Predator

by Richard Whittle

  “Are you sure you want us to do this?” Sanborn messaged Gordy.

  “Yes,” Gordy messaged back. “I’ve got the general sitting here, and that’s what he wants to do and he understands the risks.”

  “Roger that,” Sanborn replied.

  As General Atomics pilot Tim Just took the Predator lower, Sanborn grew even more anxious. “We’re at risk of getting shot down,” he messaged Gordy.

  Undeterred, Moorhead ordered another pass, this time even lower. As Just put the Predator into a descent, the video screens in the GCS, the conference room in Naples, and the CAOC suddenly froze on a frame showing the road and a blurry vehicle of some kind. No one knew for sure what had happened, but Sanborn could guess.

  On the chance that the drone had simply “lost link,” pilots Just and Foscue and other crew members spent several hours monitoring the GCS screens. Later, others scanned the skies above Gjader, hoping to see the Predator automatically flying back home. It never arrived.

  That evening, in the group tent the Predator unit shared, Sanborn was sitting on his cot when the phone next to it rang. Sanborn answered, then listened silently for a bit as Tim Just, whose cot was next to Sanborn’s, sat watching and munching on a snack.

  “Yes, I do,” Sanborn said into the phone. “He’s sitting right next to me, eating a bag of Cheetos.”

  After Sanborn explained the call, he and Just had a good laugh. The caller had been an officer with a combat search and rescue unit assigned to the CAOC who was gearing up to launch a mission. The officer wanted to know if Sanborn had any idea where they ought to look for the lost Predator’s pilot. Sanborn politely explained that since the Predator was unmanned, the rescue unit could stand down.

  The next day, the Belgrade news agency Tanjug reported that Serbian forces had shot down a UAV that Friday. Whether by mistake or for propaganda, Tanjug called the UAV “Croatian,” but Serb TV later aired video of Serb troops standing on the Predator’s wing.

  * * *

  Three days later, on August 14, Sanborn flew to Naples on the Mibli’s twin-engine C-12 King Air supply plane to discuss with Moorhead and others at NATO why the Predator had been shot down. Just as Sanborn was headed into Moorhead’s office, he was handed a message to call the Mibli in Albania—urgently. The unit’s operations officer, Captain Mark Radtke, needed to talk.

  “I don’t have good news for you,” Radtke said when Sanborn reached him. “We lost another one.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Sanborn said. “What happened?”

  As Sanborn was on his way to Naples, Tim Just had been flying a second Ku-band Predator whose engine simply quit over Bosnia. Like the seagoing albatross that inspired its basic design, the Predator soared easily, and the aircraft continued to glide. Even so, Just quickly calculated that there was no way to reach the coast and ditch the Predator in the sea, his preferred course of action. He knew from having flown these routes every day, though, that there was a big mountain nearby, a place where no one was likely to be or go, so he simply turned the drone left, put the aircraft into the steepest, fastest dive it could make without falling apart, and plowed the Predator into that isolated peak, trying to smash it into bits too small to matter if the Serbs found them.

  The next day, the Washington Post reported on the Predator losses, which it described as “crippling an experimental intelligence-gathering effort begun only last month.”

  Defense Secretary William Perry asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to conduct an investigation into the Predator losses, and a team from U.S. European Command was sent to Naples to make inquiries. The Mibli was ordered to stop flying, and did for several days, until Admiral Smith himself intervened. The Predator was a work in progress, Smith told the Joint Chiefs, but it was already proving valuable. He had accepted the risk of flying the experimental drone over Bosnia, and would continue to accept it. The reward was worth the risk.

  Smith and other commanders liked what they were getting out of this new drone. The deployment to Albania was supposed to last just sixty days, but the Predator’s stay was extended after Serb forces mortared a Sarajevo market on August 28, 1995, leading NATO to mount a major air campaign called Operation Deliberate Force. The air campaign’s goal was to force the Serbs to agree to peace talks, and after five days of intense attacks on their surface-to-air missile sites, artillery, tanks, and troops in the Sarajevo area, allied commanders called a halt to see if Belgrade was ready to negotiate. When the Predator detected the Serbs moving heavy weapons into place for more attacks on Sarajevo, the allies resumed the air strikes. Two weeks later, Serb military leader General Ratko Mladic agreed to a cease-fire, and abided by it.

