“"medium-altitude endurance"”
In the early 1990s, CIA Director James Woolsey sought a way to monitor ethnic conflicts in the Balkans without risking American pilots. The GNAT-750, operating over Bosnia and relaying video through a manned glider, demonstrated the concept. The Department of Defense, recognizing the potential, held a competition for a larger, more capable "medium-altitude endurance" UAV. In January 1994, General Atomics won a $31.7 million contract to deliver what would become the Predator. Its first flight occurred on July 3, 1994, at El Mirage, California — a derivative of the GNAT-750 with a distinctive upward-bulging nose to house a satellite antenna, longer wings, and a Rotax piston engine.
The engineering principles pioneered here—In the early 1990s, CIA Director **James Woolsey** sought a way to monitor ethni—are still embedded in the aircraft you fly today.