and he said it felt very familiar. but he just wished that his attempt could've turned out as well. the state department invited us, the actors and i, over, secretary -- secretary kerry and i introduced us for secretary shrunken or something like that. it was great. we were well treated, and i think, i do think this play in this book provide a commentary on a difficult piece is. hal sanders was an undersecretary of state at the time. he was at camp david. before the summit took place he went down to the historian at the state department and the, has this ever happened before? you know, and the historian said yeah, in american diplomatic history as one example, which was teddy roosevelt in the

russian-japanese war, the first great war of the 20th century. roosevelt invited envoys on both sides and he took them to portsmouth, actually in maine budgets across from the portsmouth naval facility, pretty secluded, and there they hammered out a peace treaty. george mitchell in northern ireland is an example. the soviets, but really in the whole history of the world there's just a whole lot of examples where two warring parties are brought together and compelled to make peace. my favorite example is in the 15th century when pope alexander the vi or solenoid that decided to resolve the dispute between the spanish and portuguese, so he divided the world between the two of them. the spanish were going to get

the new world, and there was a line on the globe so north and south america, spain, and africa were all going to portugal. but the pope didn't know that brazil stuck at a little over the line. that's why they speak portuguese today because they didn't, it became a portuguese province. that's what's so fascinating to me that this is such an unusual moment in history. and it's i think a terrible commentary that, for instance, right now our president is asking us to go back to work, back to the middle east. and it may well be that there is a militant need for us to be there, but at the same time this is the region that is crying out for reconciliation. maybe we have a role in that as well. that could be what is more

important in my opinion we will always have, as long as islam is in the civil war between the sunnis and shiites, we are always going to have these isis, hezbollah, al-nusra, all of these creations or proxy armies. and until we can -- it's not that i'm up to us, but if we want to put our energies into resolving disputes in the middle east, they won't be done militarily. somewhere along the line peace is going to have to make an appearance. and some of these stories will have to make powerful sacrifices in order to to accommodate back. >> i think we got an idea of just how fascinating this story is. the thing i like about it is history is, often people, especially young people just say, the history is dull.

but this is is this streets history in terms of people who get mad, who get hurt, who have feelings. and it gives you a real sense of how this all came together. as andy young says in our introductory film here, ever since this, no egyptian has killed any israeli and no israeli has killed any egyptian, and that's quite an accomplishment. larry right -- lawrence wright has put all together in this book and you'll be signed this right outside. let's give him a round of applause. [applause] >> thank you all. i really enjoyed having a chance to talk to you. >> please join us in the lobby where he will be signing books. thank you all very much. [inaudible conversations]

>> interested in american history? watch american history television on c-span3 every weekend, 48 hours of people and events that helped document the american story. visit c-span.org/history for more information. >> booktv bookstores and libraries throughout the country about the nonfiction books the most anticipating being published this fall. here's a look at the titles chosen by vroman's bookstore in pasadena, california.

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>> next, journalist richard whittle talks about the rise of the predator drone, once considered too fragile to use a

battle. the drone became a weapon of terror after it's used that the cia and air force after 9/11. this was not at the army navy club in washington d.c. it is just under an hour. >> the technology will talk about today has impact it the political environment in a sensitive way. who knows what further opportunities this technological at the invisible produce. there may well be applications for civilian use of the transportation. that is why we are interested to learn more about richard whittle's research. equally important however is the fact that richard and i have spent close personal friends for

a little more than 30 years. we have worked together on a number of projects over the many years and i am delighted and it's a real privilege indeed were made that i can welcome our author, richard whittle and you interested in his work rodda, his most recent book on the development of drones. richard whittle is a global fellow at the wilson center in a research associate at the national air and space museum where he finished writing this book as a fellow during the academic year 13-14. those of you know richard has written about the military for more than 30 years, including 22 as a pentagon correspondent for the "dallas morning news." this book which came out just two weeks ago or so has

accumulated quite some accolade from very different and very authoritative writers and media outlets. amazon selected the book as one of the best history books recently a stark review reserved for books of exceptional merit. "the wall street journal" called the book tree into fascinating. the "washington post" said that richard's reporting and "predator" is the particle. no small feat given the silence that the air force come the cia, obama administration and general atomics have welded for the drone operations. even the trivial parts. the post review added that

whittle's best material appears in the final chapters when he delivers action-packed details about how the cia and the pentagon used armed predators to hunt for al qaeda leaders for the 9/11 based on interviews of the numerous participants. ladies and gentlemen, we are in for a special treat. richard, welcome. the floor is yours. [applause] >> thank you, wolfgang, for that very nice introduction. we need to point out besides the fact it's coincidence that dhl started this operation in my book is about predator that your personal copy is not orange. [laughter] anyway, i am very grateful to you for your hospitality today

and for your friendship. thank you all for coming here about my new book, "predator: the secret origins of the drone revolution." it is an honor to speak to such a distinguished audience as this, especially when we have two former air force leaders at this today. former secretary which peters and retired lieutenant general jack rise to us to judge advocate general of the air force. i am honored that you are here today. i am also honored that retired general jack daly is here for an addition to being former assistant, not at the marine corps and former deputy administrator of nasa, general daley has director of the national air and space museum where i've been enjoying his hospitality so to speak since the fall of 2013. first is a research fellow at now is a research associate. thank you for being here, general. i appreciate it.

let me add that neither the air and space museum nor general daley bear any responsibility whatsoever for anything in my book or anything i will say today. they are innocent. [laughter] it is also one honor to talk about drones at an event hosted by dhl, which wolfgang has explained his doing what others have been talking about. i hope that in addition to delivering medicine to navy sunday they can start delivering books. [laughter] my book tells what i thought was going to be the story of an extraordinary airplane to turn out to be a story of invention, a story of war, a story about the air force and a story about the cia cannot believe the story about how new age aviation came.

five years ago i set out to write a book about the new age in aviation in a worse economy take a comprehensive look at unmanned aerial systems as many experts like to call. but then, i read an article in air and space magazine describing 10 aircraft change the world. one of the 10 then the only uav was the predator and macro focus for me. the predator was the uav that changed the world. and having thought about what that meant, it seemed more and more to the evidence that it not only change the world of warfare, but open the door to today's unmanned civilian aviation revolution. and i was a story i immediately knew, the story of the predator and the drone revolution. as i found out in five years

writing this book took me, the story that changed the world is the aircraft itself. many of those who created this revolutionary technology were just as unorthodox as the predator. take the predator's adventure. abraham carol, a former israeli aeronautical engineer many people regard in baghdad in 1937, but grew up in the socialist idealism that characterized his run in 1940s and 1950s. by his early 30s, care must direct your a preliminary design and special projects at israel aircraft industries, the country's most important aerospace manufacturer. but aides were frustrated by the corporate climate and cynicism he saw in the early 1970 and after working on a drone decoy to full air of air defenses in

1973, he was inspired to strike out on his own and develop uavs. karem integrated the united states, the land of opportunity and like all great american adventures he went to work in his garage. [laughter] pesos in los angeles. as a young man in israel, it had been a free flight model and the source principles stuck with them. in free flight competition supposed to make a model airplane that can be launched by hand or towed into the air on a rope like a kite and then sort as long as possible within a time limit without any remoter automated controls to keep it in the air. abe karem while the tricks to making a plane that can soar well and in his los angeles garage, he built the uav technology demonstrator that was truly innovative.

karem caught at the albatross, naming it after one of nature's greatest going earths. the albatross offered a nominal 48 hours without refueling, which was far longer than any military uav ever thrown up that kind. the demonstrator, karem got a contract from the research agency darpa to develop a larger uav for the armed services. darpa named that little drone. in 1989 a senior official wrote in a magazine article providing an order of magnitude increase in a lifetime recorded by previous uavs have let the joint chiefs of staff to establish a new endurance category and an unmanned aircraft master plan ordered by congress. yet largely for personal and bureaucratic reasons in a detail in the book, karem was unable to

sell its trust of the defense department and the company he created to build them what a great 1990. thanks to some other unorthodox thinkers, abe karem's ideas come his revolutionary ideas didn't die when his company did. those ideas were rescued in karem ms top engineers were hired by a pair of others who had a genius for business to match karem's genius for aeronautics. their names are neil and london blue here they are the private owners of the san diego area company that built the predator, general comments. come on now in the late 70s they are still very active and fascinated in their own right. in 1957 when the blue brothers were in their early 20s and still students they made a cover

of life magazine by flying a paper tripe is there from what america during summer vacation. they decided to make the trip by the way before they ever took their first flying lesson. that is because they weren't just say. the blue brothers were born and bred entrepreneurs and they hope to find business opportunities they might pursue after college. as a result of the trip, after they graduated from yale, neil and linda blew established a banana plantation on the east coast of nicaragua and partnership. so the loop ensure all my lasted a couple years, but it was the first of the many by the 1980s had made, and wealth. they began as a nuclear energy company and its silly on. they got into the ss blue

brothers bought it from chevron in 1986. they had a number of reasons for thinking uavs might be a good investment. among their motives was the desire to out the counter rebels in nicaragua overthrow the rest leftist sandinistas who in 1979 had overturned the former business partners the samosas. the blue brothers first attempt at a uav with a modified aluminum k. plan that they were trying to equip with a gps guided autopilot. neil blues idea was the contrast or an ally of the contras, i'm guessing the cia, could pack planes nose with explosives and use it as a cruise missile. neil also thought such a weapon would help deter the soviet invasion of western germany. neal bluebonnet it to be priced cheap, cheap, cheap.

i'm not a menace to learn that the man hired to run his first company is a retired as jay cassidy gave his first uav would later become a french name, predator. this unmanned airplane had absolutely nothing to do with the predator we know today except the name. nothing in common. but tom cassidy who later proved to marketing on lobbying he was a flying fighter plane at spinning predator and he chose for both. as i say in my book, if it is the motive of invention especially aviation technologies

created necessity that gave birth to the predator and innovation that made it revolutionary. the war in bosnia and the difficulty of finding serb artillery and bombarding sarajevo in 1993 led to the development of the second drone called predator, which was a derivative of a smaller less capable uav then abe karem had designed call but not 750. in 1993, the cia prior to the general atomics to use in bosnia. the photo at the bottom here, the man to the right is abe karem get the man to his left in 1993 was the cia deputy or of operations and went to california to seal that deal for cia director jim woolsey who had known abe karem for years. at the same time after conversations, under secretary

of defense for acquisition john deutch created a program to develop an endurance unmanned area of vehicle similar to the 750 for the military. deutch was in a hurry. he stipulated this uav had to fly within six months of contract were. to make that possible, he adopted an idea and a new rapid procurement method called advanced concept technology demonstrations. in january 1994, the defense department, the very first such contract and the team of engineers redesigned the net 750 and six months later the new predator made its first flight. and now i would like to elaborate on why that said this but tells a story about the air force is in a story about the

cia. in 2009 was to find offices who had flown the predator or involved in the program in some other way. an unforgettable nickname and i soon found out an incredible personality. if clark knows more about the predator than just about anybody say. that's his real name. as former air force secretary is well known, and his real name is james g clark and his air force job title these days is director of intelligence surveillance and atomic innovation. here is how i describe him in my book. in reality, clark worked --

[inaudible] in reality, this is what i say in the book. in reality, clark worked for the services, the four-star chief of staff and a civilian secretary of the air force. he was their favorite fixer, and inside operator with bypassing bureaucracy and was always getting things done if you like to put it, quick and dirty. this is partly why clark encouraged everyone to call him by his nickname, snake, or they salute him for it all snake. [laughter] he consciously cultivated the image of a shrewd operator who might be dangerous. the reputation he found to sell an intimidating or potential opponents. a reverent, sassy and unafraid to his death on toes i'm a clark was an acquired taste.

