“Exceptional utility,” Vice Admiral David Jeremiah, then vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of Pioneer’s role when the war was over.7 The Pentagon’s postwar report on unmanned systems lauded the “unprecedented success” of the drone, which it said proved “the utility and importance of UAVs in combat.” Only one was shot down, the Defense Department crowed.8 “Pioneer became a legend,” said another analysis.9
Without digging further, uncurious historians refer to “Pioneer’s ability to spot each sixteen-inch round fired by U.S. battleships in real time,” thereby increasing “the accuracy of the big guns.”10 “Ability” is the key word here: there is no evidence that the Pioneer did more than fly and film. And “accuracy” also has a very strange definition; the obsolete and inaccurate projectiles hit the ground, but we don’t know much more about what happened to these shells, which weighed as much as a Volkswagen Beetle. They barreled down to earth with all of hell’s fury, the very antithesis of precision and a leftover of another epoch, America’s own version of Scud terror. In fact, over a period of sixty hours, from February 23 to 26, almost six hundred parcels of retribution—more than half of all the projectiles fired during Desert Storm and nearly as many shells as American battleships fired during the last fifteen months of World War II—rained down on the coastal “defenders.”11
The official military justification was to deceive Iraqi troops into thinking an amphibious invasion was coming and thus pinning them in place. But the real purpose was a form of brutal housekeeping: away from TV cameras and probing eyes, the battleships were pulled out of the old industrial closet and deployed. The United States was able to landfill the old ammunition abroad, rather than having to dispose of it back home.12 Faylakah was the perfect venue for our leftovers. In fact, fighters bombing Iraqi targets farther inland also dropped bombs on Faylakah Island upon returning to their aircraft carriers from unsatisfying missions—the planes couldn’t land on the ships with external bombs still slung under their wings, so they had to go. They could have been jettisoned into the water, but why waste a bomb? Even the incident involving Iraqi soldiers surrendering to Pioneer has an explanation. A Pioneer launched from the battleship Wisconsin became uncontrollable and headed off over Iraqi positions, positions that had already been subjected to heavy bombardment. Iraqi troops poured out of their bunkers and trenches, waving any white material they could lay their hands on in a desperate bid to surrender before—they assumed—the arrival of yet more sixteen-inch shells. Flying at a low level and out of control, the drone had developed a mind of its own and must have appeared particularly menacing—at least before it ran out of fuel and crashed.13
The boosters crowed about Pioneer’s debut, but the actual record of its performance and its overall military contribution tells a different story. This would be the usual case as warfare moved from the industrial to the information era, this dichotomy of everything going as well as could be expected, or even better, the technology working perfectly, and yet that fact is completely divorced from any complex and larger outcome. This phenomenon has become even more pronounced with drones and the world of black boxes, where in addition secrecy and novelty aggrandize so much attention, obscuring and even erasing the reality on the ground.
So despite all of the quotes from the generals, Pioneer wasn’t any kind of magic bullet; in reality, ground commanders and operators alike found Pioneer difficult to employ and limited in its usefulness. The army’s Pioneer didn’t arrive in Saudi Arabia until a week after the shooting began and did not fly a mission until February 1.14 The 100-mile range and three-hour endurance were really too short to support ground forces at distances where they needed reconnaissance the most. The drones also demanded constant radio line of sight from the operator, and had communications lines that were both limited and vulnerable to jamming. It was supposedly a dangerous place to be, exposed to Iraqi antiaircraft guns. Thus, the claim that only one drone was shot down would be impressive were it not for the fact that Pioneers flew only in airspace where defenses had already been beaten back by other aircraft and artillery. In fact, more than a dozen Pioneers ended up lost not to enemy action, but to operator error or mechanical failure.15 Since imagery feeds via satellite links had not been developed yet, data transmission of what Pioneer could see was also limited.16 If two Pioneers were flying at once, the imagery could only be viewed from one at a time. Insufficient infrared cooling systems hampered nighttime viewing, and operators never quite knew precisely where the drones were, lacking as they were in both precision navigation and onboard geolocation. With a small engine that was overstressed and required special 100-octane gasoline, and with little ability to maneuver, flying was also hazardous.17 Rain eroded Pioneer’s laminated wood propellers.18 “If it’s raining… or even drizzling, we aren’t flying,” said one navy Pioneer operator.19
Pioneer wasn’t the only system hindered by weather conditions. Even the latest aircraft and laser-guided weapons were flummoxed by rain and moisture, dust and smoke. Half of the missions of the star of the war, the F-117 stealth fighter, were aborted due to weather. The problem was mostly the laser-guided bombs the F-117 carried, predominantly the GBU-27, the newest-generation 2,000-pound munition designed specifically for use by the stealth fighter and its advanced target acquisition system.20 Laser-guided bombs work by using an onboard seeker that responds to reflected laser radiation at a certain frequency. The seeker sees the target as a bright spot and sends signals to the bomb’s basic steering mechanism to orient the direction of flight toward the target. But low visibility and moisture in the air interfered both with basic laser performance and with the aircraft viewing system. Even when weapons were launched, the success rate of synchronizing and then “locking on” the laser spot with the seeker was compromised.
