The late Ben Robert Rich was the second director of Lockheed Corp.'s top-secret research and development unit known as the "Skunk Works." Founder and first director of that program was aeronautical engineer Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, who designed elements of the U.S. spy plane known as the U-2. Rich led the development of the F-117 fighter plane, the first operational stealth aircraft; and also worked on the F-104, A-12, SR-71 Blackbird and F-22. He also wrote the book "Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years of Lockheed."
In May 2010, aerospace engineer Tom Keller wrote an article for the Mutual UFO Network's journal that said Ben Rich revealed that extraterrestrial UFO visitors are real and that the U.S. military has aircraft capable of travel to the stars. Keller, who worked as a computer systems analyst for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, quoted Rich as saying the following: