Free Predator by Richard Whittle Page B

their products and capabilities,” Aviation Week noted, and “two remotely piloted vehicles were displayed for the first time.”
    Looming over Booth 500, a prominently situated space just inside the west entrance to one of the pavilions, was the new General Atomics “Predator” prototype. Painted in green, brown, and beige jungle camouflage, the stubby-winged aluminum monoplane was mounted on a pedestal as if making a diving turn onto a target. Bill Sadler had designed the display and even built the pedestal himself. He and Tom Cassidy were in the booth for much of the show, telling potential customers and reporters how the 340-pound Predator would be capable of carrying 300 pounds of explosives in its nose and flying autonomously for as far as 300 miles at speeds of up to 120 miles an hour to attack out of the blue and with precision. Aviation Week reported that General Atomics “plans to market the vehicle to the Defense Dept. and ultimately to foreign countries as an unmanned, low-cost weapon system to strike enemy targets with guided munitions, cluster weapons or a high explosive warhead.” So far, though, the Predator had been flight-tested for only sixty hours, and never without a safety pilot aboard.
    At the southwest end of a pavilion next door was another booth displaying a drone, this one made by an Irvine, California, company called Leading Systems Inc. Neal Blue had heard of Leading Systems, and he knew that its much different RPV, the “Amber,” was funded by DARPA, which meant it must have real potential. But Blue didn’t know much more about Leading Systems or its RPV, so when the youngest of his two sons, freshly minted Cornell University graduate Karsten, said he and a college friend would like to go to the air show, Neal told them to get passes from Cassidy and see what they could find out about the competition while they were there.
    The next day, Karsten and his friend Mike Melnick, wearing badges identifying them as “Neal Blue” and “Linden Blue,” turned up at the Leading Systems booth, whose Amber display was impossible to miss. An orange-and-white, full-scale model of the drone’s slender fuselage—a mere seventeen inches in diameter—was standing on its tail, with its nose rising nearly to the top of the two-story tent in a pose one Leading Systems wag called “a gigantic phallic symbol.” The display was all the more striking because, as featured photos showed, the fuselage lacked the real Amber’s willowy wings, pusher propeller, and inverted-V tail. But both the model and the photos showed that the fuselage’s nose had an odd downward bulge.
    Manning the booth was a short, bald, middle-aged man with a gentle smile who spoke with a distinctly foreign accent. Seeming happy to meet Karsten Blue and his friend, the man asked if he could scan their badges with a business card reader to store their contact information. He had heard of General Atomics and its Predator, he told them, and would like to know more about their aircraft.
    Karsten and Mike Melnick could see that the man was disappointed when they couldn’t provide answers to his detailed questions about the Predator. Moreover, when Karsten tried to change the subject to the Amber, the man turned suspicious. Amber was a government project, he explained, and there were limits to what he could tell them. After all, he added gravely, “For all I know, you are Russian spies.” Then he grinned, but Karsten couldn’t tell if he was teasing.
    Karsten chuckled at the suggestion, but he could see that it was time to move on. As he and his friend left, Karsten picked up a company brochure. He also took a closer look at the Leading Systems man’s badge so he could tell his father about him. The badge read, “Abraham Karem, President.”
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    There was much Abe Karem could have told his young visitors that spring of 1988,