It was a mass of frustrations—the need to counter Iraq’s Scud missile maneuvers, the weather limitations, and the promise (and limitations) of Pioneer and other drones 21—driving what airpower expert Barry Watts calls the development of “a true reconnaissance-strike complex able to find fleeting or time-sensitive targets and strike them in near–real time.”22 Needed first was something that would allow aircraft and weapons to simply receive coordinates on the ground and home in on that location. The navy’s Navigation Signal Timing and Ranging Global Positioning System (NAVSTAR), which later went by the acronym GPS, provided the geographic transparency.23 After Desert Storm, the air force also accelerated development of a new bomb called the Joint Direct Attack Munition (or JDAM, pronounced “jay-dam”), a weapon dependent on GPS and one that eventually paved the way to making geolocation the most important objective in warfare.24
Developed by Boeing, JDAM is a conversion “kit” for dumb bombs that gives any aircraft an all-weather precision strike capability, requiring only that the weapon senses where it began and where the target is in geographic coordinates. And at less than $30,000 per kit, JDAM cost one-twentieth of what a laser-guided bomb cost and one-fiftieth of what a cruise missile cost.
Of course, nothing is that simple, especially once an active, mobile enemy is involved, but as long as the position, speed, and heading of the aircraft are known and communicated to the weapon; as long as JDAM can acquire and track the signals of four GPS satellites once it leaves the airplane; as long as the coordinates of the target on the ground are accurate; as long as the release mechanism on the airplane, the computers, the mission planning software, the fuses, and the bomb all work; as long as no human error is made in “fat fingering” data into computers, then JDAM is able to fly itself to the given coordinates and hit the target, exploding within about forty-five feet of any intended location on earth, regardless of weather.25 This is officially labeled “near precision,” which gives some sense of how much perfection was sought.
After all of the unexpected weather interferences of Desert Storm, JDAM quickly moved forward in development. During testing, weapons recorded 95 percent system reliability while consistently landing one-third close
r than the design specifications demanded.26 Amidst testing, on June 26, 1993, the twenty-fourth GPS satellite was launched into orbit, completing the worldwide network. Each satellite carries a time code and a precise data point that when triangulated allows a receiver to calculate position, speed, and time to the nearest few feet. The extremely precise time lag—measured in fractions of a second—between the satellite transmission and the receiver is converted into distance to each satellite. The minute difference between signals is then used to calculate the receiver’s position.27
JDAM kits were developed to go on 2,000-pound, 1,000-pound, and 500-pound bombs. The navy joined the program, and GPS receivers were installed in aircraft of all stripes, and a massive program was started to verify and make target coordinates on the ground up-to-date and superprecise. Time-critical targets, then identified as ballistic missiles (like the Iraqi Scuds), also demanded ways of transferring target data from real-time intelligence systems to the attacking aircraft even after the aircraft had taken off.28
In 1997, the air force received its first operational JDAMs. By then, the United States had been patrolling the skies over Iraq for six years, enforcing no-fly zones and occasionally bombing targets on the ground. Development of JDAM followed big-war visions, which of course meant big numbers. According to one air force briefing, incorporating JDAMs into B-1 bombers would represent 78 percent of the air force’s payload, or the ability to deliver 2,280 JDAMs by ninety-five bombers in a single attack,29 more than all of the weapons delivered by the entire stealth fighter force in forty-three days of Desert Storm. General Buster Glosson, the operational deputy of the first Iraq air war who went on to head the air staff’s development directorate, described JDAM’s potential, based upon testing in Nevada, as a single bomber being able to “destroy” twenty-four separate targets in a single pass.30
