Tom Cassidy said “sure” when the owner of General Atomics, J. Neal Blue, asked him to steer the San Diego company into the unmanned aircraft business in 1987. Cassidy, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, had flown 100 types of planes over a 34-year-career, including Russian MiGs obtained by the U.S. Cassidy watched lots of unmanned drones crash, and he thought those accidents spelled opportunity for whoever could solve the unmanned-plane riddle.

In 1991, the first Predators flew over Kuwait and, as Cassidy said, “we’ve been in combat nearly continuously ever since.” The name General Atomics became synonymous with the UAVs and video systems produced by the affiliated company Cassidy runs. Today, U.S. commanders cannot get enough of them.

The blunt-spoken Cassidy sat down for an interview with editor Ben Iannotta.

Q When you look at all the attention the Predators and Reapers are getting in Iraq and Afghanistan, did you envision UAVs playing out like this?

A We were hoping it would happen some day and it really did happen pretty quick. The airplanes, the way we designed them was for a lot of growth, to be capable of carrying weapons and to control them through satellites. We figured that was kind of the way of the future, and that’s the way it worked out.

QDid you see the recently released study forecasting the UAV market?

ASomebody is always doing a study and forecasting the UAV market. We don’t pay much attention to that. We envision what the military needs next. Then we go ahead and build that kind of system. We have a pretty good feeling for what the military needs, for what Homeland Security needs, and we go ahead and do it on our own. They typically generate requirements to support that kind of an effort and we go from there.

QThe Air Force has said it’s starting to think about a next-generation UAV, and might release a request for information.

AThey did the same thing last year. The research labs asked for it.

Q Has much changed since then?

A No, not really. We’re improving the Predator B every day. We’ve improved Predator performance with the Sky Warrior for the Army, a diesel-engine, triple-redundant system and bigger payload capacity. Our next aircraft is all put together and we intend to fly it this fall. ... I’m not getting into detail until we fly it.

QThe next-generation plane, is it an all-new airframe?

A Yeah, it’s a new airframe. Same avionics as the Predator B. I can tell you it’s a pure jet, as opposed to a prop jet like the Predator B, and that’s all I’m going to say about it.

QDid you develop that with your company’s research dollars?

A Yes. We paid for it. The same thing with Predator B. We did that on our money, too.

QHave you described the plane to the Air Force?

A To some limited degree. What we like to do is take a video of the first flight and send that to them and not get into a 20-year development program.

QWhere will you fly it, in California?

AAt Gray Butte. We have two airports, Gray Butte and El Mirage.

QIn the next-generation plane, the Air Force is looking for something more persistent and reliable. When the Predator was envisioned, the thinking was, “It’s OK to lose one now and then,” right?

A Well, I certainly didn’t have that opinion. We didn’t build it that way. There were some people in the system who thought that was OK. We never did. We built them as reliable as we could, and we’ve improved them over the years.

Q Could you build one air frame that could do the types of missions performed by Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawks up at 60,000 feet and those performed by your Predators at 15,000 feet?

A Look at the aviation industry, tactical aviation, commercial airliners. They’ve got a spread of different kinds of capabilities, from commuter planes up to 747s. You go ask the airlines why they don’t have one kind of airplane. What answer are you going to get? The same answer I’m going to give you: Smaller is cheaper, but they don’t do anything. What we do is make multimission airplanes. Predator B is an example. It carries 3,000 pounds of weapons, synthetic aperture radar, camera gimbal, other sensors. It’s flown through a satellite. Takes off in the theater of operations and is controlled from [8,000] to 10,000 miles away. If you want to do that, you need a Predator B. It flies to 50,000 feet.

In my opinion, there’s no need to go to 60,000 feet and there’s probably very little reason to go up to 50,000 feet. What you want to do is be up where nobody sees you, hears you, and you go do your mission.

Q What about surface-to-air missiles?

A Again, it depends on the kind of war you’re in. If you’re going to be having a lot SAMs being shot at you, you’d like to have a stealthy airplane.

We don’t have that in Southwest Asia. There’s some shoulder-fired stuff down really low and small-arms fire down low, but where these planes operate, there is no surface-to-air or air-to-air threat. The reason we’re building the next generation is to be more survivable in a higher threat area.

QHave you had any input into this ISR Task Force Defense Secretary Robert Gates established?

A No, they know what the capabilities of Predator are.

