Drone Warrior Read online

  Personally, I believe the costs to maintain and deploy this drone heavily outweigh the benefits. Advancements in current UAVs such as the MQ-1 and MQ-9, coupled with improvements in the U.S. government’s satellite technology, could quickly make this drone obsolete.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Brett Velicovich has over ten years of experience conducting counterterrorism and intelligence operations globally. As an intelligence analyst within the U.S. military’s elite 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment—Delta, his work was directly responsible for countless missions leading to the successful capture and kill of terrorist leaders. Serving five combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, he also worked in Somalia and received numerous combat medals for his service, including the Bronze Star and Combat Action Badge. Regarded as a world-renowned drone expert, he left the service and earned an MBA from Duke University and helped start an initiative that looks to employ unmanned aerial vehicles in support of wildlife conservation in East Africa. He lives in Virginia.

  Christopher S. Stewart is an investigative reporter at the Wall Street Journal, where he shared a 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. His work has appeared in GQ, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The Paris Review, Wired, and other publications, and he also served as deputy editor at the New York Observer and is a former contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio. Stewart is the author of Hunting the Tiger and Jungleland. He lives with his family in New York.

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  COPYRIGHT

  DRONE WARRIOR. Copyright © 2017 by Brett Velicovich and Christopher S. Stewart. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover photographs: courtesy of the author (Brett Velicovich); © Getty Images (background and drone)

  ISBN 978-0-06-269391-4

  EPub Edition June 2017 eISBN 9780062693921

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

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  Table of Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PART ONE

  1 SHOULD WE KILL HIM?

  2 WHERE WERE YOU WHEN THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING?

  3 NEW GUY

  4 CAMP PIZZA HUT

  5 SPY GAME

  6 THE SHITBOX/GARBAGE CITY

  7 THE DOOR AT THE END OF THE HALL

  8 DAY ZERO

  PART TWO

  9 THE DRONE WAR BEGINS

  10 THE HUNTERS

  11 MY FIRST KILL

  12 FINDING A GROOVE

  13 WILD GOOSE CHASES

  14 HOME?

  15 THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

  16 THE SAUDI

  17 THE KIDNAPPING

  18 THE BOMBING

  19 DARK HORSE

  20 MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN

  21 DOGS OF WAR

  22 THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY

  PART THREE

  23 GONE

  24 LIFE OUTSIDE THE BOX

  25 A NEW BEGINNING

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  APPENDIX

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER