He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “I work in the Joint Staff Office of Project Development,” he said. “We’re responsible for overseeing new weapons platforms. One of the contractors we’re working with, Armcor, is supposed to be developing an unmanned armed aerial reconnaissance vehicle. The on-site project manager is a sharp young noncom, Staff Sergeant Rory Lake. He came to me a week ago to report his suspicions that Armcor’s executives are fudging the figures on the performance of their prototype.”
“Whoa, back up,” I said. “That’s a lot of description in one sentence. What the hell is an unmanned . . .?”
“It’s basically an unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV . . . some people call them drones . . . used primarily for reconnaissance over hostile territory. This one, though, will be armed and capable of missile strikes on selected targets.”
“Sort of like the drones we used in Vietnam?” I remembered the lumbering devices that had been designed to hit the North Vietnamese infiltrating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They’d loiter around an area, but often, by the time the authorization for a strike came down the chain of command, the target would be long gone.
Raymond chuckled. “The new generation of . . . drones is to the ones you remember from Vietnam what an ICBM is to a slingshot,” he said. “We’ve built on what the Israelis have done with their UAV program, and with some of the new technology, these things are like unmanned airplanes.” He looked around, and lowered his voice. “They can be flown over targets in places like the Middle East by a pilot sitting in an air conditioned control room here in the United States.”
“Holy shit,” I said. “That’ll change the hell out of the way we fight wars.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but snapped it shut when the waitress, a cute young Ethiopian girl whose breasts and hips looked like they would burst through the tight dress she wore at her next step, approached our table.
I let him order for the both of us, after pointing out that I don’t eat sheep – mutton, lamb chops, whatever, I just can’t quite deal with the greasiness. He ordered Maheberawi, a mixed meat plate containing beef stew, goat cubes, and raw ground beef. He assured me that this would be more than enough for the two of us, as it would contain several injera, or flatbread pancakes which we would use instead of utensils to eat the rest. He then ordered Italian espresso coffee.
“I would order traditional Ethiopian coffee,” he said. “But, that would mean the waitress would be at the table for twenty minutes or more, preparing the beans and brewing it, and I’d like a little privacy. The espresso’s pretty good, though. Probably the only decent thing the Italians left during their brief attempt at colonizing Ethiopia.”
The girl bowed and smiled, and withdrew to get out food. “Now, you were saying these new drones will change the way we fight,” he said. “You’re partially right. There are a few people in the Pentagon who fear it will make it too easy for us to get involved in conflicts, and being able to strike targets remotely might erode our commitment to the rules of war. But, at the end of the day, it’ll still take boots on the ground to defeat the enemy.”
“Are you one of those people?”
He looked at me for a long time before he spoke. “I’m not sure sometimes, Al. War is serious business. If we turn it into a video game, I guess I worry we’ll raise a generation of youngsters who don’t realize just how bloody it really is.”
“Okay, I just had to ask,” I said. “But, what does that have to do with me? Or, put another way, how in hell is a private detective related to drone warfare?”
