tail—would produce just a handful of spikes. BSAX, in fact, was a six-spike airplane. … the importance for Stealth of parallel planforming—that is, having aligned edges in the planform—and of minimizing the number of parallel edges, each of which produced a radar spike. A flying wing, since it lacked fuselage or tail, minimized the number of spikes.
> Northrop managers made a remarkable gamble: they told DARPA they refused to enter a competition. They had been working on the assumption that they had the job, and they protested that the government was now threatening to give it to Lockheed. Northrop calculated that the government didn’t want Lockheed to have a monopoly on Stealth, so the firm in effect said: if you don’t give us the job, we walk. And that would mean Northrop was out of the Stealth business, leaving Lockheed with a monopoly and the government with no leverage on future projects. The gambit worked. DARPA backed down and in April 1978 gave Northrop a sole-source contract for Tacit Blue.
> “So the RCS [radar-cross-section] guys would always say, ‘We want Gaussian curves.’ And our configurator, the guy who did all the layout of all the lines, said, ‘Well, they think they’re getting a Gaussian, but the shop can’t make it, and they’re getting conics.’” That, of course, did not satisfy the RCS guys. Mitzner fired off a memo insisting that Northrop’s lofters get up to date
> Like Lockheed’s Skunk Works, Northrop benefited from an integration of design and manufacturing. For Tacit Blue, aircraft design and production were in the same place, in Building 360 in Northrop’s Hawthorne plant.
> When Northrop engineers rolled Tacit Blue out of the hangar at Area 51, some Lockheed engineers watching the exercise were bemused. One asked, “When are you going to take it out of the crate?” Tacit Blue looked like an upside-down bathtub. Its ungainly appearance and bulbous nose, offset by the flaring V-tails that looked like flukes, earned it the nickname “the Whale.” As a counterpart to the skunk logo of the Skunk Works, Northrop staff took to sporting a whale logo. … Tacit Blue didn’t just look odd. It also flew funny. It was totally unstable in yaw, tending to swing around like a weather vane and end up flying tail first. It was also unstable in pitch: if it departed more than about 6 degrees from level flight it would flip over on its back. That earned it another nickname, “HUM,” for Highly Unstable Mother. To tame Tacit Blue, Northrop designers turned to flight controls, having learned from their mistake on XST, when they neglected to include fly-by-wire.
> to save money, instead of adding seals around the cockpit door, so that radar beams wouldn’t reflect off the gap, Northrop engineers just used conducting tape—like aluminum duct tape. After the pilot climbed into place, the flight crew would tape him in
> Democrats had long opposed the B-1, and they backed the Stealth bomber as a way to justify that opposition without being seen as “soft on defense.” Republicans continued to support the B-1 as the safest bet, leading Washington wags to joke that the B-1 was a Republican plane and the Stealth bomber a Democratic one.
> if the New York Stock Exchange believed that Northrop was withholding material information from stockholders and the market, it would delist the company. He alerted the Defense Department, which sent a lawyer to talk to the leaders of the stock exchange, explaining that national security meant there could be no public comment. The stock exchange replied, in effect, “Fine, Northrop can choose not to reveal the information, and we will just delist the firm.” Jones persuaded Pentagon officials to craft a press release that addressed the stock exchange’s basic question—did Northrop have a contract or not?—without revealing what the contract was for.
> Tacit Blue gave Northrop three crucial advantages in the B-2 contest. First, it was on Tacit Blue that Northrop designers first considered a flying wing, then undertook the radar tests that persuaded them that a flying wing worked both for aerodynamics and avoiding radar. Second, Tacit Blue had immersed Northrop’s designers in the use of curves to defeat radar. Curves not only helped the plane fly better; they also improved its stealthiness across a broader range of radar frequencies. Third, the B-2 had to have a radar in it for navigation and targeting, and Northrop had learned from Tacit Blue how to incorporate a radar in a Stealth plane … Losing the F-117, in other words, was crucial to winning the B-2. The consolation prize for the first round, Tacit Blue, held the key to the last round.
> It was Lockheed that had proposed a flying wing for Tacit Blue, and Air Force program managers then nudged Northrop in that direction. The flying-wing idea for the B-2 first came from outside Northrop—indeed, from its main competitor.