QEarlier this year, the U.S. special operations commander, Adm. Eric Olson, told Congress that dollar for dollar, Predator is not where he’d put his money to fill the ISR gap. How much of a role can General Atomics play in closing this shortfall?

A There’s no shortage of airplanes. It’s been acknowledged that the limiting factor right now in Predator orbits is the pilots and crews. The Air Force is currently flying 25 Predators airborne every minute of every day. What they’re trying to do is ramp that up to 50. And it’s strictly limited by flight rules. And they’re cranking them out as fast as they can crank them out.

Q So they have the aircraft they need?

A They have the aircraft.

Q To fly the Predator capably, some people are saying, “Well, the Army doesn’t require you to have flown another aircraft to fly its aircraft.” Why do it differently in the Air Force?

A We went with an instrument-rated pilot concept because of the requirement to fly in national airspace. We feel that the [Federal Aviation Administration] will be a little more receptive if they know we have an instrumented pilot up there talking to one of our controllers.

The Army philosophy is to use operators, not rated pilots, although they are using warrant officer pilots in some areas. Their philosophy from the Shadow [UAV] on, and it is true for the [Sky Warrior], is to use an operator who clicks “takeoff,” clicks “heading, altitude, airspeed,” flies the mission with a [computer trackball] and then clicks “land.”

QIn Iraq and Afghanistan, that rated-pilot concern would be irrelevant, right?

A It depends on Central Command. They control the airspace up there.

QBut the Predator would be capable of being flown either way?

A Predators and Predator Bs can be flown in the United States. We deliver them by flying on an instrument flight plan, Fort Huachuca [Ariz.] up to Creech [Air Force Base, Nev.]. We have one today going from Fort Huachuca to Gray Butte. It’s not a common everyday thing. We’re working on that, and the FAA really needs to get realistic about it.

Q What the Air Force will tell you is that they use pilots because that’s a pilot’s job, carrying 3,000 pounds of ordnance over human beings.

A I agree with them. That’s what we designed into the system. We have auto-takeoff and landing [planned] for the Sky Warriors. We’ve done it on the Predator and we’re going to be doing it on the Predator B. So they’ll be auto takeoff and land as an option here soon.

Q So you’re going to do that on the Predator B. When will that happen?

A I would think in the next couple of months. The Air Force isn’t that interested right now, but they will be.

Q Would that open the Predators up to other operators besides instrument-rated pilots?

A I think they’ll use enlisted sensor operators.         But I think they’ll still use rated pilots.

Q Right now, at Creech and Nellis [Air Force Base, Nev.], they’re using stick-and-throttle and rudder pedals.

A They’re all rated pilots — stick-and-throttle and rudder pedals.

QWhat’s the advantage of going to the trackball-type autonomy?

A They don’t have any specific advantage. We didn’t design them that way. That’s what the Army wanted. So we accommodated the Army by doing the [trackball]. They want to use nonrated operators to fly the airplanes.

Q So what is left for the operator to do?

A The operator still needs to have a good feel for aviation and how the airplane interacts with other airplanes. Routing, interaction with air traffic control, that sort of thing. When we took a lot of Army operators, we ran them through a private pilot’s course so they could learn aviation terminology, you know, just to get a feel for how airplanes fit into the structure.

Q To make it so you can steer or fly the aircraft by trackball, that sounds like a lot of software?

A Oh yeah, it’s all in there. You essentially do that with the throttle today. When you take the throttle, you make a right turn, and you have a heading that you rotate to, then you neutralize the stick. So you can do it that way, or you can do it with a [trackball]. It’s almost the same.

Q Some people say that the people who are good at video games, those are the people we need operating UAVs, not pilots. Do you agree?

A Some people might say that. When I go to Europe, I don’t want a guy who runs video games flying the airplane. I want a pilot.

Q What made you get into the UAV business? Was there an “aha” moment?

A I spent a lot of years in the Navy and I got out and went to work at General Atomics. The owner wanted to get into the UAV business. So that’s what I did. I started the outfit and we made a separate company out of it.

Q How did you know about UAVs?

A I had seen them crash time after time after time. Nobody ever was very successful at it. I figured we could probably make a success out of it by making reliable airplanes.

Q In the Navy you saw them crashing?

A I was in the Navy from the time I was 19 to 53, so over that span I’ve seen a lot of things crash, not just UAVs. å