Drones of all sizes are now integral to combat operations, primarily providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Today, the armed services own nearly 8,000. When the Predator fired its first missile in combat-over Afghanistan on October 7, 2001-the U.S. No matter how unlikely the Predator looks, its success has changed military aviation. Nor do their wings carry laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire missiles-a key feature added by the Air Force in 2001, seven years after Karem finished his work on the remotely piloted airplane. Hobbyist sailplanes, though, don’t have turrets under their chins to hold electro-optical and infrared video cameras or noses stuffed with synthetic aperture radars and satellite antennas. With long, thin wings that stretch 55 feet 9 inches, just more than twice the length of its 27-foot fuselage, the Predator looks less like a warplane than a weekend hobbyist’s glider. (GA-ASI) of Poway, California, is powered by a four-cylinder Rotax 914 piston engine-an Austrian motor used in ultralight sport aircraft-and cruises at a snailish 84 mph. Constructed of graphite epoxy composites and lighter than an economy car, the MQ-1 Predator, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. The Predator is also already on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, though it hardly looks like an aircraft that was destined to change the world. and Italian air forces and is currently causing controversy because of its use by the CIA for targeted killings. Karem’s most famous invention is in service with the U.S. “If you don’t get it, tell me to stop.” But he doesn’t really mean it. “I always have metaphors,” he apologizes after one diverting discourse. Most conversations with Karem require stamina his answers are long and filled with parables and philosophy. “I’ve never met a genius,” he playfully assures me as we sit down in the Kelly Johnson room for an interview that will last all day and into the evening. Wearing a sport shirt and slacks and serving me a cup of coffee he’s fetched himself, he hardly acts the irascible genius some acquaintances have described. Last year, Congress ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to lay the groundwork for opening the National Airspace System to unmanned aircraft.Įarly the next morning, Karem arrives. Karem is the designer of the Predator, the unmanned aerial vehicle that turned drones from unreliable oddities into military necessities, starting a technological revolution that is now spreading to civil aviation. Karem” will one day join his conference-room heroes in the hall of fame in Dayton, Ohio. “There should be an ‘Abe’ conference room,” observes one of Karem’s 13 employees, showing me around the facility while Abe-as everyone calls him-is busy elsewhere. “People who should make us humble,” says company owner Abe Karem. There’s one for Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, one for helicopter inventor Igor Sikorsky, a third for aviation legend and flying-wing designer Jack Northrop, and another for Douglas Aircraft genius Ed Heinemann. in Lake Forest, California, includes four conference rooms, each named for a designer enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame. The 40,000 square feet of office and engineering space occupied by Karem Aircraft Inc.
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