by Leslie Wolfe
Dunwood spoke with great pride about the plant's capabilities. Watching him while he was speaking about all the components built at the plant, Alex thought of a different reason why Dunwood would still be around, continuing to endure Walker's repeated abuse. Maybe he wasn't a hostage in his job, after all. Maybe he just loved what he did with such passion, he couldn't think of living without it.
"The third section of the plant," he continued, "is also the most exciting to see. It's the drone assembly line. Many visitors are surprised that we even have an assembly line for drones. After all, how many are we making? The answer is quite a few. And we're constantly growing our output numbers. Unmanned flight is the future of combat aviation, with great potential to encompass significant pieces of the air-cargo market and numerous other civilian applications. Removing life support and the crew's physical space requirements from a plane, plus the cost of the actual flight crew is a significant cost advantage.
"This translates into a full-blown assembly line, capable of delivering a few hundred units per year. This is the section we're going to be visiting last, to give you all the time you'd like to look around and ask questions. Your clearance level is high enough for your badge to access all doors in the plant, except the static-free areas, for which you need a special clearance. Please feel free to move around as you wish."
"Wow, thank you," Alex said. For some reason she hadn't thought that the plant would be so complex and large.
"And, of course, there's R&D. Our research department makes us proud. They are forward thinking and creative. They come up with ideas, which have secured, over time, this company's leading role on the market. For example, R&D is playing with the idea of designing guidance-and-control software that could be deployed in a matrix, on multiple identical drones, to test—"
"Swarm behaviors?" Alex couldn't refrain from interrupting him. "Sorry, please continue."
"Yes, precisely. We're looking to see if we could embed swarm intelligence into combat strategies. All right, let's go. Let's start with the first section, the module-and-component assembly."
They walked along a path marked by two yellow lines, delimiting the pedestrian safe zone. Dunwood was a tall man and walked fast. Alex could barely keep up on her high heels.
"Would you like some loaner boots for today? I am sure we can find a pair your size," Dunwood said, encouragingly.
"Yes, I would like some boots," she admitted, smiling.
Minutes later, she was able to trot happily, keeping up with Dunwood's wide steps without any problems.
They reached a glass wall extending over tens of yards, against the far left wall of the plant. Behind the glass walls, neatly dressed technicians wearing hairnets, lab coats, and anti-static bracelets, were seated at assembly tables covered in rubber mats. They were assembling or inspecting electronic circuits. Farther in the back, robotic assemblers were soldering components of circuit boards, feeding the technicians finished modules for them to inspect, then wrap in static-free packaging and set in output trays. Complex testing stations were operated with the same efficiency on some of the rubber-coated tables. The larger modules reaching these tables were set on testing stations, and panels with colored LED displays lit up, indicating the quality status of various circuits.
Alex became aware of the extended period of time she had spent looking through the windows at each type of operation. Dunwood stood right beside her, ready to answer questions.
"This is so fascinating, I lost track of time, I'm sorry."
"No problem, that's what we're here to do—show you the entire plant, top to bottom. It's a lot to absorb, so take your time."
"I think we can proceed," Alex said.
"Let's go to body-parts manufacturing then, and if you want to come back here after you've finished the tour, that's not going to be a problem."
"Thank you," Alex said, resuming her brisk walk beside Dunwood.
They entered a noisy, smelly area, where large machinery was producing body parts for the UAVs. Some parts she could easily recognize: wings, main body covers—top and bottom—and landing gear panel doors.
"These," Dunwood said, making a wide gesture toward a line of bulky machines, all equipped with computer monitors, "are compression-molding presses. These machines fabricate almost all parts in a UAV's body structure, including brackets and other similar smaller components. They can be compression, injection, and transfer presses. These over here," he pointed to a different set of machines, "are high precision vacuformers. They use a technology based on vacuum and high temperature to mold parts that have tolerances under ten microns. And these are micro-molding machines, which manufacture the smaller components we use, such as screws, nuts, bolts; all these are produced using extremely high pressures."
One of the micro-molding machines was spitting out oval-shaped components with an amazing speed.
"They are incredibly fast and accurate," Dunwood said, seeing what had attracted her attention. "We rarely use these fulltime, although every single one of them can mold multiple designs."
She approached a couple of machines as close as she dared. They were fascinating in their speed, precision, and automation. The manufacturing workflows were neatly organized and logically designed, and the entire plant astounded her with its highly optimized, efficient, smoothly running processes.
"Now let's proceed to assembly," Dunwood said, leading the way to the largest section of the plant. "In assembly, we have multiple lines. The GPS handheld and in-dash lines are here," he said, pointing to a rather small assembly line, operated in a corner by technicians wearing white lab coats. "The products are small, so they don't take a lot of space. We've adapted a system, invented for picking and packing in warehouses fulfilling large numbers of items, called 'pick-a-light' or 'pick-to-light,' for our assembly needs.
