"We're gonna arm this thing and go hunting"

February 13, 2016 12:02 PM

How Rogue Techies Armed The Predator, Almost Stopped 9/11, And Invented Remote Warfare

“The world is not black-and-white,” he says. “It’s shades of gray presented to you in an infrared image.”

posted by the man of twists and turns (14 comments total)

This would be absolutely fascinating and compelling if it were from a novel. As an actual account of the way decisions about large scale warfare are made in the real world, it is frankly terrifying.
posted by 256 at 12:42 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

while it's cool that our far-flung sci fi future turned out to be true i kinda wish it was the jet packs, chrome and food pills version rather than the hellish cyberpunk dystopia one.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:59 PM on February 13, 2016

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."[8]
posted by ocschwar at 1:05 PM on February 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

while it's cool that our far-flung sci fi future turned out to be true i kinda wish it was the jet packs, chrome and food pills version rather than the hellish cyberpunk dystopia one.

Speak for yourself. I was promised a future of struggling to survive in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland. If anything, they're helping deliver on that promise.
posted by happyroach at 2:28 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

the eye of another figure who would be crucial in its development, a senior Defense Department officer who was among the first to recognize the aircraft’s potential. This past spring, I made my way to the Pentagon to meet him. (For security reasons, he declined to be named.)

The article depicts him shrouded in smoke, like Cancer Man in uniform. This is not how democracies work.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:50 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

jet packs, chrome and food pills version

jet packs: sorry. We all wish we had them.

chrome: Google's web browser. (Not really what you meant, of course.)

food pills: Would you accept a liquid substitute?
posted by theorique at 5:11 PM on February 13, 2016

I knew this was a Wired piece from the headline. Fuck off, natsec-bros.

(no disrespect, man of twists and turns. you had a hard row gettin' home, glad you have the stories to tell.)
posted by mwhybark at 6:25 PM on February 13, 2016

jet packs: sorry. We all wish we had them.

*ahem*

I mean they're not Buck Rogers, or even Ark II, but they are almost here... if you have a spare US$150,000-$200,000.
posted by Mezentian at 7:52 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

while it's cool that our far-flung sci fi future turned out to be true i kinda wish it was the jet packs, chrome and food pills version rather than the hellish cyberpunk dystopia one.

Speak for yourself. I was promised a future of struggling to survive in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland. If anything, they're helping deliver on that promise.
posted by happyroach

Story checks out.
posted by nevercalm at 7:59 PM on February 13, 2016

I don't know, I kind of liked the article and the story. To me, the fascinating thing is that even inside the government they realize that the government bureaucracy is inefficient and mostly ineffective so they set up their own skunk works inside it.

As for the future, it was inevitable. It seems to me that if it moves, we find a way to arm it.
posted by AugustWest at 8:49 PM on February 13, 2016

Urgh. Annoying article full of fetishization of "startups". I read the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control by Medea Benjamin (review) recently which is pretty good on how drone warfare works in reality.

For example it says "Hand-built by a small, idiosyncratic California startup called General Atomics Aeronautical Systems". That's a division of General Atomics, a company with 8,000 employees founded in 1955. It also totally ignores the role of Abraham Karem who actually designed the prototype of the Predator in favour of talking about a team who modified it. Even if you're only interested in the technology, the history of drones is that they were pioneered by the Israeli military and Karem brought that knowledge to the US.

Obviously the article largely ignores the ethical issues of drones and the way they've changed warfare, apart from vague blather:

What about when a strike misses its target or is used for ill? That has less to do with what the Predator can and cannot do, he says. “That is just the ugly nature of war. And yeah, there’s always a little twinge of regret with that.”

One thing Benjamin points out is that "The CIA, not the Pentagon, operates most drone strikes in Western Asia": that is civilians not the military. Private companies like Academi (formerly Blackwater) operate drones too. Part of the point of drone warfare is to take the power of killing away from the military and put it in civilian hands.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:47 PM on February 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

I once met one of the shadowy figures described in the article, or maybe it was another one. Anyway he was a DARPA PM who had spent much of his career developing aircraft for the military. On his desk he had one of the original models for testing the RADAR signature of TACIT BLUE, the prototype aircraft that proved stealth technology. I was onsite for unrelated work but we got a tour of some of the more interesting projects they had including a next-gen infowar operations room design that was modeled after the bridge of a Star Fleet spaceship & was later borrowed by NSA Director Keith Alexander.

After the tour we were escorted to his office because he wanted to meet my teammate & me & have a chat. He was a retired Air Force Colonel & asked us to just call him Barry. Among other things we discussed Predator, specifically some problems it was having in the cold weather over Kosovo. He was pleased when I recognized & roughly calculated one of the biggest problems the drones would be facing, speed of light delay to an object on the other side of the planet interfering with the ability to remotely pilot the drone. Fascinating guy, full of stories that skirted classification rules & made some significant point or other.
posted by scalefree at 10:02 PM on February 13, 2016

The other day I had an utterly terrifying thought about drones (like, stopped in my tracks, every hair standing on end terrifying).

...Eventually they will figure out how easy it is to put syringes on these things and then we're all fucked.
posted by sexyrobot at 7:51 AM on February 14, 2016

Wikipedia is tells the story of Predator with more detail, and less coyness. The anonymously cited senior CIA backer looks like Cofer Black - with an additional shout out to Charles Allen.

I also learned that drones (which can detect the body heat of a human from 10,000 feet) could potentially be used to great effect for disaster relief (and almost were after hurricane Katrina); that Tarnak farm was a little more than just a farm; that Bill Clinton's catching sight of kid's swings outside the compound may have led him not to authorize the strike, and that there was an air battle between a drone and an Iraqi MiG-25 back in 2002.
posted by rongorongo at 11:06 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]