The plane continued to descend and turned off all emissions as it passed from Saudi into Iraqi airspace. This would be the sole planeload of UAVs to operate out of Mudaysis during Block G — the single exception to the plan’s policy of redundancy. For this reason, the best C-130 pilots in the IAF had been chosen to make this flight from Palmachim Airbase to Mudaysis.
From the perspective of Mudaysis Airfield, the sun set below the western desert horizon at exactly 5:44 p.m. Iraqi time. The weather was perfect, with no clouds in the darkening sky and only a soft four knot breeze out of the northwest. The five surviving men of Shaldag had completed their preparations for the coming evening. Small lights with infrared strobes on the northwest face of their heavily weighted base were placed on each side of the runway about every 1,000 feet. They were not powerful, but were enough to provide a clear silhouette of the otherwise unlit runway from the air.
Almost one hour after sunset, the Shaldag commander was the first to hear the hum of distant turboprop engines. They grew rapidly in intensity but only slowly in volume, the westerly breeze carrying the sound from far off. Using night vision goggles, the plane first appeared as a dot more than five miles distant. Flying under 1,000 feet, the C-130 Samson had no set base leg vector to approach Mudaysis. Instead, the pilot turned slowly to the southeast to line up on the runway at a heading of 130 degrees magnetic. With a long runway to use, he maintained a landing glide slope of three degrees and an indicated air speed of 155 knots.
The pilot turned on his landing lights when he was a quarter mile off the end of the runway. The plane kissed the concrete at the gentle descent rate of only 200 feet per minute and slowed down gradually until the pilot could turn left on a short connector. He then turned the plane back to the northwest and taxied along the taxiway until he came to the Shaldag soldier who had swept the airfield the previous night. The soldier, using two orange coned flashlights, marshaled the C-130 to a stop just past the access road, which ran into the taxiway at a perpendicular angle.
The cargo ramp was lowered and a loadmaster pulled the quick release tab on two restraining straps that held the rear UAV rack in place. The loadmaster pulled out a stopwatch and clicked the start button. “Okay, we have ten minutes. Let’s move.”
Eight men, four on each side, pushed the rear rack down the cargo ramp and onto the taxiway, continuing to push the wheeled device off the taxiway and about one hundred yards down the access road. Eight other men pushed the second rack through the cargo cabin, down the ramp and onto the access road. The remaining men began to remove Velcro straps that held 35 foot long wings in place against the cabin sidewall. Three men handled each 152 pound wing, one on each end and one in the middle.
The first wing, painted with the number “1,” was walked down the ramp and toward the front of the first rack. By the time the wing arrived, a fuselage had already been removed from the rack and mated to its takeoff carriage. The men with the wing walked around the fuselage and maneuvered the wing in place as the loadmaster placed floodlights outside the plane to light the work area.
The composite wing had two large bolts and two wiring harnesses protruding from the bottom of the wing directly in its center. The man in the middle rested the wing on his shoulder as he fed the two wiring harnesses into the opening in the central wing mount pedestal on the fuselage. He made sure that the bolts lined up with two receiving holes and the wing was then lowered into place. A missing access panel on the right side of the fuselage just behind the wing pedestal allowed necessary access.
The man who had been carrying the center of the wing now retrieved two large nuts and washers from a tool pouch worn around his waist. He reached into the fuselage and slid a washer around one bolt and used his hand to thread a nut onto the bolt. He repeated the process with the second bolt. He then pulled out a ratchet wrench and tightened each bolt in place. Next he reached in and connected a wiring harness that mated the wing’s aileron and flap actuators to the flight control computers in the fuselage. He then clicked together a second wiring harness that connected the UAV’s mission control and avionics modules to two launch rails mounted underneath the wing, one on each side of the fuselage.
“Done,” yelled the man over the sound of the four idled engines of the C-130. On the edge of the road, two Shaldag soldiers kept an inquisitive watch.
A second man stepped to the newly re-assembled UAV and looked into the opening in the side of the fuselage to inspect the connections using both a flashlight and his headlamp. In his left hand he held a curved sheet of aircraft aluminum that was two feet long and 18 inches wide along its arc. When he was satisfied that the connections were properly completed, he placed the aluminum sheet over the opening and snapped six latches which locked the panel in place. Behind him, the first man had folded up a hinged mast that was three feet in length and locked it into its operating position on top of the fuselage and just forward of the V-shaped tails. On top of the mast was a teardrop shaped pod that contained the UAV’s satellite link system. Two other men walked to the wings. Each man had retrieved a single Hellfire missile from the rack and now mounted his Hellfire onto one of the launch rails underneath the wings.
As soon as the men had completed their roles, they each moved on to retrieve another Hermes fuselage from the rack and a wing from the C-130 cabin and repeat the process. Elsewhere on the access road, three other Hermes 450M UAVs — numbered “2,” “3,” and “4,” — were completing their assembly, each one positioned slightly behind the one in front of it.
The senior C-130 loadmaster, one of four loadmasters now on the ground and assisting with the assembly of twenty-three drones, looked at his stopwatch as he walked through the busy team of men. He was counting out the minutes as they passed. “Four minutes,” came the yell.
Finally the man who closed the wing mounting access hatch reached down along the side of the tubular fuselage. A single orange streamer about eighteen inches long and two inches wide flapped lazily in the dry desert breeze. It was connected to a pin that protruded from a small hole in the side of the UAV. The man grabbed hold of the streamer and yanked it and the pin it was attached to out of the UAV. Inside the Hermes, all of its systems came to life and a pre-programmed autonomous software routine commenced.
Over on the edge of the access road, just a few feet from where the Shaldag soldiers watched the process, the technician who tested the satellite communications while on board the C-130 had set up a small folding table that was waist high. On the table, a laptop computer was open and connected by USB cable to a small plastic dome that was six inches in diameter and eight inches tall. The dome was communicating with each of the UAVs as they came online. On the computer screen, a status box indicated the number “1” and started to flash yellow. A series of boxes underneath turned from yellow to green as the UAV ran internal diagnostics to verify that all of its systems were online, communicating and in operating condition. The process took only eight seconds and when the last of the small boxes turned green, the main box on the screen also turned green and an “Engine Start” dialogue box appeared. The technician looked over at the first UAV to make sure the propeller was clear. He yelled “Clear One” as loud as he could and used his mouse to click the “Start” icon.