Benjamin Robert Rich (June 18, 1925 – January 5, 1995) was an American engineer and the second director of Lockheed's Skunk Works from 1975 to 1991, succeeding its founder, Kelly Johnson.

[2] He was one of five children of British lumber mill superintendent Isidore Rich and his French wife, Annie, the daughter of one of his paternal grandfather's Jewish customers who lived in Alexandria, Egypt.

Having fled the Philippines just weeks before the Empire of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, they moved to the United States in 1942, where Rich became a naturalized US citizen.

He worked (with his father) in a Los Angeles, California, machine shop during World War II, and studied at Alexander Hamilton High School.

There he worked on a variety of projects - he was awarded a patent for designing a nichrome heating system which prevented Navy patrol plane crew members' penises from freezing to their urine collection funnel.

In December 1954 Rich transferred to the Skunk Works, the secret research and development section run by Lockheed's Chief Engineer, Clarence "Kelly" Johnson.

He was also involved in the specification of the aircraft's black skin coatings which optimized dissipation of their tremendous aerodynamic heating as well as incorporating materials to reduce radar signature.