He sang about sleepless nights and lost loves as he built acoustic-guitar picking into rich, complex drones; a second musician played harmonium, tambourine and lap-steel guitar.
And other programmes most notably the extraordinarily expensive F-35 fighter plane have far more effective champions in the military-industrial-congressional complex than drones do.
The issue is more complex than drone-strike foes suggest, the current and former officials said, and is based on decades of cooperation rather than a shadowy pact for the United States to do the world's dirty work.
Today, however, technology has advanced to the point where highly complex remote-controlled "drone" aircraft, known rather chillingly as Reapers, are being used for everything from interception and exploration missions to true "hunter-killer" roles.
As we arrived at the Clark County Shooting Complex (and no, drone shooting wasn't on the program), it was already windy and miserably cold.
You can't have complex paragraphs that drone on.
He said that the issues were not a result of the drone's complex folding arms, but refused to go into further detail, adding, "It's safe to say that we've learned lessons from the delays that we experienced," referring to future production.
Given that flying scores of drones in complex sequences over thousands of people's upturned faces does rather invite a few ocular concerns.
For now, however, researchers are far away from that 'holy grail' of mind reading complex thoughts, or controlling drones with the brain; even interpreting basic EEG data is tricky because the human skull basically obstructs the signal.
In fact, you can already see the military-industrial-drone-robotics complex in formation.
