Predator : the secret origins of the drone revolution / Richard Whittle

Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Object Details

Author
Whittle, Richard
Subject
Karem, Abraham 1937-
Contents
The genius of the genesis -- The blues -- A straw hat in winter -- Predator reborn -- Predator's progress -- WILD predator -- The summer project -- The next logical step -- Hellfire and hesitation -- Ready or not -- Wildfire -- Cleared to fire -- Never mind-- we'll do it ourselves
Summary
"The creation of the first weapon in history that can stalk and kill an enemy on the other side of the globe was far more than clever engineering. As Richard Whittle shows in Predator, it was the most profound development in military and aerospace technology since the intercontinental ballistic missile. Once considered fragile toys, drones were long thought to be of limited utility. The Predator itself was resisted at nearly every turn by the military establishment, but a few iconoclasts refused to see this new technology smothered at birth. The remarkable cast of characters responsible for developing the Predator includes a former Israeli inventor who turned his Los Angeles garage into a drone laboratory, two billionaire brothers marketing a futuristic weapon that would combat Communism, a pair of fighter pilots willing to buck their white-scarf fraternity, a cunning Pentagon operator nicknamed "Snake," and a secretive Air Force organization known as Big Safari. When an Air Force team unleashed the first lethal drone strikes in 2001 for the CIA, the military's view of drones changed nearly overnight. Based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews, Predator is a groundbreaking, dramatic account of the creation of a revolutionary weapon that forever changed the way we wage war"-- Provided by publisher.
2014
Type
Books
Physical description
353 pages, 8 pages of unnumbered plates : illustrations ; 25 cm
Place
United States
California, Southern
Smithsonian Libraries
Topic
Drone aircraft--History
Drone aircraft--Design and construction
Aerospace industries--History
Record ID
siris_sil_1037030
Metadata Usage (text)
CC0