General Atomics, which has already sold 435 Predator drones in recent years, sees growing demand for its unmanned planes, including a high-flying new successor to the Predator being considered by the US Navy for use on aircraft carriers as soon as 2018. General Atomics has already received export licenses to sell an unarmed export version of the Predator to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE and Morocco, and has applied for a license to sell to Pakistan, said company spokeswoman Kimberly Kasitz. The plane is widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan by US troops, and is also flown by Italy, Turkey and Britain. Its use in nearly one hundred missile strikes on Pakistani territory, as cited by the Washington-based New America Foundation, has triggered debate over the ethics of “robot warfare.” Christopher Ames, a retired Navy admiral and head of General Atomics' business development, said his company had benefited by spending its own money to develop new technologies before pitching them to the Pentagon, and it continues to do the same thing with follow-on variants. “We're an example of how the system should work,” he said in an interview at the Farnborough Airshow. Chairman Neal Blue, who bought the company from General Dynamics for $50 million in 1986, acknowledged in 2008 Defense News interview that the company spent about 11 percent of its annual revenues on research and development, a level far higher than most publicly traded defense companies. Blue began work on an unmanned plane about two decades ago, long before drones became as widespread as they are now. His ability to continuing working on the planes, without the pressure of shareholders demanding short-term returns, helped nurture a technology now synonymous with modern warfare. “It's an exciting time,” Ames told Reuters at the Farnborough Airshow, noting that he was drawn to General Atomics because of the promise of unmanned planes. As a naval strike group commander after the 2004 tsunami, Ames had to divert helicopters that could have been delivering food and water to survivors to scour the seas for survivors. “If we had had the Predator ... even just one, it would have saved lives,” he said. The Avenger model had a first flight in April.
