Drone Games

Praise for
Drone Games

“
Drone Games
is a well-written work of fiction that is very believable. Drones and UAVs are hot topics in the airport management community today. Our concern has been focused on unintentional collisions between airliners and unmanned aircraft. However, after reading Mr. Narlock’s book, we now need to consider the possibility that drones can also be used as weapons of terrorism.”

—
PETER HORTON,
Director, Key West International Airport

“As I prepared my 777 for departure from Heathrow Airport in London to Dulles International, I found myself scanning the perimeter fence lines for drones! A fascinating and realistic novel that really got me thinking!”

—
JOHNI CHRISTIANSEN,
US commercial airline pilot

“What truly makes a thrilling novel, no matter how well-written, is how realistic and true to scientific facts and logical conclusions it is. Joel Narlock has captured this timely, frightening phenomenon in
Drone Games
to a tee. I highly recommend it to any reader, with the warning that you may have second thoughts about the next airline flight you take.”

—JERRY SANDERS,
US Army Colonel, retired, US commercial airline pilot, certified flight instructor

THE LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. . . . They will besiege all the cities throughout the land. . . . If only it were morning! Because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.

—Deuteronomy 28:49–50, 52, 67

CONTENTS

1. Foreword
   
2. Chapter 1
   
3. Chapter 2
   
4. Chapter 3
   
5. Chapter 4
   
6. Chapter 5
   
7. Chapter 6
   
8. Chapter 7
   
9. Chapter 8
   
10. Chapter 9
    
11. Chapter 10
    
12. Chapter 11
    
13. Chapter 12
    
14. Chapter 13
    
15. Chapter 14
    
16. Chapter 15
    
17. Chapter 16
    
18. Chapter 17
    
19. Chapter 18
    
20. Chapter 19
    
21. Chapter 20
    
22. Chapter 21
    
23. Chapter 22
    
24. Chapter 23
    
25. Chapter 24
    
26. Chapter 25
    
27. Chapter 26
    
28. Chapter 27
    
29. Chapter 28
    
30. Chapter 29
    
31. Chapter 30
    
32. Chapter 31
    
33. Chapter 32
    
34. Chapter 33
    
35. Chapter 34
    
36. Chapter 35
    
37. Chapter 36
    
38. Chapter 37
    
39. Chapter 38
    
40. Chapter 39
    
41. Chapter 40
    
42. Chapter 41
    
43. Chapter 42
    
44. Chapter 43
    
45. Chapter 44
    
46. Chapter 45
    
47. Chapter 46
    
48. Chapter 47
    
49. About the Author
    

IT HAS become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

—Albert Einstein

I ALWAYS say my biggest worry is an attack on a plane.

—Robert Mueller, FBI Director 2001–2013

FOREWORD

ROBERT C. MICHELSON

HIGH SCHOOL English was never one of my favorite subjects. In fact, I learned more grammar rules by studying Spanish. But I did enjoy creative writing. As an aspiring engineer, creativity was essential, so it was natural that my creative bent would be expressed in terms of technical stories, especially science-fiction short stories. Who would have guessed that my career would thrust me into cutting-edge research, essentially creating new things and demonstrating capabilities that had never been done before? While others were reading science fiction, I was living it.

My career has had very few limits. If I could get an idea funded, I could implement it without regard for company product lines or corporate bottom lines. Such was the nature of full-time research at one of the world’s top university-based research institutes.

I started out designing remote sensing systems but later gravitated to aerial robotics. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) combine aeronautics with IT. Give a UAV the ability to “reason,” and you have an aerial robot. That was my passion. A flying robot that could act intelligently on its own—as if piloted by a human—but with no human intervention.

My first attempt at building an aerial robot was actually in high school. I took a control-line model airplane and removed the control lines, replacing them instead with a series of weights and using gravity for stable flight. It was a horrendous failure for reasons that are quite obvious to me now, but it was a beginning.

Over the years, I worked on various UAV programs for the US government and taught at Georgia Tech and internationally. While America focused on large fixed-wing UAVs such as the General Atomics Predator and Teledyne Ryan’s Global Hawk, my attention turned to biologically inspired machines with flapping wings and small size—the kind that were perfect for covert operations. I developed and patented the “Entomopter” (
entomo
meaning “insect” as in
entomology
, and
pteron
meaning “wing”; thus it’s an “insect-winged machine”).