> Most airplanes are built from the inside out, starting with the internal framework as a sort of skeleton and then putting the skin on at the end. Building from inside out, however, means that errors in tolerance multiply. In order to maintain the rigid specifications for the B-2’s skin, Northrop built it from the outside in,
> The Pentagon’s fact sheet released in mid-1986 had revealed that the B-2 cost $277 millio
> on the one hand, the sharply angular [Lockheed] F-117; on the other, the smoothly rounded [Northrop] B-2. … In a fantastically fertile five-year period in the mid- to late 1970s, engineers at the two firms arrived at different solutions to achieve the same breakthrough: aircraft essentially invisible to radar
> The primary approach to detect incoming aircraft, involving giant concrete acoustic mirrors, could at best pick up bombers at 15 miles
> No sweat … until American planes started dropping from the skies over North Vietnam. Soviet-made SA-2s decimated American planes at high altitudes, and when the US shifted to low-altitude raids, shoulder-fired SA-7s proved surprisingly effective. Electronic countermeasures helped but often required support aircraft to fly alongside; over North Vietnam, the US averaged a ratio of four radar-jamming aircraft to every strike aircraft. … The 1973 Arab-Israeli War confirmed the lesson, as Soviet-built radar systems dealt high losses to the Israeli Air Force, downing over a hundred aircraft in eighteen days.
> The CIA could simply aim radar receivers at the moon to pick up the reflected signals from Soviet early-warning antennas. These data, supplemented by spy planes carrying radar receivers, mapped the location and strength of the Tall Kings
> The radar equation states that the cross section varies with the fourth power of the distance. Say that a Soviet early-warning radar could pick up an American aircraft at 200 miles, which gave the Soviets twenty minutes to alert their antiaircraft missile batteries and scramble interceptors. Cutting the detection distance in half, to 100 miles, required cutting the radar signature not by 2 but by 2^4, or 16
> If the surface has straight edges, the radar waves bounce back perpendicularly, as if from a mirror, so you get a spike, like a glint of light, in one direction. If the surface has curved edges, you get a smaller return but in all directions. The Lockheed and Northrop philosophy was that it was better to have one single spike and then make that spike go the wrong way, away from the radar antenna. The McDonnell Douglas approach was to avoid a spike altogether and scatter the reflection in many directions.
> add cesium salt to the jet fuel; the cesium ionized the exhaust gas, creating a plasma plume to absorb radar and shield the exhaust ducts. Thus, although the A-12 and SR-71 included some radar-reducing features, the design was dictated primarily by aerodynamics, and most of the radar reduction came from materials
> Ufimtsev’s breakthrough was to separate the surface currents into uniform and nonuniform components. The uniform current was the same as that expected on a flat surface by standard physical optics. The nonuniform current was what appeared at irregularities in the surface: edges, tips, cracks, or curves. Ufimtsev called these nonuniform components “fringe currents,” since they appeared along the edges of bodies. By showing how to calculate the fringe currents and the radiation they generated, he accounted for the diffracted waves in the missing region. He published his theory in a 1962 report—in Russian, of course—whose title translated as “Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction.” … Even after Ufimtsev and his institute tried applying the theory to airplanes, in effect pursuing the concept of Stealth, the Soviet military showed no interest. On the contrary, they met outright resistance. The aircraft design bureaus insisted that aircraft design was a matter of aerodynamics, not electromagnetism—and that aeronautical engineers, not physicists, designed planes. Thus the aircraft designers’ standard response to Ufimtsev: “Go away.” … Ufimtsev, for his part, shrugged and returned to his equations. He was completely unaware that his theory had sparked a revolution in the other camp.
> Locus was in the habit of browsing translated Soviet journals. He ran across an article by Ufimtsev that seemed interesting and urged Northrop’s resident diffraction theorist, Kenneth Mitzner, to read it. … Ufimtsev’s nonuniform currents filled the crucial gap in existing theory about radar scattering. No American scientist had ever met him, but the Soviet physicist, known only as a name and theory, became a legendary figure in Stealth design rooms. Northrop’s team liked to interrupt their work with choruses of “Go Ufimtsev!” to the tune of “On, Wisconsin!” … To the US intelligence community, meanwhile, Ufimtsev’s name became equally mythical, but as a source of concern. They already knew that Soviet physicists and mathematicians were top-notch. Here was a crucial advance made in 1962, and the US only translated it in 1971. The Soviets had about a decade’s head start.
> Stan Locus had the simple inspiration to drive a nail into the model on the test stand. If the radar reached the nail, it would reflect and light up like a beacon on the radar screen. When the nail showed up on the radar, they pried it out and hammered it in again, this time a bit farther back around the curve; when they reached the point where it didn’t show up on radar, they knew how well that particular curve performed.
> The pole had to get the model high enough off the desert floor to avoid backscatter from the ground; it was originally made of Styrofoam, a nonconducting surface that scattered few radar waves. A crucial problem was that both Lockheed and Northrop’s airplane models promised cross sections far below what RATSCAT or any other test range could measure. Substantial effort thus went into improving test ranges, to lower the background radar clutter to the point where the test range radars could measure the model cross sections. In particular the Styrofoam pole reflected far more radar than the model, so Lockheed supplied a stealthy pole
> Groundwater could affect the radar tests: Scherrer once recorded scattering from a target over the course of an entire day and found that it varied by several decibels, which he eventually traced to the tidal rise and fall of the underground water table.
> For some of them, however, the main competition was not the Soviets but rather their engineering colleagues at the other firm. As Cashen put it, “It’s just like we were playing with the best in the Super Bowl every year.”
> The full-scale models were made of either plywood or foam and fiberglass, coated with conductive silver paint to mimic the radar behavior of a metal plane. … During one test Lockheed’s radar signature bloomed by about 50 percent. It turned out a flock of birds had lit on Lockheed’s model and proceeded to do what birds do, and the bird turds blew up the signature. … The tests used four-tenths scale models, but those models were still big: four-tenths of the Northrop design’s wingspan was still almost 70 feet. The sheer weight of Northrop’s model on the pole was causing it to flex, creating tiny cracks in the paint. The web of cracked paint was reflecting the radar and thus blowing up the signature.
> the 7/16-inch ball bearing that Lockheed engineers rolled across briefing tables represented only the cross section of their XST design when viewed nose-on and level and for a particular radar frequency.
> Generally, big early warning systems like the Tall Kings used lower frequency, while antiaircraft radars used higher frequencies to provide the resolution needed for precise tracking and targeting
> if an antiaircraft radar saw a plane from the side, the plane would be moving too fast to track. So that left the front and the back. Damaskos’s formula defined the nose and tail sectors as anything within 45 degrees of the airplane’s centerline, either forward or aft … Northrop immediately protested. Radar would light up most attacking aircraft, speeding toward enemy territory, from the front. Northrop’s engineers had thus designed their plane assuming a wider radar threat in the front, 60 degrees from centerline, or a 120-degree wedge in all. They similarly assumed that radar hitting the back of the plane was a lower priority, since that meant the airplane was speeding away from the antiaircraft site and therefore presented a harder target to hit. So for the rear of the plane Northrop designed around a zone only 35 degrees from centerline, meaning a 70-degree wedge.
> To save money the Skunk Works had skimped on Have Blue’s brakes, and the first plane had a drag chute to help it slow down. Nevertheless, at the end of every rollout after landing, the ground crew found the brakes were literally red-hot and glowing. The crew had to station big fans at the end of the runway and run them out to the plane to cool off the brakes before they caught fire.
> The committee’s report, entitled Discriminate Deterrence, urged that the US military make Stealth a top priority, touting its potential, in combination with precision-guided munitions, to replace nuclear weapons.
> Two parallel edges essentially provided a single radar spike in the same direction, the same as would reflect from a single edge. So the Northrop team embraced what they called parallel planforming. A simple, boxy airplane with parallel edges—in the fuselage, the wings, and the nose and tail—would produce just a handful of spikes. BSAX, in fact, was a six-spike airplane. … the importance for Stealth of parallel planforming—that is, having aligned edges in the planform—and of minimizing the number of parallel edges, each of which produced a radar spike. A flying wing, since it lacked fuselage or tail, minimized the number of spikes.
> Northrop managers made a remarkable gamble: they told DARPA they refused to enter a competition. They had been working on the assumption that they had the job, and they protested that the government was now threatening to give it to Lockheed. Northrop calculated that the government didn’t want Lockheed to have a monopoly on Stealth, so the firm in effect said: if you don’t give us the job, we walk. And that would mean Northrop was out of the Stealth business, leaving Lockheed with a monopoly and the government with no leverage on future projects. The gambit worked. DARPA backed down and in April 1978 gave Northrop a sole-source contract for Tacit Blue.
> “So the RCS [radar-cross-section] guys would always say, ‘We want Gaussian curves.’ And our configurator, the guy who did all the layout of all the lines, said, ‘Well, they think they’re getting a Gaussian, but the shop can’t make it, and they’re getting conics.’” That, of course, did not satisfy the RCS guys. Mitzner fired off a memo insisting that Northrop’s lofters get up to date
> Like Lockheed’s Skunk Works, Northrop benefited from an integration of design and manufacturing. For Tacit Blue, aircraft design and production were in the same place, in Building 360 in Northrop’s Hawthorne plant.
> When Northrop engineers rolled Tacit Blue out of the hangar at Area 51, some Lockheed engineers watching the exercise were bemused. One asked, “When are you going to take it out of the crate?” Tacit Blue looked like an upside-down bathtub. Its ungainly appearance and bulbous nose, offset by the flaring V-tails that looked like flukes, earned it the nickname “the Whale.” As a counterpart to the skunk logo of the Skunk Works, Northrop staff took to sporting a whale logo. … Tacit Blue didn’t just look odd. It also flew funny. It was totally unstable in yaw, tending to swing around like a weather vane and end up flying tail first. It was also unstable in pitch: if it departed more than about 6 degrees from level flight it would flip over on its back. That earned it another nickname, “HUM,” for Highly Unstable Mother. To tame Tacit Blue, Northrop designers turned to flight controls, having learned from their mistake on XST, when they neglected to include fly-by-wire.
