Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare
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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 end
urance, 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.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dialogue of the Deaf
He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden.…
TABLET I, EPIC OF GILGAMESH
No target ever died in the collection process,” General Jumper, Air Forces in Europe commander, said at the time of the Kosovo conflict in 1999. “We don’t pop the cork when the picture arrives; we pop the cork when the target is dead.”1 It was pre-9/11 and Jumper wasn’t even talking about killing terrorists or individuals; a target is a target, an airfield, military barracks, troops in the field or on the move. An air force does many things, but in the end, it’s all about killing the target. From a military perspective, intelligence—air intelligence—is useless unless it contributes to the demise of a target. All capabilities are nurtured and perfected for this singular task, a focus that has evolved from cities to factories to bridges to the individual tank to the individual on the corner.
In our era of perpetual warfare, smooth-talking generals repeat the catechism of the day, which is about nation and capacity building, and about supporting the troops on the ground. But the honest and true-blue airman is trained and prepared to drop the bomb. You want it done more quickly, safely, and effectively, with fewer civilian casualties and collateral damage? he asks. Just give me the tools, provide me with the intelligence, point me in the right direction, and let me do my thing. It doesn’t matter whether the target is another airplane in the skies, a tent in the desert, or even someone’s cybertransmissions. War is ugly, and airpower is the modern lead. So an airman says tell me what the target is, even tell me what level of damage you want, and get out of the way.
It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that before anyone in Washington was focused on Osama bin Laden, before the politicos “thought of” putting a missile on Predator, before bureaucrats advanced their counterterrorism covert action programs, before anyone started fretting about overflying Taliban-held Afghanistan or taking out any princely phantom, air warriors were already thinking about the means: put a weapon on the new Predator, and not only can you conduct reconnaissance and find a potential target, but you can also do something about it right then. You can do it against air defenses that might be too lethal for manned aircraft, and you can do it against Scud missiles that shoot and scoot. And with the right weapons and the right black boxes, it can be done in the dark, in the rain, and a world away.
From the very beginning of drones’ development, the idea of arming them had been experimented with.2 Amber—the immediate predecessor of Predator developed for Cold War duties against an industrial army—was conceived to include a loitering model that would find the target and then turn into a kamikaze missile.3 In some ways, then, the saga of getting drones from just looking to looking and killing is unexceptional in every way. Sure, Predator (and later types of unmanned drones) had to overcome dozens of technological and institutional hurdles—even some from inside the air force itself, who bristled at the unmanned quality. But then, every new capability has to fight to gain traction in a world of tribes and limited resources: bomber versus fig
hter, combat versus support, intelligence versus operations, conventional versus unconventional.
There were people like General Jumper who genuinely had vision and sensed how the unmanned could fill a void.4 Musing about Predator long before it was armed, Admiral William A. Owens, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the original proponents of network-centric warfare, said that Predator “was flying over an area… at 25,000 feet…. It had been up there for a long time, many hours, and you could see the city below, and you could focus in on the city, you could see a building, focus on a building, you could see a window, focus on a window. You could put a cursor around it and [get] the GPS latitude and longitude very accurately, remotely via satellite. And if you passed that information to an F-16 or an F-15 [fighter flying overhead] at 30,000 feet, and that pilot can simply put in that latitude and longitude into his bomb fire control system, then that bomb can be dropped quite accurately onto that target, maybe very close to that window, or, if it’s a precision weapon, perhaps it could be put through the window.…”5 It would be many years before that vision would be even close to realization, but after the concept of loitering unmanned reconnaissance was “proven”6 in Bosnia, money began flowing: the Pentagon alone spent more than $3 billion on unmanned aerial systems in the 1990s.7 Much of that money went to fund even higher-flying, longer-range, stealthier, and far more expensive drones than Predator. More than a decade’s work lay ahead in perfecting an aerodynamically and militarily robust flying machine that would reliably be able to kill the target.