Sting of the Drone

26

^{MONDAY, NOVEMBER 30}

^{GLOBAL COORDINATION CENTER, OPERATIONS ROOM}

^{CREECH AFB, NEVADA}

“The compound that the Pakistani ISI source reported is in that valley up ahead,” Bruce Dougherty said as he flew the Predator on a reconnaissance mission over Afghanistan. “If I fly in there, it would be a perfect place for them to shoot Manpads up at me from the hilltops.”

“Good, then that’s just what we will do, fly in there,” Erik Parsons replied. He switched open his circuit to Sandra Vittonelli in her office twenty meters behind him. “Sandy, you may want to come out and watch this. I think you were right about that Pakistani ISI source. I think we are being lured into a Stinger kill box.”

When Sandra joined them on the floor of the ops center, she could see the unarmed reconnaissance Predator flying toward the valley. That view was being provided by a stealthier drone, a Peregrine, flying in trail and higher up. “Good, this looks like another one of their traps,” she said. “Make sure to turn off the chameleon skin on the Pred so that they can get a good look at it.”

Time began to move slowly for the team on the Ops Room floor as they waited to see if there would be another Stingerlike missile attack, what could be the fifth shoot down of a UAV in a month. On the Big Board were images from both the Predator and the Peregrine above it.

On the hillsides on either side of the valley floor, men also waited, spotters and shooters. Their two SA-24 missile launchers were humming in standby mode. Like the U.S. Stinger, the SA-24 had to be drawing current from the battery pack to keep its highly sensitive infrared sensors warmed up and ready to move quickly to full active search. By flicking a switch next to the trigger, the operator could bring the launcher and the missile inside the tube to full readiness in thirty seconds. Then if the operator pointed the tube toward a target, as soon as the infrared seeker on the missile had locked on to the target’s infrared signature, a high-piercing whine would come from the handgrip of the launcher holding the missile tube. Then, when the trigger was pulled and the missile launched from the tube, the SA-24 would seek that infrared source.

The spotter on the north ridge saw it first. “Hamdullah,” he cried and began hitting the Transmit button on his handheld two-way radio. The clicking sound from his hitting the button sent a warning across the valley to the team on the other ridge. The shooters on both teams moved their thumbs up on their grips, bringing both missile launchers into full active search. The shooters began to scan the sky through the optical tracker, looking for the drone. In less than a minute, both missile launchers were emitting an ear-piercing whine. They had locked on to their target, a Predator.

Two indicator lights linked to the Predator’s onboard sensors turned red and began blinking on the pilot’s dashboard, indicating that the Predator had detected that it was being lit up by an infrared seeker. “We’ve detected missile lock on. Two, one on either side of the valley,” Bruce Dougherty said into his chin microphone. “Tallyho.”

The slowly moving minutes with little happening were suddenly transformed into lightning quick seconds, with multiple simultaneous actions directed by sensors, not by humans. Two plumes of smoke could be seen on the video from the Peregrine as the SA-24s were launched toward the Predator. Almost simultaneously, red stars began shooting from the Predator, infrared heat sources with the same signature as the Predator itself had just seconds earlier. Near the rear of the Predator, two gray-white boxes began to emit new infrared signature patterns for the Predator, rapidly changing to prevent the upcoming missiles from switching to it and locking on.

To the sensors on the SA-24s, there were now dozens of objects with the infrared signature of the Predator and then there were other objects with different, new infrared signatures, constantly changing. The missiles were programmed to recognize that the many Predator signatures were probably flares designed to fool it. Therefore, the missiles attempted to lock on the new signature source, but there were too many of them and they were too rapidly switching and transforming to permit target acquisition and lock on. Given that pattern, the missiles were programmed to fly to the general area of infrared activity and then to detonate, in the hope that some of the shrapnel from their explosion would strike the real target.

As the SA-24s streaked into the sky and the red star flares shot out from the Predator, the sensors aboard the Peregrine triangulated where the shooters were. Within two seconds of the Stingers leaving their launch tubes on the hillsides, four missiles with equal velocity leaped from the launch bay of the Peregrine, which was flying slightly above and behind the Predator. They raced toward the areas where the SA-24s had been fired. Once over the launch areas, the air-launched missiles exploded, spreading thousands of sharp, strong, antipersonnel razors out in a density such that anyone within two hundred meters would have been hit by a minimum of a dozen blades, each of which would be an artery-shredding, lethal attack.

The spotters and shooters stood watching their SA-24s climb through the air, but within seconds of their missiles being launched, just as they were beginning to see the red star flares come from the Predator, the eight men on the hillsides had become hundreds of shredded body parts. Almost simultaneously, the SA-24s erupted above in midair.

Bruce had programmed the Predator to go into a 12-g force turn and climb out as soon as it launched the red star flares and the Infrared Counter Measures pod began to light up. No onboard human pilot could withstand anything more than an 8-g turn. No human pilot could have executed such a fast maneuver by hand as quickly as the Predator executed the preprogrammed command. The machine was doing what no human pilot with a joystick could do. By moving so quickly, the Predator avoided most of the shrapnel from the SA-24s, picking up only small fragments of metal hitting its wings to no effect.

The op center floor broke into applause. Pilots stood in the cubicles and gave each other high fives. “Shoot at my birds, you little fuckers, and we will shred your asses,” Erik Parsons yelled above the din.

Sandra Vittonelli shook hands with Bruce Dougherty when his aircraft were stabilized and returning to base. She turned to Erik, “You see this is basically a two-player game theory exercise in which every player-move generates a response. Anticipate theirs.” She walked back to her office, off the operations room floor.

Erik Parsons looked at Bruce Dougherty. “What’d she say?”