Executive

…78

Although checking the time every minute didn't help the technician get there any faster, Alex still couldn't help it. On her last day on this job, she was wasting a whole lot of time on a hunch, waiting for the tech to show up.

Preoccupied with her worries, she resumed her work, checking emails on the cloned laptop. Nothing much was happening, not by email, anyway.

"Excuse me?" The man seemed to have appeared from nowhere. "I am Josh Barnes from the lab. Mr. Isaac sent me; he said you needed my help?"

"Oh, yes, please sit down," Alex offered. "I need your help with this," she said, unfolding a napkin on the table and setting the pieces of broken circuit board on it. "I need any information you can give me, anything at all."

"How did it break?" Josh picked up a piece and studied it up close.

"I tried to pull it out of its mount. I released the brackets on both sides, and pulled gently. Not hard. I work in IT, so I know how to manipulate circuit boards."

"Show me how hard you pulled," Josh said, holding one of the bigger fragments with two fingers. "Pull at this piece, just like you pulled at the entire thing when you tried to remove it."

Alex grabbed the other end of the fragment and pulled. The fragment gave again, breaking into smaller pieces.

"Oh," Josh said, examining a fragment with a magnifying glass he took out of his toolkit. "That's interesting…"

"What?" Alex asked, feeling anxious.

"Well, from what I can tell, the entire circuit board is substandard. The thickness of the board itself should be significantly higher. For these complex modules, the manufacturer usually uses a reinforced board, so it can't become so brittle. This one almost crumbles in your hand. What's this supposed to do?"

"Did Tom have you sign an NDA? A nondisclosure agreement?"

"Yes, and he mentioned that you'd ask," he said.

"OK, then, these are circuit boards installed on UAVs."

"On drones? No way!"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Something must be wrong with them," he said, scratching his head. "Electronic modules installed on equipment in motion is subjected to vibrations of all kinds. Therefore, they have exact standards of execution that are in place specifically to ensure that these boards don't crack, due to the shocks and vibrations they absorb."

"I think I follow," she said hesitantly.

"You see? Here," he said, pointing at the edge of the broken board fragment, "on the crack line, you can see there's not much coating applied. When a board is designed to work in a vibrating environment, it has to be coated with a special film, designed to increase elasticity of the board itself and to reduce the risk of coming apart or becoming loose from the original soldering. No such coating has been applied in this case. For the larger installed components on the boards, I was expecting to see vibration mounts, tiny little silicon or gel pads, to ensure that vibration doesn't harm the sensitive components. Takeoffs and landings pose a lot of mechanical stress on components, that's why circuit boards for aviation have special standards, designed to address this level of mechanical stress."

"I see," Alex said.

"You said you worked in IT? Well, I'm sure you can relate, then, if I can trigger your memory with this example. How are laptop components different from desktop components?"

"Ah, yes," Alex said, following his point.

"The laptop components are designed to work during motion, vibration, or even shock, as in dropping your laptop," he continued. "They have vibration mounts; the boards are coated to ensure they won't crack and parts become loose. Some components or subassemblies are even encased completely in gels or resins, to confer them the durability needed to withstand repeated shocks. This, however," he said, picking another fragment and studying it up close, "has none of that, or almost none. There are traces of anti-shock gel around this processor, right here, but nowhere else. This circuit board didn't spend enough time in the coating chamber. Are these boards even working properly?"

"Well, I'm not sure. Outside of breaking when trying to remove it, how else would this defect manifest itself?"

"Intermittent defects, that's what comes to mind. Before it breaks, it cracks. Let's say this board has a crack in it, from vibrations, a tiny little crack, barely visible, what we would call a hairline crack. When the cracked board is under stress, some of the circuit lines drawn on it would be interrupted, and the current would stop flowing through them. That would cause the board to malfunction, or completely shut down the system. After a while, when the board wasn't under stress anymore, these circuit lines would be restored, and the circuit board would resume proper operations."

"How would it malfunction?" Alex asked.

"It's impossible to predict. It varies from circuit board to circuit board and from crack to crack. It would also vary by the intensity of the stress applied and the duration of the disruption."

"So, for instance, could it cause a drone to be in and out of comlink with ground control, apparently with no reason?" Alex asked, thinking of the Florida incident. "Or, one minute it would obey ground control commands, then the next it would fly wherever?"

