[Said] Ur-shanabi to him [to Gilgamesh],
“Set to, O Gilgamesh! Take the first [punting pole!]
Let your hand not touch the Waters of Death,
lest you wither [it!]”
TABLET X, EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Predator’s journey from invention to implementation is less clear than that of JDAM. Some insist that Predator originated in the mind of a Baghdad-born Israeli turned mad scientist named Abraham “Abe” Karem; or that a courageous CIA engineer named “Jane” defied the bureaucracy and made it so. Then there’s a retired air force colonel known to all by his call sign, Snake, who spearheaded Predator’s development by cutting through the bureaucracy. Another member of the cast is an army weapons expert who goes by the nickname Boom Boom, who integrated the Hellfire missile and changed the game completely. Lurking nearby is another woman called the Black Widow, who figured out matters of temperature and torque. Or maybe it was retired navy rear admiral Thomas J. Cassidy, who became CEO and president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Predator’s California birthplace. Others say it was CIA director R. James Woolsey; or Secretary of Defense William Perry; or Under Secretary of Defense (and future CIA director) John Deutch. Air force aficionados say chief of staff General Ron Fogleman had the vision of a reconnaissance platform in an era of disappearing planes and declining budgets. Others say it was General John P. Jumper, European commander and later chief of staff, who experienced all of the limitations of Bosnia and Kosovo and then went on to champion an armed drone, a system conceived and developed because of the vision of this one man.1
None of these characterizations tells the whole story, but they do suggest that someone is responsible, that “drones,” despite the name, were spurred by imagination and courage; that there is a hero. Except that in the case of Predator, modern-day historians have a hard time putting a face to the machine. When I told an air force friend of mine, an airpower historian and teacher, that I was writing a book about drones, he responded that they had a pretty uninspiring history—“maybe for want of people.”
Absent a discoverer or single champion, the alternative is to personify some organization as birthing and nurturing the drone. As with all military history intent on a human face, there is a subtext here as well: that Predator represents the vision of a network of courageous souls working in and across organizations; or the opposite, that Predator or some forerunner was shortchanged or squashed by evil bureaucrats and self-interested organizations who weren’t a part of the advance, the desk-bound armed only with a non-concur, like scorpion men standing in Gilgamesh’s way on his journey to the end of the earth, guarding the Mashu of advance.
And then there’s the tendency to do the thing that comes with the recounting of any controversial program, which is to paint it as unexceptional. That’s how, when one reads about Predator, one also hears of Compass Arrow and Combat Dawn, of Albatross, Condor, Prowler, and Praerie, Teal Rain and AARS, Amber and Gnat-750, the begetters of more modern iterations. These are all just characters, however, in an epic that conveys the message for fans and critics alike that nothing is ever really new and that therefore Predator per se shouldn’t be criticized, shouldn’t be singled out, that since everything is a continuum, there is no good or bad, even in weapons. There are only good and bad actors and bad historians intent on promoting their theories. Meanwhile, the Luddites and dreamers and enemies all play politics in the face of the need for national security combined with the given of unstoppable technological advance.
