“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. military officials have reported an appreciation for the intelligence and reconnaissance-gathering abilities of UAVs but declined to publicly discuss their offensive use.Ĭivilian applications have included border enforcement and scientific studies, and to monitor wind direction and other characteristics of large forest fires (such as the one that was used by the California Air National Guard in the August 2013 Rim Fire).The 40,000 square feet of office and engineering space occupied by Karem Aircraft Inc. Because offensive uses of the Predator are classified by the US, U.S. Powered by a Rotax engine and driven by a propeller, the air vehicle can fly up to 400 nmi (460 mi 740 km) to a target, loiter overhead for 14 hours, then return to its base.įollowing 2001, the RQ-1 Predator became the primary unmanned aircraft used for offensive operations by the USAF and the CIA in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas it has also been deployed elsewhere.
The UAS consists of four aircraft or “air vehicles” with sensors, a ground control station (GCS), and a primary satellite link communication suite. The USAF describes the Predator as a “Tier II” MALE UAS (medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system). The aircraft, in use since 1995, has seen combat in war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the NATO intervention in Bosnia, Serbia, Iraq War, Yemen, Libyan civil war, the intervention in Syria, and Somalia. Initially conceived in the early 1990s for aerial reconnaissance and forward observation roles, the Predator carries cameras and other sensors but has been modified and upgraded to carry and fire two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles or other munitions. The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator is an American unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by General Atomics and used primarily by the United States Air Force (USAF) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Model Description AirForce 1 1/72nd scale AF1-0015 General Atomics MQ-1 Predator Drone UAV, Creech AFB.
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