Predator

by Richard Whittle

  “The immediate objective is to fire a Hellfire missile from a Predator and hit something,” one of the first slides said. The first option Dehnert described would take nine months, cost an estimated $1.3 million, and offer “medium technical risk.” The second option was a twelve-week “Accelerated Demo” expected to cost $1.5 million and disrupt all other Predator projects. This quicker option would also come with “high technical risk,” for it would be done the Big Safari way: with the least possible government regulation and paperwork.

  Three-quarters of the way through Dehnert’s briefing, Jumper turned to Tom Cassidy of General Atomics, who was seated next to him, and quietly asked, “What do you think about all this?”

  “Let’s go in your office,” Cassidy suggested.

  The general and the former admiral excused themselves and left the room, leaving the others exchanging puzzled looks and curious whispers. Once they were alone, Cassidy told Jumper, “You give us two million bucks and two months and it’ll be a done deal.”

  “Done,” Jumper replied.

  Cassidy went back to the meeting, leaving Jumper in his office. The ACC commander didn’t return to the conference room for some time; when he did, he told the gathering he had just phoned General Michael E. Ryan, the Air Force chief of staff, and General William J. Begert, assistant vice chief of staff. Then Jumper gave those attending the briefing a surprise. Big Safari, he said, would get three million dollars to arm the Predator with the Hellfire—about double the cost of either option Dehnert had outlined, and two hundred thousand dollars more than the two combined. He also directed Big Safari to execute both the accelerated demonstration and the more cautious one.

  Ryan would find the funding. Begert would get the required congressional approval. Big Safari and General Atomics were to arm the Predator and get it tested in flight as quickly as possible. Wrinkles could be ironed out later. The Air Force, Jumper explained, “wants to make rapid progress on weaponizing UAVs.”

  * * *

  In his private conversation with Jumper, Cassidy made it sound easy, but marrying the Hellfire to the Predator was no simple matter. A week after getting Jumper’s order, Big Safari Director Grimes hosted a meeting at his tightly secured headquarters in Dayton to discuss technical and other issues with representatives from the Hellfire program office at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, engineers from General Atomics and other companies, and various Air Force experts.

  “My first question is can I fire your missile off Predator without knocking it out of the sky?” Grimes asked the Army contingent.

  No one was entirely sure. Whether the thrust from the Hellfire’s launch would throw the Predator into a spin when fired, or whether the missile’s plume—1,050 degrees Fahrenheit at its hottest—would damage the aircraft’s composite wings, tail, or fuselage, were questions that required engineering analysis, the team decided.

  General Atomics already knew the wings needed to be beefed up to withstand the strain of carrying missiles. “Hardpoints” in the current wings could carry payloads of up to one hundred pounds, but each Hellfire would need a launcher—a metal rack with a rail to carry and fire it from—and electrical equipment to make it function. The Army experts said their Hellfire launchers were in short supply, so Big Safari might have to borrow a couple from the Navy and modify them to carry only one instead of the usual four missiles per launcher used by helicopters. The engineering team would also have to find a way to reduce the thrust needed to trigger a release spring on the rail whose function was to hold a missile in place until fired. The spring’s standard 600 pounds of resistance would have to be cut to about 235 pounds, or else a launch might rip the wing right off the aircraft.

  The Hellfire’s software would have to be modified, too, to launch the missile properly from the Predator’s normal operating altitude of about fifteen thousand feet, for the AGM-114 was designed to be launched at tanks by helicopters flying two thousand feet or less above the ground. Test firings—first from the ground, then in the air—would be necessary. New tactics for launching Hellfires from the Predator would have to be devised, too.

  Beyond all that, the engineers would have to integrate the missile’s circuitry and software with the Predator’s flight control computer and a new sensor turret, or “modified Kosovo ball,” which Raytheon Corporation was developing. The new turret would add the daylight camera lacking in the laser ball used in Kosovo.

  On July 28, Big Safari received formal approval from Headquarters Air Force to do what Jumper wanted, but the instruction said no Predators were to be modified until the service got both congressional approval and a ruling that arming the drone was acceptable under the INF Treaty. Under the circumstances, the Big Safari team did as much analysis and made as many modifications as they could.

  Engineers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base analyzed the Hellfire’s rocket plume and came up with encouraging results. Because the Hellfire would get away from the Predator so fast—it would be sixteen feet past the drone’s nose within 250 milliseconds—and its rocket plume was so compact, the aircraft’s tail would only “see” (in engineering jargon) a high temperature of 440 degrees Fahrenheit as the missile departed, and that only briefly. The wing and fuselage would see only 170 degrees, and the air pressure change around the plume would present no problems.

  General Atomics, meanwhile, conducted analyses showing that a Hellfire could indeed be launched from a Predator without breaking the aircraft apart or throwing it into a spin. Engineers at the General Atomics factory in California began writing the software needed to wed the Hellfire to the Predator. They also designed new ribs and cross brackets to go inside the Predator’s wings at their hardpoints, allowing them to carry a single-rail launcher derived from a multi-rail launcher that Big Safari had quickly gotten from the Navy. The engineers were still barred, though, from making any changes to the aircraft chosen to become the first armed Predator, tail number 97-3034. Predator 3034 had been built the previous year but flown only seven times, always at El Mirage, for a total of thirteen hours.

  On August 11, Inside the Air Force reported that the Predator “will rain Hellfire this fall” upon the practice bombing areas at Nellis Air Force Base, a sprawling installation north of Las Vegas. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Novak, ACC’s weapons requirements branch chief, told the publication that the Air Force first wanted to “see if it is feasible for a Predator to do this.” The article noted that the Air Force “may have to inform Congress of a new start because the test will add a new capability to the UAV.” According to the newsletter, the Air Force expected to fire a test missile at Nellis for the first time later that year, probably in October or November.

  Less than three weeks after the article appeared, the schedule Novak had described to Inside the Air Force fell apart. On August 30, Air Force lawyers issued a legal opinion forbidding all “touch labor” to arm the Predator prior to getting approval from Congress. Now the team working on Jumper’s project was barred from modifying not only Predator 3034 but any of the other equipment needed for the project. All they could to do was look and analyze, not act. It was frustrating.

  Eight days after the Hellfire project came to a halt, the Summer Project team at Ramstein Air Base in Germany began flying an unarmed Predator over Afghanistan via satellite in the CIA’s secret search for Osama bin Laden. Soon they would learn that all anyone was going to do when they found the terrorist leader was look and analyze, not act. It was more than frustrating—it was infuriating.

  * * *

  In early October, visitors to the General Atomics flight test facility at El Mirage were treated to a strange sight. Parked on the painted concrete floor of an aluminum hangar, the rubber wheels of its three-legged landing gear locked in bright yellow chocks, was Predator 3034, looking like a patient in the midst of drastic surgery. The drone’s wings were missing. Amidships was the familiar U.S. Air Force star and bar insignia; just forward of the Predator’s distinctive inverted-V tail was a short string of black nume
rals: 97-3034. A dozen feet to either side, sitting atop aluminum wing stands—trestles akin to sawhorses—were the Predator’s unattached wings.

  Midway along the underside of one wing hung a single rail cut from what once was a four-rail M299 Hellfire launcher. Hung from the rail was a sinister-looking black Hellfire. In fact, the missile was what Big Safari called a House Mouse, a term the team learned from the Army. Not only did this Hellfire carry no propellant to create thrust and make it fly, but it also lacked the shaped explosive charge a live missile would carry, a charge that could generate a jet of heat and pressure powerful enough to drill through a heavy tank’s armor on impact. This mock Hellfire, however, held all the same electronics as a live one. Running from the launcher where the House Mouse hung on the unattached wing to the socket where the wing was meant to fit into Predator 3034’s fuselage was a collection of gray wires. Stretched to their limit, the wires measured twenty-six feet.