"Absolutely. It could have any type of intermittent defect you can think of. It could have entire modules shut down or function out of spec. The usual outcome for this type of defect is unpredictable, random, and on-and-off defects."

"Could it cause the drone to fire on targets on its own?" This time she was thinking of the Kandahar friendly fire incident.

"Absolutely not," Josh said. "Defects like these, driven by substandard components, can rarely cause a piece of equipment to start doing something it's not supposed to. Even if that happened, it would be minor, like turn on lights or something like that. Targeting vehicles or people and launching missiles on these targets, that's an entirely different story. It requires a complex set of instructions, which need to be driven by something or someone to make it happen." The tech obviously had put two and two together and was well aware of the Kandahar incident. Media coverage on the Kandahar friendly fire had been intensive; there was no surprise he was able to connect the dots on his own.

"What would then?" Alex asked. "What would cause a drone to suddenly decide to open fire on a number of allied targets?"

"Was it determined with precision that the drone acted independently?"

"Well, not sure yet, but if it was human error, that's on someone else's agenda to figure out. I am only interested in the case in which it was the drone to blame. What would make a drone go rogue?"

"Anomalous behavior like that has to be founded on technical abilities already built into the equipment. The drone had to have had the capabilities to fly itself independently, search for targets, lock on targets, and launch a missile. Then repeat all these steps, until all targets are wiped out. You can't expect this set of complex computations to occur, if the drone wasn't designed to do them in the first place."

"So you're inclined to think it was pilot error? The ground control crew somehow mistook the Canadian convoy for an enemy target?"

"I think that is the most likely explanation. Any other possible explanation would require a module, probably bigger than any other module installed on these drones, and a software component to teach the drone to do things on its own."

"The self-guidance module," Alex thought out loud.

"There is a self-guidance module?" Josh's interest was sparked again, and his eyes focused on Alex.

"Yes, there is. It's not fully functional yet. It's currently being tested, and I'm not even sure the Kandahar drone had it installed."

"That narrows it down. If the Kandahar drone had it installed, then I'd look into whether it was working or not. There should be system logs in the module's memory, and such software should also generate activity logs. If, on the other hand, this software and module were not installed on the drone, it only leaves the ground crew to be at fault for this."

Note to self, Alex thought, we need to find out if the Kandahar drone had the self-guidance software active. We need to access the activity logs.

"Josh, this was really helpful, and I appreciate it," Alex said, starting to collect the circuit-board pieces from the table. "There's one more thing I noticed when I was visiting the plant. One of the drones, ground powered for testing, scanned the area, and locked target on me. What type of malfunction could make that happen? Could the faulty boards be to blame for such an incident?"

"I seriously doubt it. I'm not familiar with the architecture of the target acquisition module, but thinking logically, the drone must see you as a target to be locking onto you. Either the drone is doing an incredibly poor job at recognizing targets to begin with, or there's some other error contributing to this, although I can't think of any other scenario. As an afterthought, if the drones do such a crappy job telling real targets from plant visitors, maybe that explains the Kandahar incident."

"Maybe. But what I'm hearing you say is that, either way, the drone had to have had the self-guidance module installed and operative to be able to do that, right? And no ground control authorizing the launches?"

"Absolutely. This drone, the one that locked on you, does it have the self-guidance module installed?"

"I'm not sure… How would I find out?"

"Huh?" The technician seemed confused by her question.

"That is, if I cannot really ask anyone," Alex clarified.

"Oh, I get it," Josh said, the new understanding of the situation making him frown. "Do you have access to the drone?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, I cannot be sure, because I haven't seen this particular drone and its insides, but you'd look for a larger module, I would think an encased one, with connectivity compatible with a computer — serial port, USB, Bluetooth. If you're lucky, the module is clearly labeled."

"I'd seriously doubt that."

"Yeah, me too. The module should have the answers you're looking for, both for the capabilities to generate the Kandahar incident on its own and for targeting you. If you find the module, see if you can access it. Sometimes, these modules come with an individual configuration screen and controls. How else would you be able to configure it, to tell it what to do?"

"Remotely, I would think, more than by doing it directly from under the hood. You should be able to change instructions and configuration while the drone is in flight, right?"

"Yeah, I guess that's right. But I still think it's worth looking for it, at least figure out if this is what's going on with that targeting system locking on you."

She sat up. "Thank you so much."

"You're welcome. And good luck with all this," Josh said, watching her leave.