The Dalfan hangar at the Seletar Airport was unremarkable, a duplicate of several other leased hangars on the property. A single-wide trailer was parked next to it.

Singh, Lian, and Jack parked the company car and headed into the hangar, big enough to accommodate two Cessna 172s or a medium-sized executive jet. Inside was neither.

“That’s the Steady Stare UAV,” Singh said.

The pilotless plane had no cockpit, of course. Its wingspan was about sixteen feet, and the fuselage about half of that. It had a six-bladed propeller. Singh pointed at the glass-orbed housing on the belly. “Our camera, sensor, and communication payloads are mounted in here. Optical, infrared, night vision, laser rangefinder, GPS—you name it—everything can be interchanged. They’re all modular and designed to fit in the unit.”

“What kind of runway length do you need to launch?”

“None.” Singh nodded toward the corner. Four lengths of aluminum pipe were welded together with smaller, thinner pieces, forming a ten-foot-long piece of scaffolding. “That’s a spring-loaded catapult. It launches the Steady Stare into the air, so no runway is needed.”

“What if you don’t have the catapult?”

“Then I’d go get it. Right now it’s not equipped for a conventional takeoff, but it’s designed to attach landing gear. We didn’t see any advantage to doing that over the catapult.”

Jack tapped on the fuselage with the tip of his finger. It was hollow.

“The fuselage is made of carbon-fiber composites. Super-strong and lightweight.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m trying to find another word besides ‘impressive,’ but I can’t. I’m sold on the concept. It looks as easy to use as you say, and I’ve seen what the cameras and software can do. What are the downsides to this system?”

“High winds will ground the system, and night flying is only possible if the operating and backup batteries are fully precharged. Of course, you can always deploy the auxiliary internal combustion engine if needed.”

“I only see one problem, and I don’t know how you overcome it.”

“What’s that?” Lian asked.

“In the United States, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution prohibits warrantless searches, and I know that some legal scholars would consider continuous surveillance like this a violation of civil rights.”

“Our sales team has encountered this issue on several occasions in the States, but American cities keep finding out about us and still contact us,” Singh said. “You’re right, it’s still a contested legal issue, and we suspect that our American operations won’t really pick up for another few years. But until then, Asian police departments have shown a tremendous interest in our product, and my best guess is that Western governments won’t be far behind. After all, they already deploy closed-circuit surveillance cameras everywhere, don’t they? That’s just an inefficient version of what we offer, and it fails to deliver our nearly perfect results.”