he spoke in a pattern. his flavor was slightly acidic and reminiscent when someone got in this way, he loves playing what he called pentagon poker. i'll see your three-star and raise you a four-star. well, i met snake or come in the air force association in 2009. i took it back a month after that. i began to understand the predator was unusual, but also in the way the capabilities were improved. initially, as the secretary pointed out to me when i interviewed him, the predator like the first personal computer was a new technology that some people find interesting, but most quite sure how to benefit from. over time come a few interested innovators came up with a soft work, new hardware, new

communications architectures that transform the personal computer from a novelty into a necessity in much the same thing happened with the predator. at first, this new endurance uav was an important, just just interesting him only to a few people at that. many were quite sure exactly. the predator offer phenomenal flight. he can stay up as much as 40 hour shooting might video in color. but there was also slow and flimsy and vulnerable. and while still photographs taken in satellites were familiar tools of military intelligence in the 1990s, full motion video wasn't. when the predator makes debut in 1994, the implement the army by the way, it was a plot one for

video at imagery sent back to the ground control station, and nascar style trailer at this time and went no further. but by 2001, three years after the air force took charge, it was the first weapon in history whose operators could stop until a single individual on the other side of the planet or may position that ambush in total invulnerability. that transformation was largely accomplished by special air force unit i'd never heard of before, even though i'd written about the military for three decades. officially it is a 645th error in article systems group, headquartered up wright-patterson air force ace in dayton, ohio. since it was established in the 1950s, it was then called. here's how i describe in the book. created during cold war to help your first come the cia, and

other agencies keep an eye on the soviet union, they evolved into far less scenic hubris, the secret service technology shop in the james bond movies. it didn't break the cases, shoot teargas or cars with machine guns, but like ebola seven, big safari with staff to clever engineers and tech nations whose mission was to divide and field often exotic here quickly. big safari was more specialized. beginning with his first assignment in december 1952 comments telling the largest aerial camera ever on a huge c. 97 cargo plane project code-named typeface, big safari schema stricken a special aircraft, often with aerial reconnaissance devices, usually in a hurry and especially with a special mission. big safari's director with the

air force took charge of the predator was still grinds. that is him on the right with secretary peters and snake clark if you can't see him. another retired colonel with civilian bill grimes. i revealed the book how he maneuvered on capitol hill to make sure that big safari got to work its wonders on the predator. another unorthodox thinker who played a pivotal role in turning the predator into a world changing technology is someone's photo who i can show you. a techno- scientist of extraordinary intellect and ability who got interested in the predator when he was still just pass technology and flown by the army. snake clark called him the with two brains. and the book by mutual agreement, i describe them in detail -- i describe the major innovation he came up with for the predator.

they include figuring out how to stream the predator video live from anywhere in the world. mapping out a unique satellites at a set that crew could fly over afghanistan in the fall of 2000 or a ground control station in europe and creating a new communications architecture that made it possible in 2005 workers in the united states to fly armed predators over the other side of the globe for the first time ever. that's a little hard to see, but that is an air force diagram. as i explained in the book, making that link to a uav on the other side of the earth is in the simplest subscribing to satellite tv. you can't just shoot a signal up to a satellite in geostationary orbit and burn it back down to his own on the other side of the planet. and you can't hopscotch the signal from one satellite to

another about the distance the signal travels in the process required along the way introducing enough latency, enough to lay in signal to make it difficult to fly the drone remotely and probably impossible to accurately emit missiles. but he figured out how to break a system that holds latency to acceptable levels in the air force is still using that essential architecture he divides today to fly with a now called remotely piloted aircraft there a world away from bases here at home. and that brings me to why is also a cia story. because he came up with what operations only so that an air force team in germany could secretly fly unarmed predator over afghanistan in the fall of 2000 help the cia find osama bin laden. that ad hoc unit of big safari operators in air force intelligence personnel and the

founder of osama bin laden for the cia. guess in a year later he invented what he dubbed remote but operation to give the cia the option of using an armed predator to kill osama bin laden without launching such a strike from german soil. i explained in the book by moving grand central station under germany was deemed essential. and while the conventional wisdom has been the cia out of the predator into one account the air force decided that it couldn't be left behind. i found the opposite was the case. the initiative to arm the predator was in fact become by air force general john jonker in 2000, not long after he took over, truth and for reasons that have nothing to do with the cia over osama bin laden. i explain his reasons and circumstances in a tale in the book. but here's what general dunford told me. all i wanted to do was to to do

