Books

an insider account of Lockheed's legendary black projects division told by the dude who literally built the sr-71. 

the skunk works philosophy (small teams, minimal oversight, impossible deadlines) created the U-2, SR-71, and F-117 by basically ignoring every rule of modern corporate development. what hits hardest is how they treated secrecy as a feature, not a bug, using isolation to shield engineers from bureaucratic interference. 

makes you wonder what we could build today if gov and corps alike didn’t stifle innovation and just let the weirdos cook.