> to save money, instead of adding seals around the cockpit door, so that radar beams wouldn’t reflect off the gap, Northrop engineers just used conducting tape—like aluminum duct tape. After the pilot climbed into place, the flight crew would tape him in
> Democrats had long opposed the B-1, and they backed the Stealth bomber as a way to justify that opposition without being seen as “soft on defense.” Republicans continued to support the B-1 as the safest bet, leading Washington wags to joke that the B-1 was a Republican plane and the Stealth bomber a Democratic one.
> if the New York Stock Exchange believed that Northrop was withholding material information from stockholders and the market, it would delist the company. He alerted the Defense Department, which sent a lawyer to talk to the leaders of the stock exchange, explaining that national security meant there could be no public comment. The stock exchange replied, in effect, “Fine, Northrop can choose not to reveal the information, and we will just delist the firm.” Jones persuaded Pentagon officials to craft a press release that addressed the stock exchange’s basic question—did Northrop have a contract or not?—without revealing what the contract was for.
> Tacit Blue gave Northrop three crucial advantages in the B-2 contest. First, it was on Tacit Blue that Northrop designers first considered a flying wing, then undertook the radar tests that persuaded them that a flying wing worked both for aerodynamics and avoiding radar. Second, Tacit Blue had immersed Northrop’s designers in the use of curves to defeat radar. Curves not only helped the plane fly better; they also improved its stealthiness across a broader range of radar frequencies. Third, the B-2 had to have a radar in it for navigation and targeting, and Northrop had learned from Tacit Blue how to incorporate a radar in a Stealth plane … Losing the F-117, in other words, was crucial to winning the B-2. The consolation prize for the first round, Tacit Blue, held the key to the last round.
> It was Lockheed that had proposed a flying wing for Tacit Blue, and Air Force program managers then nudged Northrop in that direction. The flying-wing idea for the B-2 first came from outside Northrop—indeed, from its main competitor.
> Most airplanes are built from the inside out, starting with the internal framework as a sort of skeleton and then putting the skin on at the end. Building from inside out, however, means that errors in tolerance multiply. In order to maintain the rigid specifications for the B-2’s skin, Northrop built it from the outside in,
> The Pentagon’s fact sheet released in mid-1986 had revealed that the B-2 cost $277 millio
December 19, 2022
My expectations going into this work were tempered in regards to how much the author could really say about this program; the answer turns out to be a lot. Westwick did not approach this topic from a dead start, having been involved in a long-term project to document the social history of aviation in California. This means that he can place the development of stealth into the context of the history of the Lockheed and Northrup companies. It also means that Westwick appreciates what a program like this meant to the people who worked at these companies on these high-risk, high-reward projects. There was also a great deal of coverage of the basic science involved in making stealth work. Finally, Westwick was fortunate to get access to many of the participants before they pass on, meaning that this history should have some real staying power. Best grace note in the book: Jack Northrup received a technical briefing on the B-2 bomber before it broke cover, and before he passed away, thus receiving validation for his belief in the flying-wing platform.
I don't often hand out five stars, because more books have been written from authors' need to write than people's need to read, but this work was truly outstanding.
I don't often hand out five stars, because more books have been written from authors' need to write than people's need to read, but this work was truly outstanding.
August 1, 2022
I read this book after "Kelly: More than my share" and "Skunk Works: A personal memoir of my years at Lockheed Martin." I loved the first two books and insight they provided into the stealth program and general works at Skunk Works. I selected this book to get a deeper dive into stealth, how it was developed, by who, what aircraft, ex... I am a little disappointed in the lack of detail in some areas. 90% of the book covers pre-1985 aeroplanes. it would have been interesting if the author spent a little more time in the recent years or if the author would have talked about missiles as well. I understand that this data is classified, however, I believe there could have been more non-classified information shared. Other than that, the author does an amazing job researching stealth technology and showing the development over the course of several decades. if someone was interested in learning the history or stealth, I would recommend this book. This book does not dive into how stealth technology works, but this is probably outside of the scope of this book.
January 3, 2024
There is a rule I need to follow. It isn't infallible, but it's close.
The longer the author's introduction to the book you are about to read, the worse the book will be.
Then, not only does he feel the need to spend 20 minutes (audio) telling you what you are going to read anyway, he then doubles down and spends another 20 at the end, telling you what you've just read.
This probably should have been an interesting story. Sadly, it wasn't.
The longer the author's introduction to the book you are about to read, the worse the book will be.
Then, not only does he feel the need to spend 20 minutes (audio) telling you what you are going to read anyway, he then doubles down and spends another 20 at the end, telling you what you've just read.