  This unorthodox sight had resulted from a phone call received by the Big Safari office at General Atomics on September 21, a call that brought good news and bad. The Air Force had secured congressional approval to spend money arming the Predator, meaning that touch labor would now be allowed. But the State Department general counsel’s “initial opinion,” as a senior Air Force procurement officer reported in an e-mail to Jumper and others, was that a “weaponized Predator constitutes a cruise missile, hence an INF Treaty problem.” Lieutenant General Stephen Plummer added that the Defense Department’s general counsel was “working with them to change that opinion.” But until the issue was resolved, no missile could be mounted on a Predator able to fly.

  Jumper was irate. “Chief, we should not allow this opinion to stand or to ripen for any length of time,” the ACC commander e-mailed Chief of Staff Mike Ryan. “With your permission I would like to put together a briefing (case study) from Kosovo that explains what we are after and engage the lawyers,” Jumper added, signing the e-mail, “Your Junk Yard Dog (and happy to do it). John.”

  Big Safari’s solution, meanwhile, was to put the missile launcher on a detached wing and then wire it to the flight control computer in the Predator’s fuselage to check whether the systems would work together once the wing was reinstalled. The tactic was legal, for a Predator unable to fly was clearly outside the INF Treaty definition of a cruise missile as “an unmanned, self-propelled vehicle that sustains flight.” It was also classic Big Safari. Being creative within the rules was part of the organization’s culture, as suggested by the sign Bill Grimes had posted on Big Safari’s door at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base: “Those who say it cannot be done should not get in the way of those doing it.”

  On September 27, a week after the Big Safari office at Rancho Bernardo got the message that inspired the wing stand solution, the Summer Project team in Germany spotted bin Laden for the first time. Colonel Ed Boyle, the Summer Project commander for the Air Force, was just as surprised as Predator pilot Scott Swanson when they found their terrorist target and no cruise missiles were fired. A couple of hours after the sighting, with the Predator on its way back to Uzbekistan, Boyle had the ops cell make a videotape of bin Laden at Tarnak Farms, then jumped in his car with it and drove the three-quarters of a mile to the office of the USAFE commander, General Gregory “Speedy” Martin. After Martin watched the video, they had the imagery streamed to General Jumper at his ACC office at Langley. Then Martin phoned Jumper to talk about the video.

  Boyle wasn’t privy to their conversation, but he knew Jumper pretty well. Not only had Boyle been Jumper’s director of intelligence when Jumper commanded USAFE, they had known each other since Jumper was a lieutenant colonel and Boyle was a captain. Boyle figured Jumper would climb the walls when he learned that the Summer Project team had found bin Laden and nothing was being done about it. Boyle also knew Jumper had a project under way to arm the Predator, for Boyle had been among the many officers in the June 21 meeting at Langley when Jumper chose the Hellfire. Boyle hoped the video of bin Laden that his old boss had just seen would speed that project up.

  It didn’t—even after the Cole bombing two weeks later. The wheels of government grind slowly at any time, and as the end of Bill Clinton’s second term in the White House approached, decisions were hard to come by. By October 17 the members of the Big Safari team working to arm the Predator had done all the work they could pending a resolution of the treaty issue. They were also waiting for Raytheon to deliver the new sensor ball combining a laser designator with a daylight camera. For the moment, the two most important Predator projects were in limbo.

  That same month, Summer Project operations director Major Mark Cooter and Captain Scott Swanson happened to see the flag-draped caskets of some USS Cole sailors being removed from a cargo plane at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, a stopover on the way to the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Cooter and Swanson got out of their car, stood at attention, and saluted as the caskets were unloaded. The sight made them sad—and angry. Over the next few days, Cooter loudly and bitterly complained about the U.S. failure to strike back, living up to a fiery reputation that had led an Air Force security officer to call the burly intelligence officer a “cowboy” for bridling at computer restrictions Cooter thought were slowing operations. When Cooter turned thirty-seven on October 20, eight days after the Cole bombing, his team threw him a party and gave him a pair of cavalry spurs and a big white Stetson. Cooter laughed but resisted their demands that he try the gag gifts on for size. Instead, he put a magnetic clip on the brim of the Stetson and hung the cowboy hat and spurs from a metal equipment rack at the back of the Predator ground control station. He would wear them, Cooter told the team, when Washington worked up enough gumption to take some action against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

