by Jeff Edwards
When the red light came on, Kurt gave the fingerprint reader the obligatory peek at his right index finger, and then punched in his second-level password. The machine responded with a satisfied bleat, and Kurt sat back in his chair while his computer shuffled its way through whatever technical voodoo it used to decrypt his local hard drive.
He reached for his ever-handy cup of Starbucks, and took a healthy swig of hot rich coffee. Pumpkin spice latte, one of the specialty flavors that only show up around the holidays.
Kurt lowered the warm cardboard cup from his lips, and tilted it toward the flat screen monitor in a mock toast. “Happy Thanksgiving, Mr. Computer. Hope you don’t mind working on Turkey Day, ‘cause I’m not real fucking happy about it myself.”
He took another swallow of coffee as the report queue opened on his monitor and began populating itself with a column of filenames. The process took more than a minute. The list wasn’t short. Kurt scrolled down the line of document titles and groaned.
The operating model of the Directorate of Intelligence had been developed in the 1960s and 1970s, before the internet—when email and search engines were unheard of, and rotating-drum fax machines were the cutting-edge of electronic information transfer. There had been no cell phone frequencies to intercept in those days, no web-servers to hack, and no flash drives for stockpiling and transporting gigabytes (or terabytes) of stolen documents. Back then, intelligence analysts had labored to piece together tiny snippets of useful intelligence, in a climate of extreme information scarcity.
Now the Directorate of Intelligence struggled with the opposite problem: information overload. The so-called ‘information superhighway’ had become a tsunami of ever-growing and ever-mutating data. Add in video feeds from unmanned surveillance drones, signal intercepts, and actual reports from field agents, and the average intelligence analyst was inundated with more incoming files than any human could possibly assimilate. Unfortunately, about 98% of the flood was worthless, from a national security and foreign policy perspective. The trick was to reach into that ocean of crap, and pull out the 2% that actually meant something.
That was Kurt’s job, and while it was frequently tedious and frustrating, he was good at it. He paged back to the top of his incoming file list, and began to sort.
He had been hoping for a light load today, but he wasn’t going to get it. Still, it might not be all that bad. He could tell from the filenames that many of the documents were regional intelligence summaries. Some of those would be recaps of the previous day’s summaries. He could skip those, and he could get by with skimming most of the remaining summaries.
“Okay,” he said softly to himself. “Let’s see what’s shaking in the far off and exotic land of India…”
Kurt had been attached to the CIA’s South Asia Desk for three years, the last two of which he had been assigned specifically to Bhārat Gaṇarājya, the Republic of India. He could read Hindi like a native, and speak it somewhat less fluently, but his facility with the language was less useful than it might have been in other regions, as more than half of the documents coming out of India were written in English.
Since the days of the British Raj, English had been the default language of politics and major business in India. There had been several moves to shift officially to Hindi after the country had gained its independence in 1947, but the cultural inertia of a century of British rule had left an indelible mark on the Indian government.
As was his custom, Kurt dragged a quarter out of his pocket and flipped it briskly into the air. Heads, he would plow into the Hindi files first. Tails, he would start with the English files.
The quarter landed on his desk top, bounced, wobbled, and came to rest with George Washington’s shining profile facing up. “Hindi it is,” he said, and he opened the first document.
Two hours later, and getting a bit bleary-eyed, Kurt called up one of the last files in the Hindi list. A few more, and he’d be ready to wade through the English pile.
The document was slow in opening. When it finally appeared on the monitor, Kurt could see why. It contained at least a dozen imbedded graphics.
Kurt glanced at the first of these, and then double-clicked it to enlarge the image. The result was a black and white architectural diagram of a large rectilinear structure, like a bridge, or maybe a train trestle. Judging from the associated scale legends, the structure had to be enormous—kilometers long, and about 200 meters high.
Kurt increased the magnification of the image, and began trying to read the associated text boxes. The printed text was rendered in some form of Asian-looking characters that Kurt couldn’t decipher. Chinese, or maybe Japanese, or Korean. Something like that. But there were handwritten notations at various spots around the diagram, and these Kurt could read, because they were in Hindi. Several of the Hindi notes were accompanied by hand-drawn arrows and arcing lines that converged, diverged, and crossed at what appeared to be strategic points on the architectural structure.
It took Kurt about thirty seconds to realize that the huge rectangular construction was not a bridge or a trestle; it was a dam. A gigantic hydroelectric dam, dotted by more sluice gates than he had ever seen.
Kurt minimized the diagram, and worked quickly through the remaining images in the document with a growing sense of both excitement and dread. An idea was beginning to take shape in his mind, and it was not a pleasant thought at all.
He stared at the monitor for several minutes, hoping for the first time in his professional career that he had not found something interesting.
“Not good,” he said to himself as he reached for the phone. “This is definitely not good.”
CHAPTER 22
FINAL TRAJECTORY:
A DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY OF THE CRUISE MISSILE
(Excerpted from working notes presented to the National Institute for Strategic Analysis. Reprinted by permission of the author, David M. Hardy, PhD.)
The outbreak of World War II brought renewed interest to the search for unmanned aerial weapons.
