Predator: The Secret Origins of the Drone Revolution

"Fresh and authoritative ... [Whittle] delivers action-packed details about how the CIA and the Pentagon used armed Predators to hunt for Al Qaeda leaders immediately after 9/11."-The Washington PostThe 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 one of the most profound developments in the history of military and aerospace technology.A remarkable cast of characters developed the Predator, including a former Israeli inventor who turned his Los Angeles garage into a drone laboratory, two billionaire brothers marketing a futuristic weapon to help combat Communism, 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.