"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 Post

The 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.

Prologue 1

1. The Genius of the Genesis 7

2. The Blues 29

3. A Straw Hat in Winter 47

4. Predator Reborn 68

5. Predator's Progress 90

6. WILD Predator 119

7. The Summer Project 143

8. The Next Logical Step 164

9. Hellfire and Hesitation 182

10. Ready or Not 210

11. Wildfire 232

12. Cleared to Fire 255

13. Never Mind…We'll Do It Ourselves 276

Epilogue 294

Author's Note 311

Notes 313

Selected Bibliography 334

Acknowledgments 337

Index 341