If Washington ran procure-ment programs the way it did the Lockheed YO-3A project, the words "billions" and "dollars" would never again have to be used by the Department of Defense in the same sentence. But then I'll bet you've never heard of the YO-3A. There's an irony in that, I suppose, given that the so-called Yo-Yos and their immediate predecessors, the QT-2S, were the original stealth air- planes—ultraquiet, night-flying reconnaissance planes that served for a total of two covert years over Vietnam and Cambodia. "We never had an airplane come back from a mission without having [visual] contact with the enemy," says Les Horn, then a young Navy officer who played a huge role in the development of what ultimately became an Army project. Their silent-stealth approach was an absolute success. "I don't know of anybody who took a round," adds George Walker, a YO-3A pilot who retired in 2000 as a brigadier general with 1,400 combat hours, 400 of them in Yo-Yos.
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