Unmanned Air Vehicle Joint Program Office (UAV JPO)
“Use of Force in Counterterrorism Operations” (Presidential Policy Guidance)
Uzbekistan
V-1 “buzz bomb”
V-2 missiles
V-22 Osprey tiltrotor transport
Vampire fighter jet
Vietnam War
von Maur, Henry G.
W570 (Tier II Plus design)
Wagner, George
Wald, Charles F. “Chuck”
Wallace, Ginger
Wall Street Journal
Wanda Belle mission
War Department
Warsaw Pact
Wartime Integrated Laser Designator Predator test
Washington Post
Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood (Kabul)
Weaponized UAV Demonstration
Weinberger, Caspar
Welch, Paul
Weldon, Curt
Werner (technoscientist)
Wescam sensor ball
Western Europe
West Germany
Westover Air Force Base
White, Letitia
White House
Afghan Eyes and
Predator video feed
Wildfire team
Atef and
challenge coin
ground troops support and
radio call sign
WILD Predator (Wartime Integrated Laser Designator)
Williams, Robert M.
Will (sensor operator)
Willy, Wilford John
Wizzo (weapon systems officer). See also WSO
Wolfowitz, Paul
Woodward, Bob
Woolsey, Jim
World Trade Center attacks. See September 11, 2001, attacks
World War I
World War II
Wright, Orville and Wilbur
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
WSO (weapon systems officer). See also Wizzo
X-45A drone
Yale Aviation Club
Yale Daily News Asian Expedition
Yank magazine
Yemen
Yom Kippur War
Yugoslavia
Zawahiri, Ayman al-
Zuni rocket
As a twenty-six-year-old air force officer, Abe Karem placed tenth in his category while representing Israel at the free-flight model World Championships in Austria. Free-flight modeling inspired Karem and schooled him in designing drones with uncommon flight endurance.
By the time Karem was in his early thirties, he was director of preliminary design for Israel Aircraft Industries—and a determined dreamer.
Designing a decoy to fool Egyptian and Syrian defenses that devastated Israel’s air force in the 1973 Yom Kippur War led Karem to an epiphany: a remote-control drone armed with antitank missiles might defeat—or, better yet, deter—another invasion of Israel.
Yale students Neal (left) and Linden Blue learned to fly so they could tour Latin America in search of postcollege business opportunities during the summer of 1956. Their daring journey in the Blue Bird led the young entrepreneurs into partnership in a banana and cacao plantation in Nicaragua partly owned by the ruling Somoza family.
In August 1986, the Wall Street Journal reported that Denver businessmen Neal and Linden Blue were buying Chevron spinoff GA Technologies, a nuclear power company. Neal (far left) decided their renamed General Atomics should expand into unmanned aircraft.
Inspired by the advent of GPS and his desire to help NATO deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, Neal Blue decided General Atomics should develop a kamikaze drone. Displayed at a 1988 air show before the company abandoned it and hired bankrupt Abe Karem, this “poor man’s cruise missile” was the first Predator.
When President Bill Clinton complained in 1993 that neither the military nor intelligence agencies could find Serb artillery pounding civilians in Bosnia, CIA Director James Woolsey decided a drone could solve the problem. Woolsey also immediately thought of an aeronautical engineer he considered a genius: Abe Karem.
The chief of the CIA’s clandestine branch, Thomas A. Twetten (left), visited the General Atomics hangar at El Mirage, California, in March 1993 to see about buying some of the company’s drones for spy missions over Bosnia. Satisfied that General Atomics could deliver what the agency wanted, Twetten posed for a photo with the drone’s designer, Abe Karem.
Conservative rules during initial Air Force Predator operations in the Balkans in late 1996 left flight crews at the drone’s base in Hungary feeling like characters in the movie Groundhog Day. On a later deployment, Major Jon Box (center, in flight suit, between man and woman in camouflage) and his detachment were a lot happier.
In May 1999, the first test flight of a Predator rigged to guide bombs to targets ended with the drone nose down on the runway. It wasn’t funny at the time, but Colonel Snake Clark (left) and Big Safari Director Bill Grimes (right) later shared a laugh with Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters when Clark was presented with a model memorializing the accident.
Special operations helicopter pilot and lifelong computer geek Captain Scott Swanson became Big Safari’s first Predator pilot. Swanson was at the drone’s controls when the Predator’s cameras spotted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in September 2000.
Master Sergeant Jeff A. “Gunny” Guay, Big Safari’s first Predator sensor operator, was an innovative, resourceful renegade who was never afraid to stir things up. Guay would aim the laser beam that guided the Predator’s first lethal missile strike.
As a cocky fighter pilot in Southeast Asia in 1970, Captain Johnny Jumper (third from right) learned to love laser-guided weapons, which hit targets accurately from much safer altitudes for fliers.
As commander of Air Combat Command, General John Jumper decided in 2000 to arm the Predator with laser-guided Hellfire missiles, a project he sped up after some senior officials at the CIA and National Security Council grew interested in using the drone to kill Osama bin Laden.
