The Network - Jason Elliot [69]
We loop around another vast parking lot and drive past smaller clusters of buildings until we come to a halt by a building surrounded by thick woods. As we get out of the car, Grace shifts her belt and adjusts what is probably a holster under her blazer. She’s tall and lean and walks like a man.
‘Come and meet the Manson family,’ she says, and we enter the building, press our IDs against a reader and enter a second door marked authorized personnel only.
About a dozen men and three women are in the briefing room, clustered around tables and overlooked by a giant blank screen. Grace shepherds me around with a series of first-name introductions. The majority are guarded in their manner, a few look puzzled to see a foreigner, and one or two fail to conceal their suspicion. I have the distinct feeling they are not accustomed to outsiders.
The exception is a portly middle-aged man wearing thick glasses, who I meet more or less by accident as I help myself, at Grace’s suggestion, to a cup of coffee. He’s ahead of me and nearly bumps into me as he turns around, and as if by reflex introduces himself. His face seems to be frozen in a perpetual grin. He mentions only his name and the acronym of the organisation to which he’s attached before launching into his job description. It pours out in a low drawl with infrequent pauses. He looks at me only occasionally, preferring to rest his eyes on a point somewhere near my left shoulder. His field is ‘fixed and dynamic target source analysis’, a subject on which I now feel obliged to appear knowledgeable.
His main task is prioritising and occasionally deconflicting ISR input from assets on the ground, he says, so that the sequence F2T2EA – find, fix, track, target, engage – commonly known as the kill chain, can run more smoothly. I nod sagely. He advises on kinetic collateral damage assessment and target restrictions based on operation-specific ROE, LOAC, the RTL and the NSL.
‘I don’t remember all those,’ I say. ‘Remind me.’
‘Rules of Engagement, Law of Armed Conflict, Restricted Target List and No-Strike List.’ He takes a sip from his coffee. He’s proud, he says, to be pushing the envelope on new protocols for mensuration software algorithms and datum management. But he’s lost me now. I’m relieved when Grace comes to my rescue and guides me over to some of the others. One is a tall man called Rich, who greets me briefly with formal authority before turning back to the conversation he’s in.
‘You just met the biggest toad in the pond,’ whispers Grace approvingly.
A few minutes pass before the assembly is complete, and there’s a resonant tapping on the PA system, which prompts us all to sit. The room darkens.
A young technician explains, for the benefit of those of us who aren’t familiar with tonight’s technology, how it is that we’re able to watch a live feed of imagery from Afghanistan. The screen above him flickers into life and displays a description of a Special Access Program called Afghan Eyes and the unmanned aircraft system that makes it possible: the Predator RQ-1.
A picture appears of a military-looking trailer with a satellite dish on its roof, called a ground control station, currently at an airfield in Uzbekistan, north of the Afghan border across the Amu Darya river. It’s from here, it now dawns on me, that the images we are about to watch are being beamed. Inside it are a pilot and a payload operator, who direct and control the unmanned aircraft by what is called knob control.
I can’t resist a sideways glance at Grace on hearing this expression, and am glad to see she’s got the joke too, and signals the fact with the faintest of smiles.
While the technician reels off the equipment’s characteristics, more pictures appear on the screen. The Predator itself is a long thin aircraft with weird-looking, downward-pointing tail fins that give the impression that it’s flying upside down like an injured fish. It has retractable landing gear, which enables it to take off and land like an ordinary plane. It has