"Pick-a-light signals the human operator, by having lights go on and off on the shelving behind him, to indicate which items, and how many, need to be picked and packaged in the box that is traveling on the conveyor belt in front of him. We have adapted it to our assembly lines to integrate all stages of assembly into one line. On our assembly lines, there is no pre-assembly, assembly, QA, packing, and shipping. The entire flow covers all stages of the assembly, and the assembly workers are guided through the process by lights and LCD panels installed next to them, advising what the next part to install is and the next step to perform."
"Wow," Alex said, impressed. The line moved swiftly, workers picking parts off the shelves without hesitation, guided by lights that would come on and go off in harmony with their moves. "But they don't scan bar codes, so how does the system know when the part was picked off the shelf, and if it was the right one?"
"We have installed weight-sensitive panels on the shelves. If, for example, a component weighing precisely 12.7 grams should be picked next, the system watches for that particular change in shelf items weight. If it records a change by more or by less, the line comes to a stop."
"I understand, from what you are showing me, that quality is quite easy to control and achieve at high standards with this system in place, right?"
A frown clouded his wrinkled face.
"From an assembly perspective, yes. We can't go wrong in picking parts and modules. We could still make assembly errors, such as faulty soldering of modules and so on. However, most quality errors are coming from lower quality parts, such as chips and circuit boards. My money is on the circuit boards, because we thoroughly test the chips before installation."
"What would it take to increase the quality of the circuit boards?" Alex treaded carefully, knowing she was entering an area of high sensitivity for Dunwood.
"Money. Lots of it. We took so much cost out of the product, I am surprised it's not worse. You can only go so far, you know." His face was expressing sadness and a touch of anger.
"Who invented this system?" Alex changed direction.
"What system?"
"The pick-a-light for assembly. By the way, what's
it called?"
"Oh . . . I don't know that it has a name."
"Who invented it? That's pretty darn brilliant."
"I did," Dunwood replied modestly. "I adapted pick-a-light for the assembly lines, it works now on most of them. The weighing is so precise that the line will stop even if we miss a label of only 12 milligrams."
"You should give it a name, you know. After all, it's your baby," Alex said, smiling.
"Maybe I will, we'll see. Over here, we have the RX5 assembly line. All the assembly is done by technicians, no assembly robots here. Technically, we use the same system to manage parts and control the quality of the assembly. The RX series are recon drones; they have no combat capabilities. They carry enhanced imaging equipment, not ordnance. On our right side, you can see the longest assembly line of all, dedicated to the CX series drones. The CXs are combat UAVs, or UCAVs, designed to carry significant amounts of ordnance depending on size, range, and payload. They also carry sensitive detection-and-imaging equipment, including visible spectrum and infrared cameras, and a satellite comlink."
Dunwood walked along the assembly line, from finish toward the start. He passed the finalized drones, in various stages of final assembly, until he reached a drone that was still missing the upper housing on its body.
"The reason why the UAV's body has this hump here, resembling the shape of the cockpit in some piloted aircraft, is because it's holding a satellite dish, specially designed to operate in flight. This here," he continued, sneaking his hand deep inside the open drone, "is the navigation system. It guides the drone just like your GPS guides you. This other one is the targeting module. It searches for targets, and when a drone locks on a target, this module lights green, signaling the weapons module the target lock, so it can launch the missiles. Nevertheless, it first asks for ground control's permission to launch. This here, this little black box, is the drone's brain. It communicates with ground control and interprets the communications received into mechanical actions, such as gear down, for example. It also confirms to the drone when to launch a missile. The rest is avionics, fuel tanks, hardpoint controls, and landing gear controls.
Dunwood looked briefly at his watch and frowned.
"May I please ask you to give me thirty minutes before going to lunch? I forgot a conference call that I have in about four minutes."
"Ah, sure, don't worry about it; I'll get out of your way."
"Feel free to look around, don't touch anything, though. Do you remember where my office was?"
"I-I think so," Alex responded, hesitantly.
"If not, you can ask anyone. Can you meet me there in half an hour?"
"Sure, will do. Thank you for the tour, it was amazing!"
"It's not over yet," Dunwood said, leaving in his agile step.
Left alone, Alex wondered what she could do best with the thirty minutes of freedom she had gained. She started toward the start of the assembly line for the CX model, and then she backtracked. No, instead let's talk to some people.
She made her way to the cafeteria, the one place guaranteed to have human traffic any time of day. She had almost reached the cafeteria door, when she ran into Janet Templeton. Despite all the time they had spent together discussing Rottweiler puppies, Janet didn't seem to recognize her. Alex smiled and prepared to greet Janet. Seeing her approach, Janet looked down, then suddenly turned right and disappeared behind a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. Alex was sure Janet had recognized her, yet refused to be seen talking with her. What the hell is going on here?
She grabbed a can of Coke from the vending machine and took it outside to the designated smoking area. She took out her e-cig and slowly walked around, hoping to spark a conversation with someone. There were a couple of people, smoking quietly, nervously, not interacting with her or with each other.
She approached one of them. "Hi."
"Hi," the man responded, lacking any interest in her or the conversation. He was pale, with eyes deep set in their sockets, giving him an appearance of sickness and famine. Maybe smoking wasn't the best thing for this guy.