The astuteness behind developing JDAM was seen in 1999, when Operation Allied Force, the air war over Kosovo, began. Weather conditions over Serbia and Kosovo were at least 50 percent cloud cover more than 70 percent of the time, and only twenty-one days out of a total of seventy-eight days of bombing were clear. In addition, Serbian ground forces and paramilitaries baited and vexed air planners, moving in the literal fog, hiding under trees and in urban areas, not to mention using human shields to instill hesitation in NATO’s committee-based decision-making. Yet while 16 percent of all strike sorties were lost to poor weather, JDAM never faltered. Forty-five B-2 stealth bombers, flying arduous round-trip bombing missions all the way from Missouri to Europe, delivered 656 JDAMs day in and day out. Despite the poor weather conditions, the JDAMs performed flawlessly, according to air force reports.31
The reaction from military pilots was no different than some dot-com boomers gushing about their new inventions. “Weather and other battlefield conditions that might obscure a target do not affect JDAM,” one air force pilot said.32 “JDAM solves the problem of bad weather, camouflage, [and] excessive winds aloft and night,” said another.33 Appearing at a Pentagon briefing toward the end of the conflict, Brigadier General Leroy Barnidge, Jr., the B-2 wing commander, told reporters, “I’ve seen zero collateral damage” from JDAM strikes.34
So many bombs dropping on so many precise targets: that was the public picture. But the true behind-the-scenes goal was a scramble to obtain and generate sufficient targets, thereby increasing the capacity of bomb-damage assessment in wartime: Did the bomb hit its desired impact point? Did the bomb detonate as planned and with full force? Did the bomb fuse function as intended?35
By the time JDAM proved itself, the simplicity of black box advancements like GPS was already resulting in revolutionary changes in automobiles, telephones, and other civilian gadgetry. Many senior leaders, even senior airmen, tried to temper the notions of weather being brushed aside, of darkness being turned to light, of perfect warfare emerging in a simple three-step process of finding the target, locating it precisely, and destroying it. It wasn’t just that the networks and black boxes would themselves be potentially vulnerable to a competent opponent. The Data Machine to support the overall endeavor was still in its infancy. Unmanned technologies were becoming more and more dominant, but, like modern-day Gilgameshes, the military still needed to make a long journey.
CHAPTER FOUR
Trojan Spirit
[Said] Ur-shanabi to him [to Gilgamesh],
“Set to, O Gilgamesh! Take the first [punting pole!]
Let your hand not touch the Waters of Death,
lest you wither [it!]”
TABLET X, EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Predator’s journey from invention to implementation is less clear than that of JDAM. Some insist that Predator originated in the mind of a Baghdad-born Israeli turned mad scientist named Abraham “Abe” Karem; or that a courageous CIA engineer named “Jane” defied the bureaucracy and made it so. Then there’s a retired air force colonel known to all by his call sign, Snake, who spearheaded Predator’s development by cutting through the bureaucracy. Another member of the cast is an army weapons expert who goes by the nickname Boom Boom, who integrated the Hellfire missile and changed the game completely. Lurking nearby is another woman called the Black Widow, who figured out matters of temperature and torque. Or maybe it was retired navy rear admiral Thomas J. Cassidy, who became CEO and president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Predator’s California birthplace. Others say it was CIA director R. James Woolsey; or Secretary of Defense William Perry; or Under Secretary of Defense (and future CIA director) John Deutch. Air force aficionados say chief of staff General Ron Fogleman had the vision of a reconnaissance platform in an era of disappearing planes and declining budgets. Others say it was General John P. Jumper, European commander and later chief of staff, who experienced all of the limitations of Bosnia and Kosovo and then went on to champion an armed drone, a system conceived and developed because of the vision of this one man.1
None of these characterizations tells the whole story, but they do suggest that someone is responsible, that “drones,” despite the name, were spurred by imagination and courage; that there is a hero. Except that in the case of Predator, modern-day historians have a hard time putting a face to the machine. When I told an air force friend of mine, an airpower historian and teacher, that I was writing a book about drones, he responded that they had a pretty uninspiring history—“maybe for want of people.”
