Kelly Johnson
American aeronautical engineerWikipedia
77
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20
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16
PODCASTS
Search complete. 77 mentions across 20 episodes found for "Kelly Johnson".
Nov 5, 2026
KlausHOST
Mm-hmm.
GarrettHOST
So I could be wrong here, but my understanding is – I don't know where I heard this, but I heard that Tom DeLonge knew a relative of either like a descendant of Ben Rich or a descendant of Kelly Johnson, one of the heads of Lockheed Martin in the past.
GarrettHOST
Yeah.
GarrettHOST
If you look at the lineage of Ben Rich, Ben Rich has passed away, I believe, but his son, Michael Rich... is the head of Rand Corporation.
GarrettHOST
I think that those two sons would probably be around Tom's age.
GarrettHOST
And I don't know if maybe he knows one of those two sons.
GarrettHOST
I don't know if Kelly Johnson had any kids.
GarrettHOST
But I remember hearing somewhere, and I could be wrong.
Brian FoxHOST
Anything you all are doing that way to drive disruption?
John RhoadsGUEST
Yeah, no, it's a great question, and I guess I'd answer it in that, you know, I'm going to go back and give kind of a historical anecdote first, but Kelly Johnson, you know, if you ever talk to a skunk that works in Skunk Works, you know, you'll probably hear a Kelly Johnson story.
John RhoadsGUEST
But he had kind of this unspoken rule of one miracle per program, right? I mean, he went out and did some absolutely amazing things that built the legacy that is the Skunk Works.
John RhoadsGUEST
And what you're getting at, I kind of look at that kind of one miracle per program thing.
Scott KirbyGUEST
I had not known there's a new Skunk Works book.
Scott KirbyGUEST
Clarence Kelly Johnson, you know, and developing, you know, the SR-71, you know, the U-2, you know, in a couple of years from start to finish.
Scott KirbyGUEST
I think the fundamental problem is Boeing and Airbus have a global duopoly and they have quietly, not officially agreed, but they have quietly agreed neither one of us will invest in new airframes.
Scott KirbyGUEST
They're pacing the frontier.
Richard HallionGUEST
The self-revolution became kind of a corporate battle between two main players.
Richard HallionGUEST
You had Ben Rich on one hand, who was the great signature expert and head of the Skunk Works, succeeding Kelly Johnson at Lockheed.
Richard HallionGUEST
And then you had John Cashin, on the other hand, and his team at Northrop, who were pursuing the same venture, the XST, Lockheed won.
Richard HallionGUEST
And then that rivalry continued on the development of the so-called advanced technology bomber, which became the B-2, of course.
Sean David MortonGUEST
And Gordon was talking about things that he'd seen out there in the late 60s and early 70s.
Sean David MortonGUEST
You know, we're now finding out from from the memoirs of people like Ben Rich and Kelly Johnson.
Sean David MortonGUEST
And, you know, some woman at the L.A. Times wrote a book with these old-timer guys out there talking about basically U-2 fighters and stealth bombers and, you know, surveillance and reconnaissance, what's known as S.R., You know, the SR-71, the 72, the 73, the 74, the fighter stuff.
Sean David MortonGUEST
But the UFO stuff was really pretty interesting, because a lot of the UFO stuff got moved in there, as far as I could tell.
15 MINS LATER
Sean David MortonGUEST
Now, interestingly enough, they used to be called Glanet Flights.
Sean David MortonGUEST
which stood for Groom Lake Aerospace Nevada Experimental Test Site.
Sean David MortonGUEST
And Kelly Johnson, who was the fellow that ran the Skunk Works for many, many years for Northrop Grumman, died recently, along with Ben Rich and some major guys.
Sean David MortonGUEST
And they renamed it the Johnson Airfield.
Zach ShoreGUEST
But as we've continued to- to mature and- and- and build over the last seven and a half years, I think one of the things we've unlocked is the ability to design, build, and test aircraft, period, full stop, right? So you talked about Skunk Works.
Zach ShoreGUEST
You know, Kelly Johnson did 41 aircraft into production in 40 years, and that, especially today, is- is a superpower all its own, right? If we need, if we need producible systems in any domain, surface, subsurface, space, you know, land, they have to be producible, and this is being talked about across the defense industrial base by the secretary, the unders and- and the chiefs.
Zach ShoreGUEST
And so, you know, you look at Mark 2, uh, as an example.
Zach ShoreGUEST
This is a vehicle that was cl- is a clear stepping stone for us into hypersonic, and, not or, and it unlocks a capability today for the department that is mass producible, that drives value, saves dollars, saves lives, and meets those needs.
34 MINS LATER
Zach ShoreGUEST
[laughs]
Ashlee VanceHOST
...
Ashlee VanceHOST
but I mean, to go from, like, the Kelly Johnson era, you know.
Ashlee VanceHOST
It's like we used to do a rocket every couple days.
John EllingGUEST
I'm a private pilot for fun.
John EllingGUEST
And Kelly Johnson is a hero in aviation.
John EllingGUEST
He's the fellow that ran the Lockheed Skunk Works that designed the SR-71 Blackbird, the ultra secret spy plane that we needed back in the Cold War.
John EllingGUEST
And your question was secret supply chain.
Troy MorrisGUEST
There's a good number of space companies that have actually been acquired just this last year here in the state of Michigan itself, but also it's in our origins.
Troy MorrisGUEST
Do you know Kelly Johnson of Skunk Works?
Brett StapperHOST
Yes.
Troy MorrisGUEST
Yeah, amazing name.
Mikey McBryanGUEST
And so in the nineties growing up, I, uh, I know I had lots of aviation magazines.
Mikey McBryanGUEST
So I read everything I could on the Blackbird, everything on the F-117 Nighthawk, everything on the, on the B2, everything on the U2, all Kelly Johnson, Skunk Works, everything like that.
Mikey McBryanGUEST
I mean, I love all that stuff.
Mikey McBryanGUEST
So I grew up in a time that Area 51 was 100% real and it was 100% airplanes.
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