The history of the Predator UAV is truly a tale of cosmic justice. The General Atomics Predator/Reaper UAV, that is so successful at killing extremist Islamic terrorists, was originally developed by an Israeli immigrant named Abe Karem.
Abe Karem came to the US (from Israel) in the late 70′s with nothing more than the shirt on his back. He built the first version of what would eventually become the Predator, by himself in his garage at night. It was called the Gnat. The Gnat attracted enough interest that he was given a contract to build a larger version called Amber, and started a company called Leading Systems to produce it.
Unfortunately, Leading Systems was a commercial failure and went bankrupt. General Atomics purchased the Amber technology and turned it into the very successful Predator UAV.
Following the commercial failure of Leading Systems, Abe Karem regrouped, started a new company (Frontier Systems) and produced the A160 Hummingbird UAV. He sold that successful UAV project to Boeing, who is now producing them for Army SOCOM.
Abe is now busy with his third business venture, Karem Aircraft, working to build a tilt-rotor aircraft the size of an A400. His little company is competing head-to-head with giants Sikorsky and Bell-Boeing on the JFTL program.
So, I wonder if the virulent anti-semitic members of Al-Qaeda, for whom the Predator UAV is currently causing so much grief, appreciate the fact that the Predator was the brainchild of a small, quiet, humble, Jewish man. Now that’s cosmic justice.