Absent a discoverer or single champion, the alternative is to personify some organization as birthing and nurturing the drone. As with all military history intent on a human face, there is a subtext here as well: that Predator represents the vision of a network of courageous souls working in and across organizations; or the opposite, that Predator or some forerunner was shortchanged or squashed by evil bureaucrats and self-interested organizations who weren’t a part of the advance, the desk-bound armed only with a non-concur, like scorpion men standing in Gilgamesh’s way on his journey to the end of the earth, guarding the Mashu of advance.
And then there’s the tendency to do the thing that comes with the recounting of any controversial program, which is to paint it as unexceptional. That’s how, when one reads about Predator, one also hears of Compass Arrow and Combat Dawn, of Albatross, Condor, Prowler, and Praerie, Teal Rain and AARS, Amber and Gnat-750, the begetters of more modern iterations. These are all just characters, however, in an epic that conveys the message for fans and critics alike that nothing is ever really new and that therefore Predator per se shouldn’t be criticized, shouldn’t be singled out, that since everything is a continuum, there is no good or bad, even in weapons. There are only good and bad actors and bad historians intent on promoting their theories. Meanwhile, the Luddites and dreamers and enemies all play politics in the face of the need for national security combined with the given of unstoppable technological advance.
Many feel compelled to tell the Predator story by meandering through aviation history and insisting that the unmanned we see today are merely the progeny of balloons of the 1800s or remot
e-controlled thises and thats of the industrial age going back to the First World War; or heck, even that Nikola Tesla came up with the whole idea and it was stolen from him. Drones became so hot in 2013 that the news media, searching for any angle to bring the heroless machines alive, dug up the historical tidbit that Marilyn Monroe was “discovered” while working in a drone factory during World War II. And yes, indeed, Norma Jean was photographed at the Radioplane Munitions Factory in Van Nuys, California: one of the riveters putting finishing touches on an OQ-3 drone.2
But comparing the OQ-3 to the modern-day Predator is kind of like comparing a firecracker to an atom bomb: not only does it ignore all of what makes the two so very different, but it also conveys that tired Washington message that always accompanies the public’s discovery of anything that’s controversial, namely, that Predator is nothing new, that drones have always been with us; that they are neither an invention of 9/11 nor of the war against terrorism. In other words, what’s the big deal?3
It’s actually tricky and complex to say exactly when any weapon is “invented,” and Predator is no exception. Where exactly do you start the story? Do you start it on July 3, 1994, under brilliantly sunny skies in El Mirage, California, where the prototype made its first flight? It flew for less than twenty seconds before gravity brought it back to earth.4 Virtually everything that has been written since about this drone ignores real facts, even sometimes avoiding July 3 altogether. After all, there’s no good way to start a glorious legend with a crash.5
A good place to intercept history, then, is probably the Vietnam War, when the dangerous work of manned aerial reconnaissance over North Vietnamese skies meant much loss of life and lots of political pain, as the names and faces of fallen soldiers and captured pilots ate at the nation’s soul. Unmanned technology had been used in Operation Crossroads, when remotely piloted aircraft took air samples during the atomic bomb tests of 1946–47, but that was basically secret history. In the late 1950s, with spy satellites still not yet launched and the U-2 the only reliable reconnaissance platform that could penetrate deep into Soviet and Chinese territory, work intensified on an unmanned solution that could fly lower and avoid human loss. Drones started flying as replacements for manned aircraft, and reconnaissance drones began regularly penetrating enemy airspace, flying more than 3,000 sorties in North Vietnamese skies, with losses of about 15 percent. But only about 40 percent of the missions were successful in returning reconnaissance images, and the cost (in dollars) was five times greater than a manned mission.6 Only, or that’s the very point of the unmanned, that despite the percentages, no one was killed or captured.7
Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare Page 5