  The Predator’s deployment to Albania ended on October 26, after the Serbs agreed to negotiate with Bosnia and Croatia at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, with U.S. and NATO diplomats and military leaders serving as mediators. Shaky as its start had been, the new drone had made a big and positive impression. Commanders weren’t terribly concerned about the two Predators lost, which would cost only $1.5 million apiece to replace—less than a tenth the price of Scott O’Grady’s downed F-16C. When the drones went down, moreover, no rescue force had to be sent to save pilots whose training cost millions and whose lives were priceless. And the cost had clearly been worth it: by spotting Serb artillery movements, the Predator played a key role in the success of Operation Deliberate Force. That November, U.S. and NATO commander Admiral Smith sent the Predator team a “Bravo Zulu” message, the naval signal for “Well Done.”

  “You proved the inherent value of UAVs is the ability to fly in areas where putting manned vehicles would be unacceptable due to risk or operational considerations,” Smith wrote. He then congratulated the Predator team for “extended surveillance of heavy weapons withdrawal from the Sarajevo area, reconnaissance operations during Deliberate Force, and confirmation of warring factions’ compliance with UN mandates.”

  * * *

  Smith wasn’t the only senior military leader paying attention. Even before the Navy’s Rutherford arranged for the Army’s Mibli to fly the Predator over Bosnia from Albania, the Air Force’s highest-ranking officer was maneuvering to take over the drone for his service, and he was making no secret of the fact. “U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Ronald Fogleman is turning out to be a big supporter of unmanned aerial vehicles,” Aerospace Daily reported on June 19, 1995. At the National Defense University in Washington three days earlier, Fogleman had vowed that “the U.S. Air Force on my watch is going to aggressively embrace the UAV concept.” A month later, the director of Air Force operational requirements told Aerospace Daily that Fogleman’s service wanted every Predator that was made.

  Fogleman’s attitude toward UAVs represented a dramatic shift. Like nine of the fifteen Air Force chiefs of staff before him, Fogleman was a fighter pilot, and among that white scarf fraternity disdain for drones was usually Pavlovian. But Fogleman was also a member of another elite group. Four years after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1963, he had piloted F-100F Super Sabre jets at treetop level and supersonic speed over the jungles of Vietnam as a Misty Fast FAC, the letters an acronym—pronounced “fack”—meaning “forward air controller,” military terminology for a target spotter. “Misty” was the radio call sign used by the volunteer pilots of this top-secret Operation Commando Sabre; “Fast” was the way they flew. A Misty Fast FAC’s mission was to bird-dog enemy movements and lead fighter-bombers to targets on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the rugged logistics route Communist North Vietnam used to funnel men and materiel through Laos and Cambodia to Viet Cong insurgents fighting the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam.

  By today’s standards, Misty Fast FAC missions were primitive in technology and nearly suicidal in technique. Navigation and reconnaissance devices available in the 1950s-vintage Super Sabre were almost laughably limited: Misty Fast FAC pilots carried paper maps in the cockpit and usually used handheld 35-millimeter single-lens reflex cameras to take reconnaissance
photos. On some missions, though, the Super Sabres served as bait, escorting RF-4C Phantom II jets that had cameras in their noses and flying low to flush out photo targets for the Phantoms. Few aerial missions in Vietnam were more dangerous. Fogleman was the eighty-sixth Misty Fast FAC pilot, and 28 before him were downed by enemy fire. Of 157 pilots who became Misty Fast FACs, 34—nearly a quarter—were ultimately shot down. Most were rescued, but 7 were killed and 3 became prisoners of war.