I suppose I’m a purist when I bemoan the media’s use of the antiquated term
drone
. During the Vietnam War, US drones like the Ryan AQM-91 Firefly flew reconnaissance missions to waypoints and simply returned to base. Far from intelligent machines. We’ve come a long way since then. In the 2013 International Aerial Robotics Competition, a Chinese autonomous aerial robot covertly entered a building and, without any prior knowledge of the floor plan, created a laser-scan map while reading directional signs in Arabic as it moved. Upon locating the correct room, the aerial robot retrieved a flash drive from a box on a desk and then deposited an identical flash drive to delay detection of the espionage-related theft. It then used its map to exit the building—all in under ten minutes. That is the future. An advanced aerial robot that thinks for itself. Not just a “drone,” and certainly not fiction.

Purism aside, a swarm of sophisticated, fun, mysterious, and fascinating flying machines is about to invade our skies. A new species. The next new thing. Their functions, uses, flight paths, and silhouettes will soon become commonplace, embedded in our psyche and day-to-day culture just like that of microwave ovens and cell phones. Perhaps in five years, we’ll all own one. It’s 11:00 p.m. Do you know where your drone is?

So, that brings us to Joel Narlock’s fictional story,
Drone Games
, in which an Entomopter plays a central role. The Entomopter, as with all technology, is neutral. It is a thing, neither good nor bad. It has beneficial uses as well as nefarious ones. Much akin to a gun that can be used to feed a family or kill a family, the misuse of a drone such as the Entomopter emanates from the dark heart of its user, not the inanimate object itself.

Drone Games
tells a story of homeland terrorism. The potential has existed for years but is rarely talked about openly. It poses a classic scenario: What if an otherwise benign drone fell into evil hands for an evil purpose? What kind of havoc could be wrought?

To be sure,
Drone Games
is not a how-to manual for the misuse of drone technology; rather, it is a scenario designed to entertain the reader. It should also provoke thoughts on how to defend against someone who might actually attempt such tactics, and rightly so. We can always use good security forethought. The world is already a dangerous place, and sadly, many security operations are purely reactive. A shoe bomber attempts to bring down a passenger airliner, and now we must all remove our shoes at airport checkpoints. Why were we not scanning or removing footwear prior? It is naïve to think that evildoers do not already possess the ability to create aerial robotic weapons. Many terrorists and their collaborators are trained at the world’s finest universities.

Human beings, educated or not, who are bent on committing evil will use every high-tech tool available.
Drone Games
explores one such scenario in which a harmless flying device is used to terrorize America and cripple its economy. It is an entertaining novel that can be appreciated by readers on several levels, from those who love suspense and the unfolding of a crime investigation, to the geek in all of us who is intrigued by an evil protagonist’s technically plausible schemes.

I pray that the plot stays fiction.

ROBERT C. MICHELSON

Principal Research Engineer, Emeritus Georgia Tech Research Institute

Adj. Associate Professor (Ret.) School of Aerospace Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology

President & Principal Research Engineer Millennial Vision, LLC

Cairo, Egypt

Wednesday, April 29

EXPLOSIVES ON passenger aircraft . . . hidden in shoes and underwear—tactics that had failed miserably when Richard Colvin Reid and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had tried to light theirs on fire.

There
must
be another way.

This was on Ali I Naimi’s mind as he sat with his comrade, Georgia Tech Professor Faiz Al-Aran, in Fishawy’s Café, a foodless coffee and teahouse that, barring world war, had been serving customers 24/7 since 1771.

Naimi’s vintage white linen suit, wire-rimmed glasses, and brown leather saddle shoes suggested a diplomat or a seasoned grandfather—the antithesis of the battle-worn mujahid in a pakol beret and ammunition vest who once led guerrilla raids against Soviet Special Forces in Afghanistan. A salt-gray beard and nicotine-stained mustache hid the shrapnel scars on his face.

Too old for field operations, Naimi was now the head of al-Qaeda’s majis al shura, a council that discussed and approved major terror operations. The importance of this position was based in the Holy Qur’an:

Those who conduct their affairs by Shura are loved by Allah. (42:38)

It was late afternoon, and the usually bustling café was eerily calm. A group of students from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts compared their sketches of the Jawhariya Madrasa-Mausoleum, a sacred monument from 1440 that Denmark had helped to restore. A few locals debated Egypt’s future. Their civil discussion quickly turned into an argument and then stopped. When it came to solutions, no one dared show support for either Western democracy or the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Even the waiters were jittery. The café itself had received a bomb threat. This was a troubling time for everyone.