with stability cure the problem we had in kosovo and that is the predator sitting here looking at the target. why can you put something on there that allows you to do something about it? now it's true that the project to arm the predator came substantial momentum after the air force team in germany found osama bin laden in the fall of 2000. that acceleration was largely due to the fact that by early 2000, richard clarke, current chair is in direct of the national security council and a senior cia official had come to the conclusion that the united state needed to kill osama bin laden before he killed more americans that al qaeda had done in the 1998 bombings of our embassies in kenya, tanzania and as they would do again by a bombing the destroyer uss cole on october 12, 2000. the air force conducted its

first missile tests from the crowd during january 23rd, 2009 and in the spring and summer of fact year, top cia leaders warily agreed to can enter and i emphasize the words warily and consider companies in this new armed uav to kill osama bin laden. spite the perception today, the cia predicted using drone strikes to take out terrorists. it was a great deal before 9/11 but the idea of an espionage and analysis service controlling military weapons in an operation that might be to headline such as cia uses drone to assassinate islamic eloquence. even so, big safari in a small cadre of air force intelligence officer spent much of the early part of 2001 preparing for just such a mission. by the first week of september of that year, most of the elements were in place.

this slide is difficult to see, especially from the back, that these are google earth photos that show the langley campus of the cia on september 12, 2001. the ends that shows the double wide mobile home that served as the air force predator command center. the small white rectangle next to it was the first to ground control stations that would put their flight to first armed predators of redskins fan. it was the man to disguise them. the book describes in some detail some of the early operations conducted by the air force unit as some called it and i describe as they were described to me by those who conduct again commanded. that includes the escape of the first war in afghanistan of mullah mohammed omar, who as you may aretino almost came the first high-value target ever killed by an armed predator.

my book also includes what i believe to be the most accurate account today of the predator's role in al qaeda's third ranking leader at the time of 9/11 osama bin laden is tested mohammed acre. now i'd like to explain why the predator gave birth to the revolution. drones have been around a long time and they were attempted in a wide variety of configurations in the 1990s, uav technology was improving in the military was using are experimenting with several types. they were still in these technologies. given advances in the underlying technology, i have a composite materials, smaller and more sophisticated cameras, digital communications, gps in time

uavs would become more than just a technology in any event. but as i said earlier, it is necessity is the mother of invention, will the wars of the late 20th century produced a predator in the predator may droves matter in a way they never had before. but physically or predator 3034 which now hangs in the national air and space museum started in january 2001 and tested that spring, starting with the toxic ground test, then firing missiles on targets in in the desert and then firing them into a building as cia head can start to the missiles designed to kill tanks would kill osama bin laden in afghanistan. the contractor apparently misrepresented the occasions and built a structure that bore little resemblance to the mud and houses of afghanistan.

so the testers nicknamed at taco bell and hung their sign in the business. they were in a hurry at this light, so to help measure the building, they had to spend the usual mannequin filled alyssa killer. instead, as you see in this, they use silhouettes and watermelon. but while big safari and keep a local levels in the cia were getting prepared to send the armed predator after osama bin laden, richard clarke was having trouble getting leaders in the bush administration to focus on the threat he another saw. the national security council had its first meeting to discuss the armed predator on december 4th 2011. all preparations have been made from, the station was sorry for cia campus. did the cia nor the military wanted to take responsibility so

they decided to wait. one way to the day later of course everything changed. the day after that the predators were into spec and stand where they could take command for afghanistan. predator 3034 come in very no markings at the time from the trailer park at the cia botched first predator strike in afghanistan on the first night of the warrior october 7, 2001, a strike that i described in the book. three days later, president bush had an emergency meeting. why can we find more than one predator at a time and in december of that year, bush gave his speech to the court could do in south carolina where he said before the war, the predator skeptics did not fit the old way. now it is clear the military

does not have enough unmanned vehicles. now as i said earlier, given the rapid advances in component elegies come it is fairly certain at some point runs would evolve into more than a niche technology anyway. but there's a definition of a technological evolution the same as the definition of the scientific revolution? a breakthrough moment that disrupts excepted again and offers unanticipated ideas and seems to me that arming the predator of raising the global remote control is just such a moment and what followed was indeed a tech logical revolution. of course i can offer circumstantial evidence. beyond president bush's statement and the fact that the cia has come to rely heavily on a weapon they would once use, their space. s. 2001 came come in the entire u.s. military on a total of just 82 unmanned aerial vehicles.