  On a second Vietnam tour, Fogleman flew the RF-4C Phantom II himself, so airborne reconnaissance—using aircraft, as opposed to satellites, to gather intelligence from above—was in his blood. When he assumed command of the Air Force on October 26, 1994—a week after NBC’s Tom Brokaw called the Predator a “breakthrough”—airborne reconnaissance was one of his top priorities. Fogleman saw a worrisome gap looming in the nation’s ability to conduct such reconnaissance. The last regular Air Force RF-4C flight had occurred earlier in 1994. Congress had just voted to reactivate the SR-71 Blackbird, a Mach 3 spy plane the Air Force had retired in 1990, but reviving the exotic jet would take a couple of years and be costly. With defense spending still declining after the Soviet Union’s collapse, some in the Pentagon argued that satellites could fill the reconnaissance void, but Fogleman was unpersuaded. To him, the Predator and the high-altitude UAVs being developed under the Tier programs created by Pentagon procurement czar John Deutch looked like a better solution.

  Fogleman also thought the Army was the wrong service to fly and manage UAVs, given the Army’s abysmal history with the Aquila and its limited use of airplanes. He was convinced the Army would treat a drone like a truck, not an aircraft, but the Predator was a far different breed from the Aquila, the Pioneer, and other UAVs the military had developed. The Predator was a real airplane, far different in appearance from a Piper Cub but not dissimilar in size. Abroad, the Predator would need to share runways with Air Force planes. In operations, the drone would have to be integrated into the daily Air Tasking Order, the overall plan for coordinating military aircraft.

  Even as the Army was taking the Predator to Albania, Fogleman created a new unit to fly drones. He named it the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron, revivifying a decommissioned RF-4C outfit he had flown with on Misty Fast FAC missions in Vietnam. The 11th RS, as the new squadron was known in the Air Force, opened its doors on July 28, 1995, at Indian Springs Air Force Auxiliary Field, a small, remote facility forty-five miles northwest of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. In the beginning, most pilots who were sent there figured their careers were over.

  * * *

  On November 22, 1995, after three weeks of cloistered negotiation at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, representatives of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia reached an agreement to end their vicious ethnic wars. Soon twenty thousand American troops and forty thousand from other countries were on their way to the Balkans to enforce the new Dayton Peace Accords. U.S. commanders were quick to decide they wanted the Predator there with them. The Mibli, General Atomics, and Rutherford’s team moved rapidly to get ready for the new deployment. They would take three air vehicles equipped with both synthetic aperture radar and a Ku-band satellite antenna. This time, though, the Predator would fly from a military air base called Taszár, in southern Hungary, a former Warsaw Pact nation now applying for membership in NATO. Hungary’s government was eager to help keep the peace in former Yugoslavia, whose civil strife had sent refugees flooding across its border.

  The Dayton Accords were formally signed in Paris on December 14. Two days later, a top Pentagon panel chaired by Admiral Owens, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, decided the Air Force should become “service lead” for Predator operations. A Joint Chiefs committee recommended that the Air Force take over when the Predator’s two-year test-drive period under the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration ended that coming July.

  Four months later, in April 1996, Defense Secretary William Perry agreed to give the Predator to the Air Force, but with a caveat. In a nod to “jointness,” the ever popular idea that the armed services should cooperate and share hardware, Perry decreed that while the Air Force would operate the Predator, the Navy would keep developing the drone and procuring its various elements. And as a practical matter, the Army’s Mibli would continue operating the Predator in Bosnia for a few more months while the Air Force trained some of its own pilots to fly an aircraft by remote control.

  With the Air Force scheduled to take charge of the Predator that summer, Navy program manager Rutherford was asked to go to Langley Air Force Base, in southeast Virginia, on June 13 to take part in a review of the Predator program at Air Combat Command (known as ACC, with each letter pronounced individually). ACC was operational headquarters for the Air Force’s warplanes; as such, it was the Predator’s future owner. Navy Commander Steve Jayjock, the intelligence officer who had coordinated between the CIA and the Defense Department as their respective Gnat 750 and Predator programs began in 1994, went to ACC with Rutherford and another briefer, Army Colonel Tim Fulcher. Jayjock was appalled at how the three were treated.

