Predator by Richard Whittle Page A

airborne at most four hours, and at relatively low altitude, but Lehman decided the marines could use such a capability, and the drone and its control van were small enough for ground troops to transport.
    The Navy secretary was even more excited by the possibility of developing a mini-drone like the Mastiff to spot targets for four World War II battleships he had persuaded President Ronald Reagan and Congress to bring out of mothballs. Each of the four dreadnoughts bristled with nine sixteen-inch guns that could fire man-size shells the weight of an economy car twenty-three miles. But because the munitions came to earth at over-the-horizon distances, the ship’s gunners usually had no way to see where their shells were landing, unless a manned aircraft were sent to observe the target, which was both inefficient and dangerous. Critics derided Lehman’s battleships as far too vulnerable and their guns as far too inaccurate in the guided-missile age, but Lehman saw their sixteen-inch batteries as a terrific standoff weapon and a magnificent reminder of the American might Reagan was reasserting around the globe. To make them more effective and fend off critics, though, he wanted to give their gunners a better way to spot targets. After seeing the Mastiff, he believed reconnaissance drones could be the answer.
    DARPA’s Bob Williams thought Army leaders might be interested in the Amber for a different reason. The Army had been trying for more than a decade to develop a Cold War–inspired mini-RPV of its own that could carry a TV camera and a laser designator, a device to shine a laser beam on a target and guide special artillery shells to their mark. The Army’s drone was named Aquila, Latin for “eagle,” but by 1984 this Aquila was proving to be a turkey.
    Powered by a propeller about two feet in diameter that was housed in a big, round duct at the drone’s tail, the Aquila had a short, fat fuselage and broad but stubby swept wings. The Army’s operational requirements called for the Aquila to stay airborne just three hours at a time, but that proved to be a challenge. In 1984 alone, after more than a decade of development, ten of sixty-six Aquila test flights ended in crashes or had to be aborted with an emergency parachute landing. The Aquila’s several Army managers, analysts would later find, had steadily added requirements that caused cost increases and schedule delays and drove the little drone’s weight up to crippling levels. By 1984, the Army was estimating that it would cost more than two billion dollars to develop and procure 543 Aquilas and their ground stations. That was four times as much money for about two-thirds the number of Aquilas originally planned—and the drone was still years from being ready for service.
    By mid-1985, Williams had persuaded the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army all to help DARPA develop the Amber, with the Navy taking the lead. The Navy Department agreed in December 1984 to a “remote control vehicle joint program” aimed at creating a drone able to fly twenty-four hours or more at altitudes of up to thirty thousand feet. DARPA would award Leading Systems a five-million-dollar contract to get under way and manage the project until the company built and demonstrated an Amber prototype. The Navy would invest twenty-five million dollars and take charge once the prototype proved the basic design was sound. Under Navy supervision, Leading Systems would develop different Amber versions able to carry various payloads, from daylight and infrared video cameras to special radars and sensors able to intercept electronic communications. Eventually, the company might also develop an Amber with a warhead in its nose.
    In July 1985, the Army joined the program, raising the total Amber budget to forty million dollars. Two months later, Karem met with Melvyn R. Paisley, an assistant secretary of the Navy, and came away believing that the Pentagon would