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You let them spread, they throw their armor against your armor, their air force against your air force, and all of a sudden you have thousands and tens of thousands of casualties.”
    Pilots add weight to an aircraft, and more weight requires carrying more fuel; besides, pilots need to land every few hours to rest. But a fleet of pilotless aircraft such as Karem was imagining would have the persistence—the flight endurance—to provide an air-to-ground defensive missile system guarding Israel’s borders day and night. Moreover, if the enemy shot one down, no pilot would be lost. Achieving the necessary flight endurance would be one of the hardest parts of his challenge, but Karem was sure he could design such a drone. For one thing, he believed himself not only the best engineer in aeronautics but probably the best engineer of any kind in all of Israel. Beyond that, he had been a model aircraft hobbyist since his teens, and as a modeler his specialty was a type of aircraft whose sole objective was endurance.
    Thrown or towed into the air like a kite on a fifty-meter-long string and then released, free-flight gliders are the oldest form of model aircraft and among the trickiest to build. A schoolchild’s paper airplane technically fits the definition, but in competitions the models are far larger—wingspans of six feet are common—and more sophisticated. Model gliders are built of lightweight material, such as balsa and tissue, and usually weigh a pound or less. The goal is to make a plane that is capable of staying airborne long after its launch or its release from the tow line, but without any remote or automated controls to help keep it aloft.
    Like the materials used to build it, a tow-line glider’s flight characteristics are the opposite of a jet fighter’s. A model glider typically floats through the air at two or three miles an hour or less, gently circling until aerodynamic drag and the law of gravity return the aircraft to earth. In international competitions, the winning aircraft is the one that accumulates the most flight time over a series of launches within a strict limit of three to three and a half minutes per flight. The time limit and multiple rounds prevent winning or losing by the luck of the wind, though catching a thermal of the sort birds often ride is a favorite technique for success.
    A good free-flight glider is rugged enough to withstand turbulence and return to stable flight or take a hard landing, yet light and aerodynamic enough to fly as close to three minutes as possible even in calm air. Most carry a dethermalizer, a device operated by a timer or activated by radio signal, which moves a control surface to put the plane into a “deep stall”—a sudden dive—and bring it to a gentle landing. Deep stall is used after a round’s maximum flight time has been achieved, or to escape a thermal that threatens to carry the model away.
    The best free-flight modelers employ all sorts of tricks and techniques to improve endurance, and Karem was a world-class free-flight modeler. Free-flight gliders were what Abe had learned to build in the Aero Club, and he pursued the hobby into adulthood. In August 1963, as a twenty-six-year-old Air Force officer, he placed tenth in his category representing Israel at the free-flight World Championships in Wiener Neustadt, Austria.
    Two years later, Abe met Dina Schleiffer, a petite, lively, smart conscript who showed up one day in the Air Force engineering spaces, assigned to fulfill her obligatory two years of military service drafting technical drawings for engineers. Only eighteen, she was ten years younger than Abe, but he found her much more mature and confident than older girls he knew. They started dating, and soon Dina was traveling with Abe to free-flight competitions. She loved the little planes he designed, especially one he put together just as a spare and called his “ugly duckling.” She loved