Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…Here's what's interesting about this contract and Lockheed and Skunk Works losing it. This is an example (I think) to that first tenet from LMSC of threat-based need and real market need, maybe you want to adapt that to. Kelly Johnson, as amazing and a genius as he is, is a very stubborn man. The stated purpose, the Air Force's goals with the F-16, was to have a cheap fighter. It didn't need the best, it needed to be cheap, that they can make a lot of these, and they could use them all over the world. That's not Kelly's MO. He and Skunk Works bidding on this project, they kept trying to give the Air Force what they didn't want, and they lost it. The idea of Skunk Works losing a contract, this is crazy. In particular, he didn't really want to play ball the way the government was trying to bid out the contract. He looked at the requirements, he said, this is stupid. I'm going to design you an airplane that I think meets the needs of how this will be used in the field, rather than what these technical specifications say here. Over the long run, he was right. As the program evolved, the specs actually changed to what Kelly decided to build their prototype airplane to do. But the prototype they produced was not in spec for the original F-16 requirements. By this point in time, to bring some context back of where the country was, we're now basically post-Vietnam War. The Cold War for sure is still going on, but it's not the same level of urgency in Americans' minds as it was back in the 50s.…

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