"How's today treating you?" Alex asked.
"Just like any day, I guess," he answered, showing just as little enthusiasm as before.
"I'm Alex Hoffmann, visiting from corporate," she said, extending her hand to greet him.
"Hank Baker." He briefly grasped her hand, and then eagerly let it go. His hand was cold and sweaty, unusual in the 102-degree heat. "Corporate, huh?"
"Yes, I'm here to visit the plant. I'm fairly new, I just started mid-June. This place is amazing!"
"Yeah? Well, try working here for a while, then we'll talk amazing," he said grumpily.
"Why? What's wrong? Like I said, I am new, so I don't know much about anything."
"What's wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong. We, the workers, mean absolutely nothing to you corporate brass. Every time our boss goes to corporate, he comes back with more cuts, more changes, more cost reductions, or whatever the hell they want to call it when they suck the life out of us and this plant and put people in the street for no reason. That's what's wrong."
"I see. Well, has anyone tried to do anything about it?"
"Do you think I want to see a pink slip with my name on it? Do you think any of us wants that? We tried, and that's exactly what happened . . . Firing people, that's what corporate knows how to do. And it happens a lot. Since you're new and all, I hope you won't get me fired over our little chat, here—"
"Oh, no, don't worry about it," Alex said, reassuringly.
"Not this week, anyway," he said bitterly, throwing away his cigarette butt, and walking away without saying good-bye. Just before entering the building, he spat on the grass with a gesture that expressed the deepest contempt, rather than the need to get rid of a foreign particle in his mouth.
The other smoker had been watching silently, from a close-enough distance to be aware of what was discussed. Alex turned to him and smiled. The man started walking away, taking one more drag off his cigarette.
"Oh, no," he said, making rejection gestures with his hand, "I have nothing to talk to you about. How do I know you're not some fancy-dressed corporate rat sent here to spy on us? Hank's got three kids; I have two. Leave me alone, I have nothing to say to you," he said firmly, and went inside, slamming the door behind him.
OK, that was interesting, Alex thought. She looked at her watch and decided to head toward Dunwood's office. The thirty minutes he had requested were almost gone.
Dunwood was wrapping up his conference call. He waved her to come in and sit.
"Now, for the fun part," he said, after hanging up the phone, "we're going to take an electric cart and head out to the testing field. Let's see what we have going today," he said, flipping through his calendar. "In about twenty minutes, we have a couple of Hellfire missile launches scheduled, an air-to-ground attack on fixed and mobile targets. This will be fun to watch, but we'll need protective gear for our eyes and ears." He opened a cabinet and took out two hardhats, two sets of noise protection earmuffs, and two pairs of clear, protective plastic eye shields. "We're going to circle by the cafeteria on our way, to pick up a couple of sandwiches."
They headed out deep into the fields, behind the plant. Adjacent to the plant's main building, a few storage hangars housed the finished drones. A strip of asphalt road led from the plant to the field, running by each hangar. This was the taxiway for the UAVs, allowing them to commute between their allotted storage space, to the landing strip, and to the testing field. Dunwood maneuvered the cart with speed and precision, and as soon as they passed a small ridge, the landing strip became visible. It was fully equipped with complete landing lights and a windsock. The landing strip was long and wide, much longer than needed for UAV use.
"Does anyone else use this strip?" Alex asked.
"Yes, visiting military often land here, rather than go to John Wayne Airport and drive back here. It depends on the aircraft size—if we can accommodate, we will. It saves everyone
a lot of time. ATC is there," he said, pointing at a small tower overseeing the strip.
"What's ATC?" Alex asked.
"Air Traffic Control. The control tower," Dunwood clarified. "We only staff it when we expect visitors. Drones don't need ATC, because they have the ground operators to supervise everything during testing. Here we are."
He stopped the cart next to a row of picnic tables, set in line along a fence. There were posted warnings every thirty feet or so, advising potential passersby that they are trespassing if they enter this testing area and testing takes place using live ammunition. Unlike other No Trespassing signs, which might indicate the legal consequences of trespassing, this one didn't mention any negative outcome of committing the trespassing crime. Just mentioning the live ammo was enough to scare anyone away.
They unwrapped their lunches, carefully prepared by the cafeteria. Double-sized sandwiches, cookies, and soft drinks. Before they were finished, the hum of a UAV engine drew their attention.
"This one is preparing for takeoff. It came out of the hangar there," he said, pointing at the only hangar that had a door open, "and it's moving toward the runway. It will take off momentarily. Time to put on the gear," he said, handing her the hardhat, glasses, and earmuffs. "According to the testing schedule," Dunwood added, consulting briefly a printed schedule, "the drone will self-guide today, acquire the fixed land target represented by that concrete bunker there," he said, pointing at a distant structure, barely visible, "and blow it up. We are outside the drone's perimeter, but we're close enough to see all the action."
With all that gear on, her head seemed twice as big. The hard hat came all the way down to her eyebrows; it must have been a couple of sizes too large. The protective glasses were also too large, covering half her face. She squinted, trying to distinguish the target, holding her hand up to shade her eyes.