the predator into small reconnaissance friends, navy marine corps pioneer, the pentagon is shooting april 2001 at month before 9/11 estimated that by 2010 the armed services might have as many as 290 uavs, but still only three types. in 2010 arrived, the military tape absence of viewing these and i think the number today is more like 10,000. today the air force is annually trained the remotely piloted aircraft operators. the army assign its own predator in the navy and air force are developing unmanned combat aerial vehicles, as many as 80 nations are building their own military uavs and civilian use of droves of clarity outstripped federal aviation administration regulated.

in short, i think erin space magazine got it right. the predator changed the world to come to disrupt accepted thinking and offered unanticipated ideas and what followed was a drone revolution that is still unfolding. thank you for listening and again i think dhl in my great friends most importantly for inviting me here to talk at the army navy club. it's been an honor whatever time we have remaining out do my best to answer your questions. thank you. [applause] >> richard, thank you goodfellas gray. let me start with two, to add two additional aspects of the debate.

there are legal implications from an optical point of view, moral point of view. is this all feher to go after people who may not have committed any crime and just anticipate that they will. how do you look at all of this? what about the authorization of drone strikes, who can do this come is this satisfactory today, it better, et cetera. you just mention 80 some droves. is that safe? >> there is a lot they are. i your first question the one

question is it fair for our military personnel to fit in perfect even kill people on the other side of this world and my feeling about that is if you accept the morality, commanders have two primary applications. the first is to win in the second is to protect the people the best they can. i think that fairness is a concept that is very vital to the sport. but that doesn't really have a rule. they often say were not interested in fair fight. i say nothing at all. i just think it is a red hearing

or something unfair about using this weapon and military operation. the whole area of targeted killings raises a different set of issues. as i think you know, the military operates under title 10. the intelligence agencies operate under title 15 and executive orders. as a citizen, one question i had is whether we don't need better checks and balance his on the executive ranch and more information about how people are put on the target list with the standards of evidence are. i would be personally more comfortable if we had maybe the kind of situation we had for the foreign intelligence surveillance by the wiretaps,

the judge has to approve one and at least someone in the judiciary has to review the evidence. the general principle i think is i would like the executive branch from our checks and balances weather them for and none after. they do any thing with the information. the question of targeting killings. the principle when the obama administration issued a public memo on the legal justification or the killing of how lucky, much of that was redacted. but the justification was

essentially that the government has a think it's called the public toward the right to kill people. so anyway, the whole tangled area and not memo didn't use the word drone. i remember the exact phrase, but talked about targeting killing in the point is you don't have to use a drone to target someone and kill them so we have to decide what we want to make do. >> charlie stevens in size. you have written about other aircraft, beach 22 osprey, you've written about predator. but lessons would you offer to do a better job in the revolutionary technologies? >> i assume you mean in the

acquisition and wide with situations like we do now that the projects that have been going on for years and years and how can we get there? i thought about that a lot and i wish i had some good ecm tears. i would be a genius to fight it because a lot of smart people work on this. questions all the time. the interesting thing to me about the difference between the osprey in the predator and the inquisition is with the osprey, you started out -- it takes off like a helicopter and flies like an airplane. in shorthand i call it the ugly duckling that turns into a salon because it had a very troubled development process, but i was doing wonderfully for the marine corps and the air force. it took $22,000,000,000.35 flaws

before the osprey became the great aircraft it is today. it started out in the project file are for services with 10 different missions that were supposed to go enlist the requirements that went on and on, but the people designing the type to me. the predator was almost like build it and they will calm. there's actually a very simple list of requirements in only three or four in 1993. i think that opportunity exemplifies the process a great deal. we write the requirements for military development is when the system gets bogged down a lot because there's a temptation to ask for the impossible. i think the defense contractors