This probably should have been an interesting story. Sadly, it wasn't.
July 8, 2024
An interesting history of stealth aircraft.
December 26, 2024
An essential book if you're interested in aeroespace stuff. The book is focused on the thirty-year race between Lockheed and Northop to develop the technology behind stealth aircrafts. However, the real main characters of this book are the engineers that designed and built them.
Worth reading. For me, 5 stars.
Worth reading. For me, 5 stars.
November 24, 2024
About the history of Stealth Technology behind the F117 and B2 aircraft but really gives a broad view of the middle history (ie not the soldiers in the trenches or the top down generals and heads of state) and how technologies are developed.
The technical development starts from Tesla mentioning his death ray and whilst testing it Scientists discovered it couldn't shoot down planes and slowly made the radios give feedback based on the planes' distance and speed. Which luckily wasn't consigned to a field project but the development of RADAR.
Choice Notes
Tesla mentioning his death ray and whilst testing it Scientists discovered it couldn't shoot down planes and slowly made the radios give feedback based on the planes' distance and speed. Which luckily wasn't consigned to a field project but the development of RADAR.
Soviet theory on radio wave scattering on edges of objects was released in 1960 and not translated until 1971. USA thought that the Soviets had a decade headstart when they hadn't even bothered to classify the document.
During a test Lockheed model had flared by 50% this was found to be from bird dropping son the model.
Tom mogenfell had the front landing gear fall off and landed plane in a wheelie by pitching up the nose. He was poster ranked by colleagues claiming he was hit with a union grievance for unauthorised grinding of a flight component
Aviation Week (aka Aviation leek) divulged information such as Lockheed v Northrup competition to build stealth and reported the test flights; this on the most security cleared black project at the time
The Fulda Gap offered a path through the moutains from east to West to invade frankfurt, the financial capital of West Germany.
Secrecy required in 1981 FBI discovered an engineer had been sending microfiber film to soviets for $ 110000. A northrup engineer attempt to sell secrets. Another engineer snuck up to the roof and wrote a vulgar word in Russian as a middle finger to the spy satellites.
A trade journal defence news issuesdd a 1985 warning that taxpayers would realise too many weapons projects are spending billions ina rtas maze. It is only a matter of time before the public see inside the rats maze and are disgusted.
Test flights revealed that rain and humidity damaged B2s so they needed climate controlled hangers. B2s required 80 hours of maintenance for every 1 hour of flight in test. 124 hours per hour of flight in deployment.
B2 saw action in 1999 against valiant target destroying a third of targets. Flying from missouri and back. Over the war it flew 50/34000 NATO flights but destroyed 11% of the targets. One f117 was shot down, not due to stealth failure but because they constantly flew the same routes.
Lockheed built a stealth ship the "seashadow" but was identifiable because it didn't scatter radar the same way as the ocean.
The technical development starts from Tesla mentioning his death ray and whilst testing it Scientists discovered it couldn't shoot down planes and slowly made the radios give feedback based on the planes' distance and speed. Which luckily wasn't consigned to a field project but the development of RADAR.
Choice Notes
Tesla mentioning his death ray and whilst testing it Scientists discovered it couldn't shoot down planes and slowly made the radios give feedback based on the planes' distance and speed. Which luckily wasn't consigned to a field project but the development of RADAR.
Soviet theory on radio wave scattering on edges of objects was released in 1960 and not translated until 1971. USA thought that the Soviets had a decade headstart when they hadn't even bothered to classify the document.
During a test Lockheed model had flared by 50% this was found to be from bird dropping son the model.
Tom mogenfell had the front landing gear fall off and landed plane in a wheelie by pitching up the nose. He was poster ranked by colleagues claiming he was hit with a union grievance for unauthorised grinding of a flight component
Aviation Week (aka Aviation leek) divulged information such as Lockheed v Northrup competition to build stealth and reported the test flights; this on the most security cleared black project at the time
The Fulda Gap offered a path through the moutains from east to West to invade frankfurt, the financial capital of West Germany.
Secrecy required in 1981 FBI discovered an engineer had been sending microfiber film to soviets for $ 110000. A northrup engineer attempt to sell secrets. Another engineer snuck up to the roof and wrote a vulgar word in Russian as a middle finger to the spy satellites.
A trade journal defence news issuesdd a 1985 warning that taxpayers would realise too many weapons projects are spending billions ina rtas maze. It is only a matter of time before the public see inside the rats maze and are disgusted.
Test flights revealed that rain and humidity damaged B2s so they needed climate controlled hangers. B2s required 80 hours of maintenance for every 1 hour of flight in test. 124 hours per hour of flight in deployment.
B2 saw action in 1999 against valiant target destroying a third of targets. Flying from missouri and back. Over the war it flew 50/34000 NATO flights but destroyed 11% of the targets. One f117 was shot down, not due to stealth failure but because they constantly flew the same routes.
