Predator by Richard Whittle

to observe. “It’s a fire-and-forget system. Once you fire it, you can walk away.”
    Cassidy also spoke to the reporter and told him that the Predator would be able to slam into targets at ranges of three hundred miles while carrying three hundred pounds of explosives or a small nuclear warhead, yet each plane would cost just thirty thousand dollars.
    The reporter noted in his article that General Atomics had exhibited but not flown its Predator at the air show the previous May, and that the company had been getting “calls from U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East, but not from the Pentagon.” The article contained no comments or reaction from Admiral Flynn or any of the other military officers present.
    After the demonstration of the prototype in Arizona, Cassidy and his boss hoped their contacts in the military would call back expressing interest. What they got was silence. As Neal Blue put it years later, “They came. They saw. They left.”
    *   *   *
    Even as Karem continued to clash with his handlers at the JPO, DARPA remained impressed with the Amber’s growing capability. In the February 1989 issue of Aerospace America , a magazine published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the agency’s Ronald Murphy noted that the Amber’s “order of magnitude increase” in flight time over previous drones had already led the Joint Chiefs of Staff to establish a new “endurance” category in the RPV master plan demanded by Congress. But in a separate article in the same issue, a DARPA deputy director provided a reality check. Despite support in Congress, an “unquestioned need” for such a drone “on the battlefield,” and the technology’s demonstrated capability, “DARPA’s decision to turn Amber over to the services could prove fatal to the program,” Robert A. Moore wrote. “The services are having difficulty finding adequate funding for field evaluation of Amber while simultaneously meeting the expense of fielding Pioneer.”
    When Karem read the article, his heart sank: Moore might as well have invited the Navy to cancel the Amber. But Abe Karem wasn’t a quitter. Getting a shock from the light switch on his uncle Ezra’s bed hadn’t stopped him from taking things apart when he was a toddler. Seeing his drone proposals undermined by his former colleagues in Israel hadn’t stopped him from pursuing his aviation dreams. Nor did giving up occur to Karem now. Instead, he became a man possessed.
    For the next two years, Karem spent nearly every waking moment trying to save the Amber and Leading Systems. In early 1989, the JPO invited contractors to compete for a contract to produce a UAV for the Army and Marine Corps, asking for a drone that could loiter over an area as much as ninety miles from its base for five to twelve hours. Karem offered the Amber, and Leading Systems was one of three bidders. Mullowney’s office announced that two bidders would be selected to compete for the final award—a potential billion-dollar deal. The winner would be commissioned to build an expected four hundred drones and fifty systems needed to fly them (ground control stations and related gear) within five years.
    The Amber clearly could perform the mission, but the JPO also made it clear that the finalists would have to prove they had the experience, facilities, manpower, and “organizational structure” to produce aircraft in significant numbers, and provide parts and supplies to the services later on. Karem’s deputy, Frank Pace, told his boss that Leading Systems needed to team with a much bigger company to have a chance, but Karem was reluctant.
    â€œHe didn’t really want to team,” Pace mused years later. “He didn’t want anybody to tell him what to do.”
    For months, Karem dithered. In the end, though, he had no choice—Leading Systems