Many feel compelled to tell the Predator story by meandering through aviation history and insisting that the unmanned we see today are merely the progeny of balloons of the 1800s or remote-controlled thises and thats of the industrial age going back to the First World War; or heck, even that Nikola Tesla came up with the whole idea and it was stolen from him. Drones became so hot in 2013 that the news media, searching for any angle to bring the heroless machines alive, dug up the historical tidbit that Marilyn Monroe was “discovered” while working in a drone factory during World War II. And yes, indeed, Norma Jean was photographed at the Radioplane Munitions Factory in Van Nuys, California: one of the riveters putting finishing touches on an OQ-3 drone.2
But comparing the OQ-3 to the modern-day Predator is kind of like comparing a firecracker to an atom bomb: not only does it ignore all of what makes the two so very different, but it also conveys that tired Washington message that always accompanies the public’s discovery of anything that’s controversial, namely, that Predator is nothing new, that drones have always been with us; that they are neither an invention of 9/11 nor of the war against terrorism. In other words, what’s the big deal?3
It’s actually tricky and complex to say exactly when any weapon is “invented,” and Predator is no exception. Where exactly do you start the story? Do you start it on July 3, 1994, under brilliantly sunny skies in El Mirage, California, where the prototype made its first flight? It flew for less than twenty seconds before gravity brought it back to earth.4 Virtually everything that has been written since about this drone ignores real facts, even sometimes avoiding July 3 altogether. After all, there’s no good way to start a glorious legend with a crash.5
A good place to intercept history, then, is probably the Vietnam War, when the dangerous work of manned aerial reconnaissance over North Vietnamese skies meant much loss of life and lots of political pain, as the names and faces of fallen soldiers and captured pilots ate at the nation’s soul. Unmanned technology had been used in Operation Crossroads, when remotely piloted aircraft took air samples during the atomic bomb tests of 1946–47, but that was basically secret history. In the late 1950s, with spy satellites still not yet launched and the U-2 the only reliable reconnaissance platform that could penetrate deep into Soviet and Chinese territory, work intensified on an unmanned solution that could fly lower and avoid human loss. Drones started flying as replacements for manned aircraft, and reconnaissance drones began regularly penetrating enemy airspace, flying more than 3,000 sorties in North Vietnamese skies, with losses of about 15 percent. But only about 40 percent of the missions were successful in returning reconnaissance images, and the cost (in dollars) was five times greater than a manned mission.6 Only, or that’s the very point of the unmanned, that despite the percentages, no one was killed or captured.7
Eventually, the technological challenges experienced during operations led to a system of constant upgrade, with each variation overcoming some limitation of the previous model. The Reagan era then brought increased secret budgets, with companies being founded and sold, one system building upon another, many crashes and many kinks working their way into usable systems.8 In 1983, drones mounting low-light-level video systems were used to track infiltrations into Honduras along the Nicaraguan border.9 Long-endurance reconnaissance drones that might replace manned aircraft were funded by the CIA, defense agencies, and the armed services. There was a profusion of code names and programs, and experimental birds exceeded altitudes of 68,000 feet, flying for over forty hours. But here are the words and phrases that really mattered: composite structures and lightweight materials, flight controls and computers, high-lift wings, fuel economy, electric motors, communications, bandwidth, navigation, geolocation.10
As airpower historian Tom Ehrhard says, Predator became a part of the air force, but in fact it emerged from the intelligence community—from the CIA—and drone development was initially dominated by the army and navy.11 During the Cold War at least, the air service was bombers and missiles, and the mission was nuclear deterrence. Drones were merely a sideshow, an expense not central to the industrial meat grinder of accumulating awe-inspiring numbers and capabilities to keep the Soviets at bay. At that time, even the manned fighter community battled to earn the same national recognition of SAC, the Strategic Air Command. Then, and now, an “off-budget” program would be allowed breathing room for science experiments and a high-risk development environment. In this world, there were fewer meddlers and no interfering newspeople to answer. Just a few in Congress were briefed and co-opted, none of them in a position informed enough to ask questions. The practical benefits were obvious, but the downside is autonomy itself, with technological pursuits being driven forward because we can and because we must—leaving the arguably more important matters of public trust, reason, and national purpose behind on the ground.