Lockheed built a stealth ship the "seashadow" but was identifiable because it didn't scatter radar the same way as the ocean.
April 4, 2021
I like to stories of aircraft. Who designed & built them, who tests and flies them. It was a thrill to actually touch a Habu SR-71 and an F-15 at a museum. I get the bug from my dad, as he was long time Air Force.
I picked up _Stealth_ as it is about the stories of the teams that developed the technologies in southern California. I had read _Skunk Works_ about 20 years ago & was dazzled. In the years afterwards, I've come to realize that book was leaving a lot out. From reading about the YF-23, Northrop developed solutions that rivaled those of Lockheed. In this book we get to see a bit of that, where the Skunk Works really wasn't all that wonderful when it came to cutting edge designs.
It doesn't surprise me that the designers at Lockheed didn't think stealth was a viable solution to the problems of the day. Their entrenched bureaucracy didn't like anything that was outside of what Kelly Johnson said should work. He didn't like the idea of stealth. The facets were unstable. Why would anyone want to build an invisible airplane. It comes to light in the book that aerodynamic designers and the radar cross section teams would argue over what should take precedent.
Lockheed went the route of following the computer code, which could only handle facets. Northrop went in another direction, that of curves. It was a neat combination of intuition and science that gave them the shapes of the B-2 & YF-23. While the designers came up with curves that could shed radar, the shop floor had trouble with building to such tight tolerances.
The book is short. It would have been neat to dive further into the development process, though I know that a lot of it is classified. While the book has a lot of little stories throughout, it would be been even better with more. The goal of the book is to describe why were Lockheed & Northrop able to develop stealth in southern California and no where else. It took the push of DARPA to think big and push the teams to try something new. While the USA always shows the world they have the highest tech aircraft, the actual truth is the aircraft exist in spite of organizational aversion to radical advancement.
I picked up _Stealth_ as it is about the stories of the teams that developed the technologies in southern California. I had read _Skunk Works_ about 20 years ago & was dazzled. In the years afterwards, I've come to realize that book was leaving a lot out. From reading about the YF-23, Northrop developed solutions that rivaled those of Lockheed. In this book we get to see a bit of that, where the Skunk Works really wasn't all that wonderful when it came to cutting edge designs.
It doesn't surprise me that the designers at Lockheed didn't think stealth was a viable solution to the problems of the day. Their entrenched bureaucracy didn't like anything that was outside of what Kelly Johnson said should work. He didn't like the idea of stealth. The facets were unstable. Why would anyone want to build an invisible airplane. It comes to light in the book that aerodynamic designers and the radar cross section teams would argue over what should take precedent.
Lockheed went the route of following the computer code, which could only handle facets. Northrop went in another direction, that of curves. It was a neat combination of intuition and science that gave them the shapes of the B-2 & YF-23. While the designers came up with curves that could shed radar, the shop floor had trouble with building to such tight tolerances.
The book is short. It would have been neat to dive further into the development process, though I know that a lot of it is classified. While the book has a lot of little stories throughout, it would be been even better with more. The goal of the book is to describe why were Lockheed & Northrop able to develop stealth in southern California and no where else. It took the push of DARPA to think big and push the teams to try something new. While the USA always shows the world they have the highest tech aircraft, the actual truth is the aircraft exist in spite of organizational aversion to radical advancement.
July 27, 2020
Stealth: The Secret Contest to Invent Invisible Aircraft (2020) by Peter Westwick is an interesting account of how the US and two US companies, Lockheed and Northrop developed the first stealth aircraft.
In the Vietnam War the vulnerability of aircraft to SAMs was demonstrated and the US government started exploring how to handle the effects of powerful ground based radar and SAMs. A Soviet physicist, Petr Ufimtsev studied how electromagnetic waves were reflected. The Soviets didn’t see great use for this and published his results that the Americans then explored in order to make aircraft with much lower radar signatures.
Lockheed and Northrop wound up in a competition to develop Have Blue which was going to be an aircraft with a very low radar signature. Lockheed won this competition and created the F-117. Lockheed’s design depended on angled plates that they could model the radar return on computationally, Northrop used curves. Northrop lost the Have Blue competition but then worked on Tacit Blue, a low observable craft that was going to have a radar mid mounted on it. They used their expertise to then develop stealthy bomber for another competition with Lockheed. Northrop won this and this led to the B2.
The book has a great deal of detail about the people who worked for the two companies and how they managed to create the remarkable F-117 and the B2. It’s hard not to lose track of all the people coming and going.
Finally the book summarises the work and makes some interesting points. More money was spent on stealth aircraft than was spent on the SDI program. It’s hard to say if stealth aircraft had much impact on the Soviet collapse. Remarkably Ufimtsev actually wound up working for Northrop after the end of the Cold War.