say oh yeah, we can do that easy . one of the areas that should be focused on is the whole process and thinking about whether big safari was developed as a predator in many ways, one of their many mottos is look for the 80% solution. that's not a bad motto. >> and george nash of the national. thanks for the presentation. my question is given this that we experience every day with target, home depot, the chinese then everything here. the nsa is not bad either. how can we make sure and be sure that these predators are not going to be controlled by

hackers and then turned against another target including ourselves quiet >> well, the question that comes to a lot of people's minds i would be lying if i said i did the technical answer because i am really not an engineer. i am a storyteller. and i've told the story by interviewing people who are experts. i am told however by people who are expert oddness that at this point the military has encrypted the signals for all of the major uavs, the large ones and that there is really no danger, little to no danger of anyone being hijacked in control. now someone else told me while they still can be jammed, but as

they say, that is certainly a risk, but it's when the military has thought about. yes, sir. >> i'd like to go back to the question. we all know technology is closely held, soon finds its way but the same technology. i am wondering, how effect really is a predator accused to follow commercial flight and what is the possibility that we could reach a point in time for someone who is an adversary could actually use the same type knowledge he against civilian aircraft? >> there are countries out there trying. the chinese have sort of a predator knockoff called the pterodactyl. if you've seen the photograph,

it looks very similar. i think that the aircraft technology is not the secret. lots of countries may be able to duplicate aircraft with that. but the software and communications architecture are very special and very few countries will build to duplicate that. now also, the predator ball fairly hard to detect itself is stored in the book when captain scott swanson was piloting over afghanistan in 2000 looking for osama bin laden, the taliban scrambled that came up in swanson and the other members of the crew underground station for bobby and unwavering and

maneuvering the aircraft in make it as small as possible. and that jet fighter pilot failed to see the predator that flew right by because you know, it cruises at roughly 82 miles per hour and if it's painted air superiority grad as it was when they send them into action over in afghanistan, it's pretty hard to see. but it's quite easy to shoot down. in fact, one air force general told me the best shoot down a predator is to fly a helicopter with a 12 gauge shotgun. [laughter] so i think other countries may be able to duplicate aspects of the technology aircraft like the. i don't think they're going to be successful in going over our

borders. we have the best i assume, i hope in the world and africa. but anyway, we have substantial air predators and i don't have to worry about people find those kinds of drones over our territory. especially since the communications architecture is such you know as the diagram shows come in the signal has to go by fiber-optic cable from here on to the atlantic ocean to europe where it joins the satellite earth terminal and goes to the predator. i think it's a pretty expensive proposition and i don't think many countries can do that. so i think the greater threat actually is to send america from the unmanned aircraft is from small unmanned aircraft even down to the size of the partial copter is someone in the various

group wanted to take one for some sort of explosives on it. but that would just be a terror weapon. you know, that would be a weapon of any military significance. i rambled a bit, but i hope i answered the question. [inaudible] -- russian university. both follow up on that point on the civilian uses of the technology. could you call what you might expect that to look like how is that going to involve and how will that change the environment in which all of the aircraft come. >> jim williams would love it if i could given the answer to that question. that is something the faa has struggled with. as you know, one of the big issues, one of the problems one of the technical hurdles in the

unmanned safety piloted aircraft has to deal to see and avoid other aircraft. so there are lots of companies, the defense department are working on technologies to provide the uav can unmanned aircraft the ability to avoid other aircraft or detect the aircraft. the real question as to how heavy and how expensive that technology has to be and without it, i think it is definitely what you're going to be what to do with this technology because you can't just let the skies of aircraft at night writing to other aircraft or falls in the sky and her people or cause damage to buildings or whatever. so safety is a major concern and a major hurdle.