In 1940, British engineer Frederick George Miles proposed the development of a remotely piloted lightweight aircraft, capable of carrying a 1,000 pound bomb. Designated the Miles Hoop-la, this design was not intended as a single use weapon. Instead, it would drop a bomb payload on a designated target, and then return to its home field to be refueled and rearmed for future attacks. The airspeed of the Hoop-la was estimated at over 300 MPH, but this was never verified, as the project was cancelled shortly after it reached the mock-up stage.
In 1941, the German ReichluftMinisterium (Air Ministry) began to investigate designs for ‘composite’ aircraft, i.e. multiple aircraft which are physically connected together and flown as a single unit. Nazi interest in this concept may have derived from Soviet studies in the 1930s, in which fighter planes were attached to the fuselages or wings of large bombers, ready to launch whenever the host-bombers were threatened.
One German scheme involved using an attached fighter plane to guide an explosive-packed unmanned Junkers Ju-88 bomber to a target. Upon reaching the designated site, the fighter pilot would aim the drone bomber toward its final objective, detach his own plane, and depart the area as the Junkers dove into the target and detonated.
The concept met with initial resistance among senior Luftwaffe leadership, but the ReichluftMinisterium ultimately authorized project Beethoven, to build a composite flying bomb under the codename Mistel (mistletoe).
The first operational test of a Mistel occurred in July of 1943. The control plane was a Messerschmitt Mf-109E fighter, mounted to the top of an unmanned Ju-88A bomber, and wired directly into the larger aircraft’s throttles and flight controls. The fighter pilot made a smooth takeoff, and flew the composite aircraft directly toward the target area. At the appropriate range, he detached his Messerschmitt from the bomber, allowing the Ju-88A to make its final approach on autopilot. The accuracy of the attack could not have been better, and the explosives aboard the bomber utterly destroyed th
e target.
US Soldiers Inspect a Captured Mistel
The Mistel did not much resemble the Sperry Aerial Torpedo, or the Kettering Bug of the previous world war, but this new German design was the direct descendent of those earlier flying weapons. In the space of a single test flight, the Mistel had proven that the concept of an unmanned aerial bomb was both valid, and deadly.
The officers of the Luftwaffe high command forgot their reservations, and became instantly enthusiastic about the Mistel. They quickly began planning ways to improve the Mistel design, and push the weapon into production and use.
The Mistel went into operation in June of 1944, almost exactly a year after the first test flight. The final configuration utilized a Focke-Wulf Fw-190A fighter atop a Junkers Ju-88A-4. The nose and crew cabin of the bomber were removed, and replaced by a 7,720 pound hollow-charge warhead.
Tests demonstrated that the enormous Mistel warhead could penetrate virtually any thickness of reinforced concrete. A trial attack against an old French battleship wrought astonishing damage to the target vessel, revealing the Mistel’s potential as an anti-ship weapon. This potential was to be tested quickly, as several Mistels were used to conduct attacks against Allied ships during the weapon’s first month of operational service.
The Nazi high command began planning a massive coordinated Mistel campaign against the Allies, codenamed Operation Eisenhammer (Iron Hammer). Over 250 Mistels were built, but Operation Eisenhammer never took place. The accumulated Mistels were expended in numerous smaller attacks, mostly directed against bridges in the path of the Allied advance.
The Luftwaffe developed a number of minor variants to the Mistel, incorporating modifications and/or aircraft substitutions to accommodate various mission profiles. A jet-powered model was considered, to be built around the Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighter, but the concept was never implemented. Still more variants were proposed, some of which were far-fetched, even by the standards of the Mistel program. Most of the more drastic ideas did not ever progress beyond the drawing board.
While Germany was developing and deploying its new pilotless killing machine, on the far side of the Atlantic, the United States was once again pursuing the idea of the aerial torpedo.
During a visit to England in 1936, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William H. Standley witnessed a live firing exercise against a British Queen Bee training aircraft (a radio-controlled version of the de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane, configured as an unmanned flying target). Impressed by the Queen Bee’s performance, the CNO contacted Rear Admiral Ernest J. King, the head of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and directed him to research options for developing remote-controlled aircraft for the U.S. Navy.
At the CNO’s suggestion, Rear Admiral King chose Lieutenant Commander Delmar S. Fahrney to lead the project. A veteran pilot with a masters degree in aeronautical engineering, Fahrney was experienced and technically skilled. He was also a visionary.
Working in cooperation with the Naval Aircraft Factory, Fahrney supervised the modification of two Curtiss biplanes and two Stearman biplanes into “drones.” (It’s fairly certain that Fahrney was the first person to use the term “drone” in the context of unmanned aircraft. This was probably intended as a friendly acknowledgement of the British Queen Bee from which the U.S. Navy program had taken its inspiration.)
By 1937, Fahrney’s team was conducting flight tests of these unmanned drones. A year later, the team’s drones were utilized for anti-aircraft firing tests against gun crews aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ranger. The drones turned out to be difficult targets, surviving barrage after barrage during simulated attack runs against the warship.