Stealth is a very good read for anyone interested in stealth aircraft and their development. It’s a well written history of the people and companies that created this remarkable technology.
December 15, 2021
The aerospace world of Southern California in the 1970s was one of salty language, ego, towel-snapping banter, willingness to work 60- to 80 hour weeks to meet a demanding schedule. These were visionary problem solvers who spoke the language of physics and math knew that they were working on cutting edge, using engineering virtuosity and exotic materials and machined to unprecedented tolerances to develop utterly unique aircraft. Two defense contractors, Lockheed and Northrop compete to develop aircraft that can deflect radar waves away, Lockheed with the F-117 stealth fighter ($350 million each) and Northrop with the B-2 stealth bomber ($2 billion each). Westwick notes that a single F-117 with two smart bombs was effective as 108 B-17 bombers in WW2 carrying 638 bombs. Intention for the B-2 was for stealthy penetration of the Soviet Union during the Cold War; with that ending its purpose is now somewhat moot. It's unusual for an official university history prof to write a popular and easy-to-read narrative, but Westwick does an admirable job. Even when discussing technical material, I found myself fully engaged.
April 26, 2025
I listened to this book via Audible.
I came across Stealth after reading Ben Rich's Skunk Works and thought it would be interesting to learn more about one specific aspect of their work put into a larger context. Getting to see the full story of stealth was pretty fascinating.
The book covers relevant parts of Cold War history to explain the need for evading radar, and even goes back into World War II to illustrate the back and forth between the offense and defense of planes versus radar. The push and pull comes back in the defense contractor battle of Northrop and Lockheed as they both end up competing for subsequent projects to implement stealth technologies in their own unique ways.
While the book reaches pretty close to the present, covering the F-23, F-35, and B-21, the next chapter of stealth is still unwritten. I don't think we'll really see where the technology will go next or if it will be completely supplanted by something else until there is a large scale conflict between the US and China. Hopefully that doesn't happen, and we can focus on looking back at this unique concept that pushed the boundaries of the possible at the turn of the computer age.
I came across Stealth after reading Ben Rich's Skunk Works and thought it would be interesting to learn more about one specific aspect of their work put into a larger context. Getting to see the full story of stealth was pretty fascinating.
The book covers relevant parts of Cold War history to explain the need for evading radar, and even goes back into World War II to illustrate the back and forth between the offense and defense of planes versus radar. The push and pull comes back in the defense contractor battle of Northrop and Lockheed as they both end up competing for subsequent projects to implement stealth technologies in their own unique ways.
While the book reaches pretty close to the present, covering the F-23, F-35, and B-21, the next chapter of stealth is still unwritten. I don't think we'll really see where the technology will go next or if it will be completely supplanted by something else until there is a large scale conflict between the US and China. Hopefully that doesn't happen, and we can focus on looking back at this unique concept that pushed the boundaries of the possible at the turn of the computer age.
August 12, 2022
I thought this book would be a very broad overview of stealth and after reading 'skunk works' I look at all other stealth books with derision (its a bad habit).
So I thought i may as well get through it to get it off my bookshelf, but it was not what I was expecting at all.
Although 'Skunk Works' is a detailed look at the development of the F117, U2 and SR71 this book is the continuation i was looking for.
It covers the battle between the two great stealth houses in a remarkable period of innovation (F117 to B-2) which may never be seen again, especially given the 2 billion price tag for the B-2.
It looks at the approach taken in development, the reasoning for it, and then why one company won or lost. I hope that the experience gained in these projects has carried through and we may see other future projects of such scale and imagination - which is touched on it relation to the F-35 or stealth black hawks.
So I thought i may as well get through it to get it off my bookshelf, but it was not what I was expecting at all.
Although 'Skunk Works' is a detailed look at the development of the F117, U2 and SR71 this book is the continuation i was looking for.
It covers the battle between the two great stealth houses in a remarkable period of innovation (F117 to B-2) which may never be seen again, especially given the 2 billion price tag for the B-2.
It looks at the approach taken in development, the reasoning for it, and then why one company won or lost. I hope that the experience gained in these projects has carried through and we may see other future projects of such scale and imagination - which is touched on it relation to the F-35 or stealth black hawks.
November 17, 2020
Warning: If you think that you plan to just skim this book out of curiosity while thinking only a military-industrial geek will be the only one to read it, stand by to be caught up in a very readable and interesting book that you will most likely read to the last page. Yes, it is techie but nothing more than any reader with a broad interest in technology and it’s impact not only on the life around us just as we have come to realize how much technology has changed our lives as a result of our research to send a man to the moon. This is a tale of personalities and goals as much as it is about how to develop a plane that will be invisible to radar and play a significant role in peacefully ending the Cold War.