US military operations in the former Yugoslavia began in July 1992 with Operation Provide Promise, a humanitarian airlift of food and medical supplies to Sarajevo that eventually surpassed even the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49 in the amount of materiel delivered. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs and veteran senior military officer from Desert Storm, called for the development of “more than episodic reconnaissance” over the Balkans: he wanted loitering surveillance.12 Reconnaissance satellites couldn’t provide continuous coverage of mobile targets, and the imagery produced was too highly classified to be quickly disseminated to allied partners or actual soldiers. Manned aircraft were of limited endurance and only available in small numbers; and, most important for political war, they came with the additional danger of the possible loss of an aircrew over hostile areas. It seemed that only a family of long-endurance unmanned systems could fill the gap.13
The most promising immediate platform was the Gnat-750, a high-flying long-endurance drone that the CIA funded out of its research budget.14 Lucky for everyone, the new president, Bill Clinton, chose the most unlikely of candidates to be agency director—R. James Woolsey, a hawkish Republican Washington arms-control lawyer—a national security feather in Clinton’s cap, but also a man who would become famous for being the consummate outsider. Woolsey was a technical man and “long fascinated with the notion of a long endurance unmanned reconnaissance vehicle.”15 When briefed on Gnat, he immediately agreed to support development, even after one of two prototypes crashed in California because of a software error during initial testing.16 In roughly six months, a CIA-operated Gnat was flying 25,000 feet over the Balkans, operating clandestinely from an airfield in Turkey and from the Croatian island of Hvar.17
Miniaturization of electronics, improved sensors, development of reliable and jam-resistant data links, and improvements in navigation accuracy overcame many limitations of earlier systems.18 Gnat, which did not yet have a satellite link, had to receive flight commands and relay data through a nearby ground station or a manned airplane flying within line of sight. Yet when the manned airplane was used, it could remain at its post relaying communications for only a few hours at a time. Gnat also only successfully launched two-thirds of the time, with many missions being scuttled because of technical problems or bad weather.19
General Atomics was awarded its initial military contract for an upgraded version of the Gnat in January 1994; the firm called it Predator.20 With Gnat and operational experience under its belt, the San Diego–based company was able to deliver a “system” of three vehicles in less than a year. It extended Gnat’s fuselage, put on a longer wing and a better engine, and thereby tripled the earlier drone’s ability to carry a payload. Predator exceeded all of Gnat’s specs, including a fuel capacity that allowed for up to twenty-two hours’ endurance.21 And where Gnat sounded like a lawn mower in the sky, Predator had a quieter engine.22 The drone itself had a bulbous nose that integrated satellite communications into the forward fuselage.23 The ground control system, fitted into a single trailer, contained two main consoles, one for the pilot and one for the sensor operator, who regulated imagery functions and camera settings, switching from the visible to the infrared spectrum and taking single photographs. Another trailer housed the Trojan Spirit, which transmitted and received both unclassified and encrypted communications from voice, wire, digital, and satellite sources and was the conduit used to relay commands and disseminate intelligence.24
The most important innovation in the Predator, though, was the satellite links, both GPS for navigation, and communications data links to commercial satellites that were connected to the ground control station and could relay images to users.25 For the first time, military drones could be controlled from up to 400 miles away.26 Now an unmanned machine could range far away, stay up longer, and send back motion imagery in near–real time like a television camera in the sky.27
Starting in August 1995, Predator video from Bosnia dazzled. Special lines were set up to relay the intelligence to Langley and right onto Woolsey’s desk.28 The CIA director recalled that he watched foot traffic over the Mostar Bridge while communicating with the forward ground station over an early form of chat software.29 Later he gushed: “I could sit in my office, call up a classified channel and in an early version of e-mail type messages to a guy in Albania asking him to zoom in on things.”30
Unmanned aerial vehicles became the best potential source of intelligence without undue risk.31 Commanders needed some way to improve their ability to monitor safe areas established around Bosnian cities. UN peacekeepers on the ground couldn’t do it, and manned reconnaissance wasn’t abundantly available, nor could it loiter, particularly given the low level of risk NATO was willing to take with its pilots.
This, at any rate, was the theory behind the use of drones and the requirement for them, but Predator was still in its infancy and nothing was quite instant or consistent: the initial three vehicles deployed didn’t have ground-mapping radar (which would allow the system to “see” through bad weather), forcing them to fly beneath the clouds, where they were also more vulnerable to Serb guns and missiles.32 Two of the three airframes were lost in the first month: one was shot down while flying at just 4,000 feet, the other scuttled due to an engine failure.33 At 120 knots maximum speed (138 mph), Predator also struggled to make progress in the face of strong headwinds. The drone’s very large wings allowed it to fly more like a glider than an airplane, and that was the secret to flight endurance, but at lower altitudes it also made the drone more sensitive to wind and turbulence.34 In-flight icing, precipitation, and cloud cover also hampered operations.35 Would technology ever overcome the force of Mother Nature?
