Free Predator by Richard Whittle
Authors: Richard Whittle
book in 1983 about the defense acquisition system containing pithy observations he called Augustineâs Laws. One law addressed the inexorable rise in the cost of developing aerospace technology: âIn the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft.â The Air Force, Navy, and Marines, Augustine added, would have to share the plane. The last thing Blue wanted to do was get tied up in the âdefense acquisition systemâ his friend Augustine had lampooned, a sclerotic bureaucracy that could mangle the execution of even the most elegant technological ideas.
Not long after joining General Atomics, Cassidy met Bill Sadler, an aviation entrepreneur in Scottsdale, Arizona, who had designed and was selling a single-seat âultralightâ plane that Cassidy thought had possibilities. Built for sport, the aluminum monoplane had an open pod cockpit made of fiberglass and Kevlar, a pusher propeller in back of that, and twin booms leading back to a horizontal stabilizer. The configuration resembled a 1950s British fighter jet called the Vampire, so its designer called it the Sadler Vampire.
Sadler, an electrical engineer with a masterâs degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was intrigued by the idea of turning his sport plane into an âattack droneâ so inexpensive that thousands could be sold. After a meeting in June 1987 with the Blues and Cassidy at General Atomicsâ headquarters, he signed a time-and-materials contract to convert his Sadler Vampire into a drone with a computerized autopilot whose guidance would come from a GPS receiver. Sadler took one of his ultralights, shortened the wingspan from thirty to eighteen feet, gave it a smaller tail, and then installed a Trimble Navigation GPS receiver and connected it to the autopilot.
Soon Cassidy was flying from San Diego up to Phoenix about once a month to meet with Sadler and gauge his progress. They would rendezvous at Sadlerâs house in Scottsdale before sunrise and drive to Gila River Memorial Field, an abandoned single-runway airstrip on a dusty Native American reservation fourteen miles south of Phoenix. Sadler would haul the prototype down from his shop in Scottsdale on a trailer, folding its wings up into a triangle to fit. The two men had to launch early to catch the signals from the only four GPS satellites the military had deployed so far, and one of the men had to be in the cockpit to take off and land and make sure the plane flew properly. Cassidy could fly anything, but he was too big to fit into the little pod cockpit, so Sadler served as safety pilot during the tests, getting the plane airborne and remaining ready to take over when necessary. With each passing month, the autopilot did more of the flying. The goal was to get the plane to the point where its autopilot alone could fly it to waypoints using GPS signals to navigate. Part of the challenge was to program the autopilot so that it wouldnât put the plane into a stall or otherwise cause it to go out of control.
Neal Blue wanted to call his pet project the Birdie, because âbirdies go cheep, cheep, cheep.â Potential military and international customers, he was sure, would get the pun and appreciate the point that this was going to be a very inexpensive weapon. After Cassidy finished rolling his eyes, he started collecting alternative suggestions, and soon a blackboard in his office was cluttered with a couple of hundred possible names. The former Navy admiral pondered them for a while, then chose one he thought conveyed the right image for their product. Early one morning, as Sadler was getting ready to climb into the cockpit for a flight test, Cassidy told him, âOh, by the way, we have a name for the airplane now.â Then he walked to the tail and smoothed on a sticker bearing the new appellation. Later, Cassidy and the Blue brothers would insist it was pure coincidence that an Arnold Schwarzenegger
Not long after joining General Atomics, Cassidy met Bill Sadler, an aviation entrepreneur in Scottsdale, Arizona, who had designed and was selling a single-seat âultralightâ plane that Cassidy thought had possibilities. Built for sport, the aluminum monoplane had an open pod cockpit made of fiberglass and Kevlar, a pusher propeller in back of that, and twin booms leading back to a horizontal stabilizer. The configuration resembled a 1950s British fighter jet called the Vampire, so its designer called it the Sadler Vampire.
Sadler, an electrical engineer with a masterâs degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was intrigued by the idea of turning his sport plane into an âattack droneâ so inexpensive that thousands could be sold. After a meeting in June 1987 with the Blues and Cassidy at General Atomicsâ headquarters, he signed a time-and-materials contract to convert his Sadler Vampire into a drone with a computerized autopilot whose guidance would come from a GPS receiver. Sadler took one of his ultralights, shortened the wingspan from thirty to eighteen feet, gave it a smaller tail, and then installed a Trimble Navigation GPS receiver and connected it to the autopilot.
Soon Cassidy was flying from San Diego up to Phoenix about once a month to meet with Sadler and gauge his progress. They would rendezvous at Sadlerâs house in Scottsdale before sunrise and drive to Gila River Memorial Field, an abandoned single-runway airstrip on a dusty Native American reservation fourteen miles south of Phoenix. Sadler would haul the prototype down from his shop in Scottsdale on a trailer, folding its wings up into a triangle to fit. The two men had to launch early to catch the signals from the only four GPS satellites the military had deployed so far, and one of the men had to be in the cockpit to take off and land and make sure the plane flew properly. Cassidy could fly anything, but he was too big to fit into the little pod cockpit, so Sadler served as safety pilot during the tests, getting the plane airborne and remaining ready to take over when necessary. With each passing month, the autopilot did more of the flying. The goal was to get the plane to the point where its autopilot alone could fly it to waypoints using GPS signals to navigate. Part of the challenge was to program the autopilot so that it wouldnât put the plane into a stall or otherwise cause it to go out of control.
Neal Blue wanted to call his pet project the Birdie, because âbirdies go cheep, cheep, cheep.â Potential military and international customers, he was sure, would get the pun and appreciate the point that this was going to be a very inexpensive weapon. After Cassidy finished rolling his eyes, he started collecting alternative suggestions, and soon a blackboard in his office was cluttered with a couple of hundred possible names. The former Navy admiral pondered them for a while, then chose one he thought conveyed the right image for their product. Early one morning, as Sadler was getting ready to climb into the cockpit for a flight test, Cassidy told him, âOh, by the way, we have a name for the airplane now.â Then he walked to the tail and smoothed on a sticker bearing the new appellation. Later, Cassidy and the Blue brothers would insist it was pure coincidence that an Arnold Schwarzenegger