we are not there yet. haven't looked at this story and the book tell the story of how they came up with this remote split operations to solve the major problems that arose in the planned operation, i think i am very hesitant to try to predict the future because i don't gain a month before he did that anyone would have predicted that you could control it uab on the other side of the globe from the united states. in fact, all the other experts were saying this can't be done. we have to shut down the operation. but i am reminded also of the fact that when i wrote the book about the osprey i wrote about the 1930s than the tree and that inspired the aircraft, the dream of creating aircraft that

could do everything a bird could do and the dream of flying cars. we are still waiting for flying cars and i don't know how air-traffic control would work the ball of us have the ability to suddenly decide i'm sick of this traffic jam. i'm going to fly over to the grocery store. there's one problem that may be in the end installable. yes, sir. >> robert danziger. in the way, the previous question duplicating drones. as you know, a drone crash in iran and they were able to reverse engineering -- [inaudible]

were the rain and able to duplicate not just the frame, but also the electronics? >> you're asking me whether they were able to? >> well, i don't know, but i doubt it. you know, it was interesting to me when they hold their news conference in may showed the 170 cents a mall previously inserted node to reporters in kandahar because they would just get glimpses of it, started that wing shaped drones. one of the notable things about it was they didn't show the landing gear and they had a flag or something draped across the firm. and i had talked to people who knew more about these things than i could say let's suggested that that aircraft came in for a pretty hard landing and it is unlikely that it contact when

they found it. it let wake a strange east actually when they showed it at their news conference. but i don't know the answer to that question. that was a classified aircraft before the ukrainians got it. but have also been told and makes more sense than anything else. it lost the signal and went down and probably had a higher looking. i have answered every question. >> any additional comments or questions to chime in? >> one more, please.

>> rick, you have written your previous book, which i think is more of a characteristic, more incremental. this really is as you say of revolution of the beast 22, great story, too. there are very few opportunities to observe a revolution as it happens in the aerospace defense industry. if anything in the future, on the right thing, that could approximate something of this magnitude in aerospace or even requirements. >> while i can count on you richard to pose the unanswerable question. i think if i knew the answer to that i wouldn't tell you because i'd be working on a book about it. [laughter] >> on that note richard, thank you very much.

[applause] thank you very much in thank you all for being here. for those who have not received the book with his signature, i think there are some copies left. thank you for joining us. see you soon i hope. [inaudible conversations] >> so where are we now? i like to do this at the moment when iraq and pinched on syria. when i think back to events a year ago, i asked someone who is a closed area watcher, i don't think i could've anticipated

what happened. the warning signs were there. they were there for many of us who served in the middle east particularly. in many ways the syrian tragedy seemed so overwhelming, so deep that the manner in which syria would end up destabilizing iraq and iraq would end of destabilizing area was surprising in many ways unprecedented. here the central actors were isis, not referring to itself as i had, islamic state. originally been strained to cut their teeth in afghanistan in camps to iraq where they became al qaeda became al qaeda and iraq have incredibly brutal come incredibly successful until they were quashed by factor significant among the u.s. surge. although crashed, they manage, they managed to regroup, reorganize and grow in strength by capitalizing on the chaos that was then unfolding in neighboring syria.

many of you will be familiar with the origins of isis, but it can be helpful to take a step back and think about what makes the isis unique. the first is their claim to an established caliphate or reestablished caliphate. the word caliphate is a major buzzword in our media today. but i don't think the definition is per se widely known. tequila fate is of course the normative sum of government established by the successors beginning with his immediate successor abu bock of perpetuated a series of word and powerful dynasties that spread islam in the atlantic coast of morocco to the hindu kush in central asia. over the course of the middle ages, the caliphate as an institution disintegrated, but the good witch and never vanished and so even as the caliphate became something of a fiction and reality, the restoration of the caliphate to where it had been at the

beginning, it was always in the sense it whole to reestablish it. it was absolved under ataturk at the beginning of the 20th century in various sunni military groups over the course of the past decade had attempted her claim to want to restore this, but none have done it until isis this past summer. so that is one thing that makes them unique. the alleged realization of the goal of reestablishing the caliphate. the second thing that made them very unique in my eyes connected intimately to the first is that as a group that wages transnational jihads, it is a holding territory. this is the nature of the caliphate. unlike al qaeda responsible for september 11th attacks, these groups for the most part did not have an interest in state building. isis is quite the office said. caliphates and that is what make isis special.