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 a camera in its nose, a sensor turret and a multi-spectral targeting system. It also has an infrared camera for use at night, synthetic aperture radar to see through smoke or cloud and listening devices for picking up radio signals in its vicinity. It’s a technological marvel, invisible and inaudible from the ground, and to judge from the hypnotised expressions on the audience, it impresses them as much as it impresses me. A newer version, we’re told, is under development, which will enable multi-role operations. Instead of just looking at things, in other words, it will be able to shoot at them with laser-guided missiles.
Then comes the near-miraculous moment when the small square at the bottom of the screen is suddenly expanded, and we’re looking at live video from a Predator’s nose. Spinning numbers at the edge of the screen give the aircraft’s position, heading and the time. I imagine the images will be still ones, but the video is as good as television and the impression is almost supernatural.
We are in the south-east of the country, near the border of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas and what the British used to call the North-West Frontier. To the Pakistanis, it’s Waziristan; to the Pashtuns, for whom the border has never really existed since the British imposed it a hundred years earlier, it’s still Afghanistan.
The Predator is circling silently above a potential target designated by a tracking team on the ground. It’s a mud-walled compound typical of the region, and the feed shows several parked vehicles in a courtyard and a single man emerging from a doorway. The angle of view is not from directly overhead so unlike an aerial photograph we can see the place in two dimensions. The man is wearing Afghan clothes and, by the looks of it, a waistcoat, but no turban. For a few moments all our eyes are on him. Then he stoops down and reaches for something on the ground. The camera is almost still. It’s surreal. From 7,000 miles away, we’re watching a Pashtun housekeeper sweep the dust from the doorway of his house.
A few moments later he stands up and runs across the courtyard towards the entrance gates. Behind them, two squat Russian jeeps have pulled up, and I imagine the characteristic single-tone horn of the forward jeep that has interrupted the housekeeper’s task. I imagine the metallic clang of the gate as it sweeps open and the smell of dust and diesel as the jeeps enter the courtyard and park. Several men descend from the vehicles and are joined by two others from inside the house, one of whom is steadying his turban on his head as he comes out. They greet their visitors in turn. We can even see the fluttering of the untied ends of their turbans in the wind. Even at this distance the formalised solemnity of their gestures is somehow communicated, and I can almost hear the ritual exchange of blessings as they embrace, touching chests rather than shaking hands, in the timeless Afghan fashion. They carry no weapons. Who are these men? Traders? Government members? Brothers or friends? Terrorists? I will never ever know.
We hear the distorted electronic voice of the Predator pilot over the loudspeakers as he receives instructions from two men wearing headsets sitting at the back of the room at computers. They are searching for a single man in a country the other side of the world, hoping to encounter the visual signature by which bin Laden has now become known: a convoy of Land Cruisers and armed bodyguards. I’m filled with a feeling akin to awe at the effort and technological genius that makes this spectacle possible. It is matched only by private concern at the fragility of the search, which will only ever be as reliable as the informers inside the country providing the likely targets. I imagine the temptation faced by an Afghan informer, seduced by bagfuls of hundred-dollar bills, to select targets merely to please his handlers because he knows this is what is expected of him and guarantees the next instalment. But I dare not express my cynicism.
For several hours we stare at the images as they filter from the heavens onto our screen, following suspect cars and trucks along remote mountain roads and peering from afar into the private worlds of our unsuspecting quarries with angelic, or perhaps demonic, omnipotence. It’s 4 a.m. when Grace taps my arm and suggests we cut a trail back to my hotel. We shake hands in parting with a few of the remaining station members as we make for the door.
‘Really appreciate your input,’ says one of them, although I haven’t given any.
Our driver is summoned on a walkie-talkie and we speed into the city along the Memorial Parkway with the Potomac on our left. Grace asks me for my thoughts.
‘Very impressive,’ I tell her, then feel I should say more. ‘It’s a dedicated team.’
‘Sure makes you feel all-overish looking at those images, doesn’t it? You don’t think we’re barking at a knot with all that technology?’ She sighs and speaks again before I can answer. ‘I can tell you do, and you’re right. I’ll admit there’s a few hotheads in the family who want the glory of nailing bin Laden in some Tom Clancy black op. They don’t give a damn what happens in Afghanistan. Way I see it, the Company’s a strategic entity not a tactical one. You can’t do strategy with a motorised buzzard, even if it can see in the goddamned dark.’ She peers from the window. ‘Same goes for the DIA’s data-mining programmes. We can analyse the conversations of every member of every jihad chat room across the world. We can listen to their phones 24/7. We could hear them talking in their sleep if we really wanted to. But it’ll never tell us what they’re really thinking. You gotta be there to know that.’