NSC counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke believed that President Clinton had given the CIA all the authority it needed to kill Osama bin Laden following the Al Qaeda terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. In the months before 9/11, Clarke was particularly eager to send the armed Predator to kill the terrorist leader before Al Qaeda killed Americans again.
In January 2001, Predator 3034 was chained by its landing gear struts to a concrete pad on a test range at China Lake Naval Weapons Station for a “static ground launch” of a Hellfire to see whether a missile rocketing off its wing would rip the aircraft apart.
Master Sergeant Leo Glovka (left) and Captain Curt Hawes stand triumphantly over the target tank they hit on February 21, 2001, with one of the first Hellfires ever launched from an airborne Predator.
Predator 3034 was initially painted white and bore the marking “WA”—the two-letter base code for Nellis Air Force Base, where the first Hellfire tests were conducted. When 3034 launched the first-ever lethal drone strike, in Afghanistan, the aircraft was painted air superiority grey and bore no markings at all.
In the spring of 2001, the CIA hired a contractor to build a residence typical of Afghanistan as a test target for Predator-launched Hellfire missiles. The adobe building constructed at China Lake bore so little resemblance to an Afghan villa that test participants dubbed it “Taco Bell” and hung up a mock sign advertising “Hellfire Tacos, 3/99¢.”
To help the CIA determine whether a Predator-launched Hellfire could kill Osama bin Laden indoors, plywood silhouettes and air pressure and temperature gauges were placed inside the Taco Bell for test shots fired in May and June 2001.
After one Hellfire shot in June, the test team inspecting the interior of the Taco Bell found bits of brick and metal a bit larger than BBs in the plywood silhouettes. They also found multiple holes in the rinds of watermelons, which, to save time and money, had been substituted for the manikins usually used to measure a weapon’s lethality.
&nbs
p; CIA Director George Tenet, with the NSC’s Richard Clarke sitting behind him, watched President Bush address the nation on the evening of September 11, 2001, from the White House bunker. Before that day, Tenet and Clarke were at odds about whether to use the armed Predator to try to kill Osama bin Laden. Afterward, Tenet became a Predator disciple.
Air commander General Chuck Wald, styrofoam cup in hand to catch sunflower seed shells, watches live CIA Predator video with subordinates at an air base in Saudi Arabia as the war in Afghanistan begins. “Who is in control?” Wald fumed to a fellow general after being surprised by the Predator’s first missile launch. “I’m ready to fold up and come home.”
A special Air Force team launched the first intercontinental drone strikes from a complex on the CIA campus that became known as the Trailer Park. Later, those involved created a memento—a coin embossed with a mobile home built around an armed Predator and bearing a motto reflecting the CIA’s shift to ordering Hellfire strikes independently: “Never Mind … We’ll Do It Ourselves.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of a journey of discovery that began five years ago and led me to a number of facts and stories that some institutions and officials have been reluctant to see revealed. It is therefore not merely difficult but impossible to thank by name all of the dozens of people who gave me the benefit of their time, knowledge, insights, documents, contacts, advice, or just encouragement. For various reasons, some who helped insist on remaining anonymous. You know who you are; I hope you know how grateful I am. I am equally grateful to a number of people who played roles in the rise of the Predator and generously helped me understand it, but whose names go unmentioned in this book. I hope they will understand that the demands of narrative rather than lack of gratitude are to blame for their anonymity.
It would have been impossible to write this book without the cooperation of its main characters, particularly the inimitable Abe Karem and the utterly different but equally inimitable Neal and Linden Blue. Each is among the most extraordinary people I have ever met in a career that has often put me in close proximity to extraordinary people. Each has been generous with his time and assistance, and I am grateful to all three for opening to me not only their own doors but also the doors of others.
Another who has been a great friend to this project is retired Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula, one of those rare military officers who truly understands the media and who, as a result, earns the media’s respect. Aside from sharing his own recollections with me, Dave spent many hours over the past five years helping me try to understand and deal with his beloved Air Force. For all these reasons, I will always be grateful to him.
I am deeply grateful to many others who played larger roles in the Predator story and whose names appear often in the narrative. Many granted me one or more lengthy interviews, followed by repeated phone calls and e-mails to verify facts. So many helped so much that to name them one by one and describe their contributions would require several pages. I hope it will suffice if here I simply say to them as well, you know who you are, and I hope you know how much I value all you have done for me and this book.
The list of those who played no role in the story but contributed greatly to my ability to tell it, and to whom I am also indebted, includes people at two prestigious Washington addresses where it has been my privilege to work on this project: the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.
