Predator by Richard Whittle Page B

asset,” a genius whose work could be invaluable to America’s defense. During the Amber’s deep political stall, Abe had leaned on Ira heavily for advice, sending him drafts of his plans, proposals, and letters and calling Kuhn almost daily on the phone. Now, with the Amber dead and buried, Kuhn wanted to help Karem salvage what he could of Leading Systems.
    Hughes foreclosed in late 1990, taking legal possession of all Leading Systems’ property. At first, the big defense company told the bankruptcy court it might establish a UAV subsidiary and hire Karem as a consultant, but that plan fell through when Karem’s chief supporter at Hughes was struck down by a sudden illness. By January 1991, Hughes was trying to sell the assets of Leading Systems, and Karem was trying to help find a buyer—ideally someone with money who would appreciate the value of what he had accomplished, take possession of all his physical and intellectual property from Hughes, and then bankroll Karem and the core of his team in a fresh start, with the Gnat 750 as their base. Kuhn made some calls, talked to some friends, and came up with an idea: what about the Blue brothers, Neal and Linden, the owners of General Atomics?
    With Karem’s encouragement, Kuhn called Linden, the brother Kuhn knew best, and told him about Karem—his brilliance, his team, and the promise of his drones. “You guys have been wanting to get into the unmanned vehicle business,” Kuhn told Linden. “Why don’t you get serious and go up and buy the remains of Leading Systems? I’ll try to talk Abe into bringing the residual team down to your company and continuing this thing.”
    Kuhn’s timing was excellent. Only a few weeks back, Linden had told Neal that they really needed to move on from their prototype Predator and develop a serious aircraft. The modified aluminum kit plane was proving the concept of using GPS to guide a drone, all right, but otherwise they were at a dead end. A year after the flight demonstration the company staged for the military at Yuma, Sadler still hadn’t been able to automate the Predator sufficiently to fly without him in the cockpit. Besides, in Linden’s view, the aluminum Predator couldn’t hit the performance marks that would be required of a real military UAV.
    If General Atomics wanted to get into the UAV business in a serious way, Linden argued, the company needed to build a drone made of composites, materials such as carbon epoxy, that could be baked into rigid forms to serve as lightweight but sturdy aircraft parts and structures and be less visible to radar than aluminum. As a top executive at Gates Learjet from 1975 to 1980, Linden had overseen experiments that used composites to make aircraft parts, and he knew a lot about the still-emerging technology. He also told Neal they needed to develop a UAV with a high-aspect-ratio wing, which would be essential to creating a drone with exceptional range and endurance. In other words, General Atomics needed to build the kind of drone Abe Karem had already designed.
    Neal listened. By now it was clear that the military had no interest in using UAVs as cheap cruise missiles; moreover, the potential targets that had inspired his interest in the concept were gone. In Nicaragua the Sandinistas were out of power; in Europe, the Berlin Wall had fallen; the Soviet Union was collapsing. In the foreseeable future, at least, no Russian tanks would be pouring into Western Europe.
    The Blue brothers began a series of conversations with Karem, and on Valentine’s Day 1991 Karem faxed Kuhn copies of a “first-cut” proposal he had sent General Atomics and a counteroffer he had gotten back. Karem’s proposal envisioned General Atomics buying his assets from Hughes, then investing nearly four million dollars over the next two years in a “separate entity” to build UAVs. General Atomics would put Karem, Pace, and other