Aquila and Predator: The Failure and Momentum of Drone Technologies in the U.S., 1970-2015

This article examines the technological and intellectual histories of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) development in the U.S. from the 1970s until 2015. Borrowing from the field of science and technology studies, the author argues that although early drone development demonstrated a significant degree of heterogeneity (i.e., interpretive flexibility), the spectacular failure in 1987 of one program in particular—the Aquila Remotely Piloted Vehicle—thereafter contributed to a significant restricting of UAS potentialities. Aquila’s demise prompted a Congressional directive in 1988 to consolidate the disparate UAS development efforts within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) under one joint program, ushering in a means by which a singular exemplar artifact, the Predator, could emerge and stabilize as the prevailing UAS technological frame for the following three decades. This article further suggests the possibility that the restricting of UAS potentialities to Predator-like form had the deterministic effect of scripting U.S. policy in its war in Afghanistan, ultimately reducing the latter to a dubious campaign of strategically ineffectual “targeted killings”. If true, this claim establishes an indirect causal link between an obscure technology failure in the 1970-80s with a national strategic failure in the 2010-20s. By centering the Aquila as the subject of the article, the author intends to unbury an understudied attempt by the DoD to develop a drone type that differed drastically from Predator.