At the Wilson Center, rightly ranked as one of the top ten research institutions in the world, I thank Sam Wells for opening the door and Rob Litwak for inviting me in as a Public Policy Scholar in 2011. That opportunity marked a turning point in my research, and my work that year was greatly aided by my Wilson Center intern, the diligent Dylan Jones. My seven-month stay in 2011 turned into a continuing affiliation, and in 2013 I had the honor of being named a Wilson Center Global Fellow, for which I again thank Rob Litwak, as well as Mike Van Dusen and Jane Harman. Among the many benefits of being affiliated with such a respected think tank is the ability to lean on some of the world’s best librarians, who include the Wilson Center’s unfailingly helpful Janet Spikes and Michelle Kamalich. I owe them both greatly for going above and beyond the call of duty to assist me on many occasions.
I was able to finish this book as the Alfred V. Verville Fellow for 2013–14 at the National Air and Space Museum, where the benefits include not only financial support but also the privilege of having an office around the corner or down the hall from some of the best aerospace historians alive. At the NASM there are several people I want to thank for their support, advice, and help, as well as their collegiality. The list begins with my two primary advisers, Aeronautics Department Chairman Bob van der Linden and Space History Department Chairman Paul Ceruzzi. It includes fellowship committee chairman Dom Pisano, fellowship program coordinator Collette Williams, NASM director General (Ret.) John Dailey (USMC), Deputy Director Roger Launius, and Tom Paone. But above all I must thank the NASM’s Roger Connor, my guru on drones, rotorcraft, and just about any other aerospace topic. Roger and I met as I worked on my previous book, The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey, and I have drawn on him regularly and relentlessly ever since as a reservoir of advice, information, and enjoyable conversation. On this book, Roger’s counsel has been invaluable at every stage, from suggesting research materials and other sources as I was getting started, to helping me define my concept for the book, to encouraging my interest in the Verville Fellowship, to reading and commenting on my draft manuscript. Roger even scanned photos for me to include in the book. Without question, this is a better book because of his generous help. If there are errors in it, they of course are my responsibility.
Many others deserve thanks for lending their support in other ways as I researched and wrote this book. They include former Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters, Robert L. Hutchings of the University of Texas, William Warmbrodt of NASA Ames Research Center, Michael Hirschberg of the American Helicopter Society International, J. J. Gertler of the Congressional Research Service, and John Harrington, Amir Pasic, and Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where I was honored to be a visiting scholar in 2011–12. I also thank Rebecca Grant, former director of the Air Force Association’s Mitchell Institute for Airpower Studies, for publishing my 2011 Mitchell Institute monograph, “Predator’s Big Safari.” I am grateful as well to Linda Shiner, editor of Air & Space Smithsonian, for giving me the opportunity in 2013 to profile Abraham Karem in her fine magazine.
Others who have written about the Predator deserve my thanks for sharing their insights and documents. I am grateful to David Fulghum, now retired but for many years one of the brightest stars at Aviation Week & Space Technology, for giving me a copy of an unpublished Big Safari history that was illuminating, as well as pointing me to groundbreaking articles he wrote about this obscure organization during his impressive career. I am also grateful to Air Force Colonel Sean Frisbee, who shared not only his thoughts and knowledge but also a trove of key documents he collected as he wrote his excellent 2004 Air University master’s thesis, “Weaponizing the Predator UAV: Toward a New Theory of Weapon System Innovation.”
The Air University is a natural starting point for any research on Air Force topics, and I thank Colonel John Davis of the Air Force Research Institute, who as a lieutenant colonel at the Air University in 2009 provided academic papers and Air Force contacts that helped me get this project off the ground. For more recent Air Force assistance, I thank Major Mary Danner-Jones of Air Force Public Affairs for patiently arranging important interviews and quickly reviewing documents for release as I raced toward the finish line. She is a true professional.
Few if any books are shaped by an author alone, and on this one, the influence of several people is invisible but has been invaluable. I am lucky to have the best literary agent in the business, Richard Abat
e, who kept me focused and resilient as this project turned from a sprint into a marathon. I am also indebted to my friend and literary mentor James Reston Jr., a master craftsman whose seventeen (going on eighteen) books include several renowned narrative histories, and whose advice shaped this one in important ways. I am also grateful to Jim for sharing his wisdom on how to deal with the many challenges of life as an author aside from writing.
This is my first book for Henry Holt and Company, where I have been honored and blessed to have as my editor another master craftsman, John Sterling. When Richard Abate told me that the editor of Rick Atkinson’s acclaimed Liberation Trilogy on World War II was interested in my book about the Predator, I was excited. Now, having seen John strengthen and sharpen every page of my manuscript, I am elated. At Henry Holt, I also thank Emi Ikkanda, production editor Chris O’Connell, and copy editor Jenna Dolan for their important contributions to this work.
My first and toughest reader, as always, has been my gifted and giving wife, Faye Ross, who read and reread every chapter as I drafted and redrafted, serving as a one-woman focus group and doing her best to keep me focused on the narrative as well as the facts—a challenge, at times, for a recovering newspaper reporter. For this, and so much else, I love her more than I can say.
ALSO BY RICHARD WHITTLE
The Dream Machine:
Predator Page 42