The convention at this point, which I will honor, is to recount the limitations of the machine itself. And indeed Predator emerged with the expected hiccups that plague any system as it grows into its skin. The drone’s initial flaws were legion:36 despite their range and endurance, the vehicles still needed to be placed close to their targets to begin their missions. And because of the two-second time delay in the satellite signal, direct radio-controlled takeoff and landing had to be managed by close-in pilots and maintainers—in other words, bases, which in the case of Balkan operations meant clandestine relationships or diplomatic arrangements with countries like Albania, where US forces didn’t formally exist. The ground presence was also substantial,37 not necessarily a flaw but a surprise to some who had a vision of one-man, one-joystick, one-vehicle operations.38 Cost, the air force found out, was ten times what many assumed.39 In fact, despite the term “unmanned,” maintaining Predator proved more labor-intensive than manned operations, not even counting how many people were needed to handle the incoming intelligence, which just kept increasing in volume.
As with the performance of Pioneer in Desert Storm, it is hard to really say what bigger difference the 128 Predator missions and their 850 hours of video made in Bosnia.40 One air force study points to September 5, 1995, when NATO was dithering over renewed bombing, the decision hinging on whether the Serbs were withdrawing heavy weapons from the Sarajevo safe area. Based on Predator motion imagery that day, the study says, the US commander advised his NATO counterpart: “No intents being demonstrated; let’s get on with it!”41 Predator was also credited with monitoring mass grave sites near Sarajevo, helping search for downed pilots, and providing real-time bomb-damage assessments of air strikes.42 When Pope John Paul II made his visit to Bosnia in April 1997, a Predator flew two dedicated security surveillance missions totaling 22.5 hours.43 One military writer even says that Predator provided NATO commanders with the “critical intelligence to begin a bombing campaign that, in turn, led to the Dayton Peace Accord signed in December 1995.”44 Whatever the truth, wherever Predator video was delivered, particularly to the desktops of generals and admirals in the chain of command or to the Pentagon, the phones started ringing: Fly over this, fly over that, what’s that?45 The hypnosis was beginning.
For the military, Predator was the first of the modern-day “advanced concept technology demonstrations.” These were boutique and one-of-a-kind experiments. They did not approach the multibillion-dollar fighter planes or fighting ships in cost or visibility, nor were they the stuff of engineering drawings, where methodical testing was required before a production model could roll off a mass assembly line. Initially, in fact, no two systems were exactly alike. Think smartphones today: they can be externally identical, and yet how fast the processor is, how many gigs of memory, how many megapixels the camera, and what software and apps it runs, mean a world of difference. These early Predators were ad hoc and quick reaction and more lost in the books than off the books. That pioneering quality—flying by the seat of the pants, even if no one was flying—opened the door for the entire family of fathers, cousins, uncles, and advisors to stake a claim. As the Institute for Defense Analyses would later say of Predator, it never met the “requirements” set down on paper and yet still flew and flew, and flew. “It supports the argument that deploying a less-than-perfect system is better than deploying no system,” the think tank concluded.46
“Less than perfect” also meant that no specification was set in stone: when Predators first emerged to fly over Bosnia, they didn’t even have operator’s manuals. The concept of operations (or CONOPS)—the very centerpiece that tells everyone from the grease monkey on the flight line to the general in the command center how the system fits in and what is expected—was considered a “living document,” undergoing endless iterations in response to both failures and successes.47 Retired admiral Cassidy even accompanied the first group of Predators to Albania to ensure that the system would perform as promised, and he brought along a gaggle of company civilians and engineers (the first generation of the ubiquitous contractors to come). Without the manufacturer on the scene, the system couldn’t even have flown.48
After the first Gulf war, reviewers were already noting the dangers of this new feature of ad hoc weapons development, which manifested itself in Desert Storm not just in science experiments rushed to the battlefield but also in an unwritten scourge—which at that time birthed the cult of the military recording everything in a forever-changing PowerPoint briefing rather than writing things down on a piece of paper.49 Long before anyone heard of Internet addiction, before people were saying they would feel panicked and naked if they lost their mobile phones, Predator was flying into our culture. Being incommunicado was no longer an option, waiting was already become exasperating, quietly thinking was dying, paper was on its way out, and everything was becoming data, precisely located and instant. Right down to their desktop monitors in Washington, decision-makers could be perpetually plugged in and as much a part of the day-to-day battle as anyone else. It was the birth of an age of what I’ll call vextering (vectoring in an era of text), with an infinite gamescape of data and targets just around the corner.