Drones

In Skunk Works, drones are the answer to the question that runs through Kyle’s notes on the book: “what comes after stealth?” Ben Rich’s Evolution of Warfare framework — soldiers → planes/tanks → radar/missiles → stealth → drones — treats the offense-defense arms race as the actual structure of military history, and Rich’s late chapters forecast a pilotless future. He writes plainly: “I anticipate that we are heading toward a future where combat aircraft will be pilotless drones,” with remote-controlled tanks, unmanned submarines, and field commanders firing weapons “from the safety of control centers thousands of miles away.” Kyle’s marginal note sharpens the point — Rich “wasn’t wrong but it was drones, not just missiles,” and stealth “WOULD rule the skies until small autonomous drones changed it again.”

The book also documents drones as an early R&D bet that forced Lockheed to invest its own money. Rich was “fascinated by drones” — “a remote-controlled or preprogrammed pilotless vehicle was the pragmatic solution to spying over extreme hostile territory without worrying about loss of life or political embarrassments of the Francis Gary Powers variety.” Kelly Johnson initially resisted (drones were “too big and complex to be economically feasible”) but gradually changed his mind; when the CIA “turned its back,” Lockheed nearly launched the program itself on seed money, with Cyrus Vance later telling Kelly all overflights “will either be with satellites or drones.” Kyle’s notes tie this directly to the Anduril thesis — drones “went from complex to cutting edge to critical,” and Lockheed’s drone investment pattern parallels Anduril’s product-investment pattern. The thread connects to Autonomy via Rich’s automated takeoff-to-attack mission program.

Context: Unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have moved from Cold War reconnaissance platforms (like the Lockheed D-21 referenced in the book) to a defining feature of 21st-century warfare, where small, cheap, often autonomous systems have repeatedly disrupted the dominance of expensive crewed platforms.

Where this appears

• Skunk Works — the “what comes after stealth” answer; Rich’s evolution-of-warfare framework, his forecast of pilotless combat aircraft, and the early Lockheed-funded drone R&D that Kyle maps onto the Anduril investment thesis