I highly encourage anyone looking for a next-good-read to consider adding “Stealth” to your list; I did not give it five stars lightly... the author earned it.
I highly encourage anyone looking for a next-good-read to consider adding “Stealth” to your list; I did not give it five stars lightly... the author earned it.
July 3, 2020
An excellent, in-depth history of the development of Stealth aircraft from the pioneering work in radar theory at OSU and Michigan to the first uses of the B-2 and F-117. The trees sometimes overwhelmed the forest in the author's narrative but, overall, the balance was strong. The author spends the perfect amount of time discussing the societal implications of the development of Stealth and the ethical value of spending national resources on these projects. Normally I would not like that sort of judgment from an author in such a history, but his analysis is thoughtful and balanced and it provides the reader with a context for which to view the entire development. Overall, I highly recommend!
February 9, 2025
I give this one three stars as it pertains to my tastes. The book has great insights into WW2 strategy and aircraft, as well as how the Cold War went. The book goes into great detail about California, the beginning of the military industrial complex, and each competition phase of designing a stealth fighter.
The part I didn't enjoy as much as others might was the sheer volume of detail and discussion about each design competition phase between the competing aerospace companies -- it made up the majority of the book: this book is slightly more academic than I would prefer in a military history book: otherwise, I learned some things I'll never forget and am happy I read it.
The part I didn't enjoy as much as others might was the sheer volume of detail and discussion about each design competition phase between the competing aerospace companies -- it made up the majority of the book: this book is slightly more academic than I would prefer in a military history book: otherwise, I learned some things I'll never forget and am happy I read it.
November 22, 2021
Westwick does a great job telling the end-to-end story of the development of stealth technology, with a focus on the competition that lead to the F-117 and B2 planes. Not an 'ah-ha' moment, but rather the result of a million+ man hours from drawings to production with trial-and-error inbetween. I especially appreciated his weighing the value of the money and effort spent vs. the new technology and boost to the economy this effort brought. Plus, the mystery of Area 51 finally divulged. It was a quick and enjoyable read.
April 22, 2024
An excellent and concise book covering the development of the F-117 Nighthawk and the later B-2 Spirit.
It also discusses the Tacit Blue plane that was never mass produced but served as a stepping stone between the two. This was really interesting as I'd never heard of it.
The book does well at placing the development of these planes within the broader context of events as well, I really recommend it! It's just the right length too, it covers everything yet moves at a quick pace.
It also discusses the Tacit Blue plane that was never mass produced but served as a stepping stone between the two. This was really interesting as I'd never heard of it.
The book does well at placing the development of these planes within the broader context of events as well, I really recommend it! It's just the right length too, it covers everything yet moves at a quick pace.
August 7, 2020
There was some interesting information, but it was too dry to be really entertaining and too qualitative to be really educational. It felt like the sort of book written not to be widely read but because, having done some research, the author wanted to have something to show for it and couldn't think of anything else to do with it.
February 14, 2024
This book was too short, imo. The level of technical storytelling reminded me of some of the space program books that I've read. I had no idea that the development of stealth made the nuclear programs obsolete with the US being able to use small bombs to accomplish what they had previously only thought possible with big bombs.
January 19, 2025
I read this book shortly after completing "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich. I'm a young automation engineer and this book is filled with technical problem solving techniques engineers at Lockheed at Northrop used to produce the famous stealth airplanes. It gives a very deep and technical insight on the stealth bomber and fighter. MUST READ if you are passionate about engineering or airplanes!!!
April 10, 2020
A well-crafted general history
This book takes the reader through the early development of stealth in the United States, focusing on the F-117 and B-2. It does a good job of explaining the history and course of these programs for non-technical readers.
This book takes the reader through the early development of stealth in the United States, focusing on the F-117 and B-2. It does a good job of explaining the history and course of these programs for non-technical readers.
January 29, 2021
A great story!
A great story of the history of stealth technology in the aircraft industry. From the beginning you learn how the engineers, manufacturers and test pilots overcame each obstacle and developed the technology which helped the US win the cold war.
A great story of the history of stealth technology in the aircraft industry. From the beginning you learn how the engineers, manufacturers and test pilots overcame each obstacle and developed the technology which helped the US win the cold war.
May 1, 2022
A fascinating account of driving innovation in technology from the middle, well ahead of its time - the story of Northrop and Lockheed's achievement provide a glimpse into history that organisation can learn from, to drive innovation towards solving challenges we face today.
February 14, 2023
This was a good background on stealth development. I flew the B-2 in the late 90’s and knew some of there stories the author shared and learned many new ones. I enjoyed the audiobook, it was well narrated.
April 28, 2020
This book was very readable, well researched, and quite enjoyable.
August 29, 2022
A very nice and in-depth view into the lives and works of engineers working on this top-secret art of the aerospace business.
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