Karem Aircraft, Inc. is an American aerospace company with offices in Lake Forest, California and Fort Worth, Texas, founded by Abraham Karem as a rapid development firm specializing in advanced tiltrotor transport aircraft. Karem was the former chief designer for the Israeli Air Force and migrated to the United States in the late 1970s.
Under his previous company, Leading Systems Inc. (LSI), Karem led teams that developed the Amber and GNAT 750 (predecessors of the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems, as well as the A160 Hummingbird Optimum-Speed Rotor UAV, now a Boeing product.[1]
Karem's company, Leading Systems, had since gone bankrupt and been bought up by US defense contractor General Atomics. The CIA secretly bought five drones (now called the "GNAT") from them. Karem agreed to produce a quiet engine, which until then sounded like "a lawnmower in the sky". The new development became rechristened the "Predator".[2]
The Hummingbird was developed by Frontier Aircraft. In May 2004, the company was acquired by Boeing[3] and integrated into Boeing Phantom Works and then into the Advanced Systems group of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.
In early 2008, Karem Aircraft teamed with Lockheed Martin in offering Karem's Optimum Speed Tilt-Rotor (OSTR) design for the US Department of Defense's Joint Heavy Lift program.[1][4]
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