The success of the drones, and the ship’s failure to knock them out of the sky, forced a sweeping reevaluation of anti-aircraft capabilities throughout the fleet. The tests with USS Ranger also convinced Fahrney that radio-controlled aircraft could be used as offensive weapons, conducting direct bomb or torpedo attacks against enemy ships.
Fahrney quickly arranged an operational test, sending an “assault drone” armed with a dummy warhead against the battleship USS Utah. Unfortunately for Fahrney, the gunners aboard the Utah were better shots than their shipmates on the Ranger. As the drone was commencing its dive bombing run, a burst of flak made a direct hit on the unmanned aircraft. The drone crashed into the sea, ending the simulated attack.
Fahrney was not discouraged. His demonstration had been cut short by a lucky shot, but he had no doubt that the underlying concept was both practical and achievable. A remote-controlled drone could attack an enemy warship, without risking the life of a pilot.
While investigating options for improving his assault drone, Fahrney encountered Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, a brilliant immigrant from Russia who had become the chief scientist for the Radio Corporation of America (better known as RCA). Zworykin, who would eventually hold key patents for the technology behind both the television and the electron microscope, had been trying for years to interest the U.S. Navy in the idea of a flying torpedo guided by an electric eye. Navy leaders had regarded Dr. Zworykin’s concept as unnecessary, expensive, and—in all likelihood—impossible.
Fahrney took one look at the proposal, and disregarded all previous evaluations of its potential. He quickly arranged a contract with RCA to develop a series of experimental television systems for use aboard Navy aircraft.
Because Zworykin had been tinkering with the idea for years, he had a functional prototype ready in only a few months. The first model weighed 340 pounds, far too heavy for a relatively small drone, but light enough for testing aboard a manned aircraft. The initial tests were successful, proving that video signals from one airplane could be seen and interpreted from another plane up to 20 miles away.
While the prototype tests were underway, Zworykin’s team at RCA was working on a new and smaller model. Dubbed ‘Block-1’ because of its rectangular shape, the new model weighed only 97 pounds, and fit into an 8x8x24 inch box (i.e. the block).
Before the Block-1 prototype could be installed on an airframe for testing, the Japanese Imperial Navy conducted its now infamous bombing raid on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, inflicting unprecedented damage on the U.S. Pacific fleet. The American aircraft carriers and some light escort ships emerged unscathed, because they were absent from Pearl Harbor during the raid, but the majority of the fleet was devastated.
The U.S. Navy was thrown into chaos. The battleships, the primary might of the fleet at that time, had been mauled. Some of the damaged hulls would be salvaged and returned to service, but—with the Japanese Imperial Navy rampaging through the Pacific—the United States could not sit idle and wait for the battleships to be repaired. The American Navy needed to be combat-ready immediately.
The aircraft carriers were a major part of the solution. They represented a radical departure from the big guns and heavy armor of dreadnought warfare. In the coming months, the carriers would clearly establish themselves as the future of naval power projection, but in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, their reliability and capability had not yet been proven. In this climate of uncertainty, Fahrney’s television-guided assault drone suddenly seemed like a very promising idea.
In February of 1942, the Navy issued a top secret directive known as Project Option, making the assault drone a national defense priority. Fahrney and Zworykin didn’t even have a functional prototype ready, when they abruptly found themselves with a full-scale development program under the leadership of Commodore Oscar Smith.
Only two months after the program’s inception, the Project Option team launched a successful test attack against the USS Aaron Ward, a destroyer moving at 15 knots with full evasive maneuvering. The unmanned assault drone, which had been converted from an existing torpedo plane, was guided from remote control by the pilot of a plane circling 8 miles away—completely out of sight of the destroyer under attack.
Watching the remote video feed from a television camera in the nose of the assault drone, the pilot had no trouble gui
ding the drone into a perfect attack run. The torpedo ran straight under the hull of the wildly evading destroyer. If the weapon had been armed with a live warhead, USS Aaron Ward would have been blasted out of the water.
Senior political officials and upper echelon military leaders were stunned by the motion picture films of the test attack. Few people who watched the films had any doubt that they were witnessing a major shift in the nature of warfare.
Admiral King, who had recently been promoted by President Roosevelt to Chief of Naval Operations, ordered Commodore Smith to proceed with the production of 5,000 assault drones. King also directed Commodore Smith to create eighteen drone squadrons, to serve under the command of a new Special Air Task Force.
Although Project Option had support at the highest level, the program was not by any means universally popular. Ironically, the fiercest opposition came from Rear Admiral John H. Towers, who had replaced Admiral King as head of the Bureau of Aeronautics. Admiral Towers insisted that it was unwise to commit valuable resources to an unproven weapon system. (His opposition seems doubly ironic in view of the struggle that Towers himself had endured in the 1920s and 30s, while attempting to gather support for naval aviation over the objections of leaders who openly doubted the effectiveness of aircraft carriers and airplanes in a world dominated by cruisers and battleships.)
While Fahrney clearly believed in the assault drone concept, he recognized the need to give the program’s detractors as little justification for criticism as possible. He decided that the full-production model torpedo drones should be manufactured using the smallest feasible quantities of war-critical resources. As a result, the first generation of torpedo drones, designated TDN-1, were constructed almost entirely of wood.
