Cohen gave Jennings an angry flash of his eyes, for just a fraction of a second, then resumed looking straight down.
"Do you normally play with the self-guidance feature?"
"This UAV came equipped with self-guidance software, but it's for testing purposes only. It wasn't cleared for deployment, as you well know. It is, if you will, like a trial version, reduced in functionality and designed to help us, the drone pilots, to figure out if it does what it should do, and what other functionality we'd like to have built in. It's more of a research tool. We sometimes play with it, but not that day, and never in populated areas."
"You're positive this drone was not self-guiding?" Alex asked.
"Yes, I am," Jennings answered.
"Yes, we are," Cohen answered, at the same time. "You have to physically turn on self-guidance to make it work. No one flipped that switch that day. Like Jennings said, the self-guidance feature is under development, it's not complete yet, and shouldn't be used outside of a test environment."
"But you said something about playing with it?"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," Jennings said, trying to fix it. "That was a slip of the tongue, more than anything else. We rarely test the self-guidance, and, when we do, the drones are out at sea, or over desert areas with no target in sight."
"All right, I get it. Tell me about ordnance. What was that UAV armed with when it hit the bus?"
"Nothing, ma'am," Cohen said. "It was a surveillance drone, not a combat one. The surveillance UAVs are equipped with video cameras and all kinds of imaging and monitoring technology. This particular one was helping the Coast Guard patrol our territorial waters."
"The explosion would have been far worse, if any type of missile had been involved," Jennings confirmed.
"Then what caused such a big explosion if the drone was unarmed?"
"Fuel, ma'am," Cohen said. "The UAV's tanks were more than half full."
…67
This time, Alex was late for her own staff meeting. She hated when people had to wait for her. She considered lateness a rude gesture. When she finally stepped through the conference room door, her team had been waiting for a while and was engaged in the casual chatter that occurs in such cases.
"Good morning, everyone, sorry I'm late," Alex said. She had no hesitation apologizing to her direct reports for being late, or for any mistake she made. The theory saying that apologizing is a sign of weakness didn't go well with her nature.
"Welcome back," Louie said, "I hope you're feeling better."
"Y-yes, I am," she replied, almost taken by surprise. In the whirlwind of the previous day's events, she had nearly forgotten she called in sick on Monday morning, claiming a bad case of food poisoning.
"Back where I'm from, especially on a Monday, food poisoning means something else," Louie said, to the amusement of the rest.
"Like what?" Alex asked.
"Like a serious hangover." Laughter erupted around the table.
"I promise you I was not hung over," Alex said, unable to contain a smile. "OK, back on track here. This week we're going to work with R&D in assessing the self-guiding software. There are complaints about the software, specifically about its unreliable performance. In last week's operations meeting with Walker, Peter Wilson mentioned software failures in all models. Who can take a look at that and let me know what's going on?"
Alan's face changed expressions from his usual degree of worry to a deeply concerned frown.
"This isn't the first time this has happened, you know," he said. "We've seen it before, last year, when we deployed the first version. There were so many bugs to fix that we didn't even try. We pulled back and went straight to the drawing board, designed what we have today. Today's version didn't go through formal QA, or a bug-fix period of testing and redeployment. There's plenty of work to do there."
"I'll work with you on that," Louie offered.
"Hey, I'll take all the help I can get," Alan said gratefully.
"I could help too," Bob said. "Everything else I have can wait or be delegated."
"Heard you're going to the plant today," Lisa said, with her usual charming smile.
"You are?" Bob asked.
"Yes, I am leaving right after this meeting."
"It's an interesting tour; you'll love it," Lisa continued. "I wish I could get out there more often. You learn more about the product from a visit to the plant than you learn from a month of theoretical dissertations."
"Well, if you're going there today," Bob said, "maybe you can help me with something."
"Shoot."
"I have this small, bomb-dismantling robot that needs to be tested. It needs to get there. You would save me a trip."
"Sure, no problem, I'll take it. Is it big and heavy?"
"No, just a few pounds, kinda looks like a toy. The Air Force wants to assess the feasibility of having these robots dropped from low flying UAVs. Folks at the plant are going to fit the little bugger with a parachute of sorts and start dropping it for testing. I'll walk you to your car, so you won't break a fingernail."
"Ah," Alex gave an amused sigh of pretend irritation. "OK, let's go."
"I'll tag along," Louie said, "got a question for you."
The robot wasn't large. It had a mechanical arm with a gripping claw, extending toward its front, much like an excavator. This robot's claw had a complicated design, involving multiple degrees of freedom, which allowed it to reach various locations and under different angles, to grab, detonate, or project a detonating laser beam from a safe distance.
"Where do you want this?" Bob asked.
She opened the rear car door on the passenger side.
"Put it down on the floor, between the seats. It won't budge from there. If we put it in the trunk, it will bounce around the whole way."
"Wanted to ask you," Louie said, "in the analysis of the self-guidance software, anything specific we should be looking for? Did Wilson mention anything in particular?"
"If I recall exactly, he said they fail in orientation, navigation, and targeting."
"Targeting? Or target acquisition?" Louie asked. "Targeting is in a different software module than target acquisition."
"Acquisition, yes, you're right. He said the drones get lost, exceed their patrol perimeter, and fail to pick up targets based on preloaded imagery. Fact is, I'd like to be able to have some kind of response for the operations team before the next meeting, which is in a week or so."
"All right, we'll all get on it then, full priority."
"Where should I put this?" Bob asked, holding a small device in his hand.
"What's this?" Alex asked.
"It's the remote for the bomb-dismantling robot."
"It works with a remote?" Alex asked.
"Oh, yeah," Bob said, thrilled at the opportunity to demonstrate. "You open it like this. It opens like one of those full keyboard cell phones. On this screen, you'll see what it sees with its cameras. You can select front view, side-left, side-right, rear, and above," he continued, demonstrating the robot's views. The views were showing incredibly detailed images of the interior of her car.
"Someone needs to vacuum under her seats," Louie said cheerfully.
"Ah, shut up," Alex fired right back at him.
"Here," Bob continued, unabated, "you have the arm controls. A small joystick, embedded in the remote, would snap up and become operational when in place. See?"
She nodded with interest.
"This is how you control the arm," Bob was demonstrating all the possible movements of the arm. "Combining the joystick with these four controls, you can get it to move sideways but also on the vertical axis, like this, or grip its claw, like this. You can lock the grip, like this," he continued, showing more combinations of controls.