It's fast on smart cards, and efficient in hardware. It also has no key setup time. If it weren't for the small 80-bit key, I'd consider Skipjack for my own applications. Skipjack is interesting primarily for its design. This is the first NSA-developed algorithm we've ever seen.
Cryptography is an adversarial science.
This is how we learn. It's a worthy target. Military cryptography started with rotor machines, and then generalized into shift registers. The block diagram and description of Skipjack clearly shows its shift-register roots. I find it fascinating the that the two different design paths are converging.