  Four-star general Richard Hawley, a fighter pilot who had taken command of ACC on April 5, chaired the Langley event, which was held in a huge conference room. Hawley greeted Rutherford, Jayjock, and Fulcher in front of about sixty of his officers by announcing that he, Hawley, was the new owner of the Predator—even if the Navy was still its program office—because the Air Force chief of staff wanted it that way. With defense budgets declining and many pilots already leaving the service, the Air Force couldn’t simply ask for volunteers to fly the Predator, as the Army had done. Instead, Air Force pilots would have to be ordered to report for this duty—and Hawley made it plain that, in his opinion, any pilot involuntarily assigned to fly this stupid thing would hate to trade soaring through the sky for sitting in a frigid van for hours. Hawley did nothing to hide the fact that he felt like a car salesman pitching a lemon.

  The other officers in the room followed their leader’s cue. As Rutherford took the dais and showed his first slide, ACC fighter, bomber, and U-2 pilots openly showed their contempt—especially two young majors wearing U-2 patches. Scoffing laughs greeted a photo of the Predator. Wisecracks and snorts were audible as Rutherford described the Predator’s speed and range, its capabilities and limitations. Questions were hostile. One of the U-2 pilots even accused Army officer Fulcher of lying about the Predator’s accomplishments in Bosnia. Fulcher was furious, and Jayjock squirmed as he watched, his own blood pressure rising. To Rutherford’s shock, Hawley did nothing to tamp down the hostility during the three-hour verbal slugfest. Still, Rutherford did his best to parry the verbal blows; smiling, he calmly reminded the ACC officers that it hadn’t been his idea to assign them the Predator. Jayjock would always admire how cool and professional Rutherford was that day.

  Afterward, upon returning to his Naval Air Systems Command office, Rutherford felt heartsick. He had spent the last two years trying to make the Predator a reality, and he hated the idea of handing it over to the Air Force. Maybe Fogleman really wanted the Predator, but maybe Air Force leaders just wanted to keep another service from having it. Ever since the Air Force’s separation from the Army in 1947, the two had waged an unending political battle over which should control aircraft whose main mission was to support ground forces. Rutherford couldn’t help wondering how long the Predator would last once the Air Force got hold of it. The white scarf wearers at Air Combat Command obviously wanted to shoot it down.

  * * *

  On Halloween Day 1996, twenty-three years after he entered the Air Force, James G. “Snake” Clark, age forty-four, was promoted to colonel. Three months after he pinned on the silver eagles denoting his new rank, Clark got a phone call from General Ron Fogleman.

  “Snake, what do you know about Predator?” the chief of staff asked.

  “Arnold Schwarzenegger—great movie,” Clark cracked.

  Fogleman ignored the joke. “Good,” the general said. “I want you to go over th
ere and tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Clark knew “over there” was Taszár. On September 2, the Air Force’s 11th Reconnaissance Squadron had officially taken over Predator operations from the Army’s Mibli, which had been flying the drone over Bosnia by remote control from Hungary since March 14. One day short of a month after the Air Force assumed control, one of the three 11th RS pilots at Taszár crashed one of the three Predators based there. The pilot was blameless; as with the Predator over Bosnia the previous August, the drone’s engine failed.

  In the three months since that accident, Fogleman had been getting a stream of complaints about the Predator from Army leaders enforcing the Dayton Accords. On January 29, 1997, the vice chief of staff of the Army, General Ronald Griffith, had gone so far as to send a “message to the field” saying, “Predator support to the 1st Armored Division was less than satisfactory” in Bosnia. Army commanders said the Predator wasn’t in the air often enough to do them much good. Air Combat Command claimed weather was the problem; the Predator’s wispy wings were too prone to icing, and ACC’s recommendation was that the unit simply be brought home for the winter and sent back in summer. Others suggested that the pilots the Air Force had assigned to fly the Predator just weren’t very good. Everyone knew that commanders of manned aircraft units weren’t sending their best when told to give up pilots for the new drone squadron.