  By the following month, Cooter’s feelings were only stronger. On November 14, he sent a scathing letter to Boyle, Snake Clark and Cooter’s opposite number at the CIA, arguing that if actionable intelligence produced by the Predator flights were going to lead to no action, the missions should be stopped and new options considered. Cooter was so angry, in fact, that he originally drafted his protest under the file name “resignationletter.” After talking it over with a lieutenant colonel he was close to, he deleted a sentence declaring that he was going to resign, but he didn’t mince words when expressing his frustration with the failure of those in power to act against terrorists clearly determined to kill as many Americans as possible. The Air Force team had proven they could find bin Laden with the Predator, but such operations were high in risk and low in return, Cooter argued. In a dozen missions that fall, the Predator had spotted bin Laden twice for sure and possibly a third time. In Cooter’s view, the Predator team should stop flying over Afghanistan until those with the power to decide figured out what they really wanted to do about Osama bin Laden.

  Summer Project commander Boyle was angry, too. Boyle’s gut told him that bin Laden and his lieutenants were finalizing their plans for the Cole bombing when the Predator’s cameras saw the Al Qaeda chief at Tarnak Farms on September 27. He figured the sailors killed on the Cole might still be alive if a cruise missile had hit bin Laden’s meeting that day. He fervently hoped the Predator would soon be armed; when it was, he also hoped the team he had led in the Summer Project could go hunting for bin Laden again. Boyle wanted to rain Hellfire on him.

  9

  HELLFIRE AND HESITATION

  Now Predator 3034 resembled a prisoner more than it did a patient. On January 23, 2001, wings and nose restored but tires missing, 3034 was chained by its landing gear struts to a concrete pad atop a barren hilltop overlooking a shallow desert valley. The dry swale below the hill was on a test range at California’s landlocked China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, whose 1.1 million acres make it 50 percent larger than Rhode Island, and whose 17,000 square miles of restricted airspace make it ideal for trying out military weapons. Here, on Pad J54 at Test Site G-6, Predator 3034 would be put through a “s
tatic ground launch” of a Hellfire to see, before trying it in the air, what a missile rocketing off the drone’s wing would do to the aircraft. Under each of 3034’s shiny new white wings—attached to the fuselage three weeks earlier after months of resting on metal stands—hung a sixty-four-inch-long Hellfire incapable of living up to its name. There was no explosive inside.

  Only one of these “inert” Hellfires would be launched in this test, but each had white stripes along its menacing black skin, the better to help high-speed film and video cameras see the missile’s aerodynamics in flight. The stresses on the drone from the heat and thrust of the Hellfire’s rocket plume would be measured by thermal, strain, and pressure gauges, and by temperature-sensitive crayons applied to the laser ball, tails, and leading edge of the wings. The rocket’s effects would also be visible in the flapping of strips of tape attached to 3034’s composite skin, whose inverted-V tail now sported the Scotch plaid colors of the 11th Reconnaissance Squadron, plus Big Safari’s black-and-gold African shield with crossed spears.

  General John Jumper’s project to arm the Predator had been released at last from its bureaucratic limbo a month earlier, on December 21, when government treaty experts abruptly decided that a lethal drone was permissible under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The decision took months to reach, but the logic was simple—especially after NSC counterterrorism chief and armed Predator advocate Richard Clarke weighed in. Clarke, who had been deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence when the INF treaty was negotiated and served as assistant secretary of state for politico-military affairs before going to work at the NSC, pointed out that, by definition, a cruise missile had a warhead and the Predator didn’t. The Predator was merely a platform, an unmanned aerial vehicle that had landing gear and was designed to return to base after a mission.