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Build Your Own Cruise Missile
WegianWarrior writes "Bruce Simpson, the man behind one of the more interesting site about pulsejets on the web, has launched a project to build a US$5000
DIY cruisemissile - just to prove that it can be done, since some said his earlier
article about it was off the peg. Bruce has also designed and placed on his site a non-weld
pulsejet you can build with simple tools, a 2D airflow modeling rig and a new valve/injector design for conventional pulsejets (according to the first page on his
site, this new design is placed in the public domain)." We linked to his pulsejet pages about two years ago.
The Monkey Pages: Not just another personal site...okay, so I lie.
An anti-spam solution that's bound to work....
I bet I could get some nerds to build one of these and send a hamster into space.
As the apprentice of Prof. Chaos said, "SIMPSONS DID IT!!!!"
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The DIY a-bomb, DIY chemical weapons, DIY bioweapons? Maybe they can have kids build these in schools! Let's all kill each other!
Now I'll show my loser neighbour down the street who's boss! One tomahawk coming up!
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
Can you build a rocket engine without a turbopump?
Seriously,
Intel Inside
AMD
Designed for Windows 95
Though, personally I like a peace sign.
Where do you put the warhead? Some of my Korean friends were asking...
This get strapped to one of these and ride to work on post-Saddam Iraq.
I'm told you can buy Chinese Silkworm cruise missiles for $25K or so at your friendly arms bazaar. The Silkworm is basically a Mig-17 airframe with the pilot replaced by a guidance system. Man, this stuff is scary.
Lucky he doesn't live in America, or he'll be branded as a terrorist and thrown in prison without any formal charges.
How do you want to calculate today?
Seeing as how New Zealand doesn't have an air force, this could help them a lot!
OLPC Australia
Who sees a 'national security' takedown notice appearing at his ISP soon?
Yay me!
Bill Gates: "Hmmm... 50,000,000,000/5,000 = 10,000,000 cruise missles... Imagine a beowolf cluster of these you hippies!"
At a million dollars a pop, the US govt. sure gets ripped off on theirs.
besides the obvious *geek* factor this kind of *experiments* and demonstrations should make us all stop to think a bit ...
...
how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?
limiting acces to knowledge (with DMCA style laws)?
creating a orwellian policial state where all are suspect ans subject to vigilance (and who controls the vigilantes) ?
limitating the publication of (now) public-domain stuff ('cause it can be used to devilish ends) ?
the RIAA/DMCA people already want to control what could go on the net, and that is, maybe, only the beggining (see China - although there 's hope there - see the massive failure of the SARS coverup) so maybe it is time to start thinking about how to mantain the net free and at the same time this planet a safe planet to stay
just my two uros,
cheers from Portugal
The impressive thing about cruise missiles is the multi-thousand mile range. That's achieved with very clever turbojet engine design, and some of that technology is still classified. Still, it's decades old.
(It's annoying that general aviation is still putt-putting around on reciprocating engines, decades after everything big went turbine.)
"Not surprisingly, that piece has produced a significant amount of feedback from the tens of thousands of people who have read it so far"
I am a felow hobbiest, please sned me detailed plans.
FROM: moustashiod_villian@yahoo.com
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
don't you mean:
glowing dead hand?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The real question is not 'how do we prevent terrorist from using this king of stuff' , since if joe-nobody can build a cruise missile in his backyard, you can be sure that terrorist organisations could have built it years ago. However, they do not need to buy their own missile. They have enough money to buy *quality* missiles from kind multinational corporations when they want to.
The question this article raises is why would somebody who is not totally out of his mind would want to build a cruise missile. I don't think the *geek* factor alone would be a correct answer. A cruise missile... as if the world needed more of those. I cannot believe the man could not find anything more useful to build.
Thats why we have spies.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Bush Inc. should acquire the assets and personnel of the Osama Corp. After this is done, he should liquidate (in the old meaning of KILL for you youngins) all of Osama Corp.'s assets and personnel, until Osama Corp.'s becomes Osama's corpse. C'mon, those who know me know my word play. Enjoy. -Khye
Will the Darwin Award cover my burial expense?
Cause the non-weld easy build pulse engine seems doable. But I don't have adequate life insurance.
Wait a minute, what do I care?
I'll just leave instructions to charge it to my VISA.
just one note : when i mentioned the *geek* factor i was thinking in the interest this kind of *news* would raise here at slashdot not the motivations of the missile builder...
Regards
you could use a large RC plane :) The distinctive
with a microject. the problem with this
using even a tiny microjet is the
fuel usage is ~5 litres per minute.
good luck with a 1 hour flight. Second
pulse jets are notoriously fuel hungry-
even more than micro jets, and inefficient.
The V1 style shutter valves must close for
a bang and this causes drag. The V1 used
a pulse jet for 300 mph, but weighed 4800 lbs
on 150 g of acetylene fuel
resonance freq of the engine as well as steel
construction would give position away easily...
Get your mirror quick before the NSACIAFBIRIAAMPAA gets them!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Bush Inc. should acquire the assets and personnel of the Osama Corp.
After this is done, he should liquidate (in the old meaning of KILL for you youngins) all of Osama Corp.'s assets and personnel, until Osama Corp.'s becomes Osama's corpse.
C'mon, those who know me know my word play.
Enjoy.
-Khye
if you are an American, especially an unemployed one (which thankfully I am not), it's not funny at all.
.iq during the "war".
Nothing like launching tons of these into
Why not spend that money on getting the 8.8 million people that are currently unemployed some jobs?
And the cost of putting a limit on informatin in areas such as electronics or rocket science would be *way* over what anyone would accept.
The best way to prevent a terrorist attack with LCCM's is to keep an eye on who's who in rocket scienc, jet propulsion and turbo jets.
The powerplant on the rocket is the one single component that i difficault to get(buy) or construct.
Or better (like thats gonna happen); try to eliminate the reason behind the fact that there actually are (probably) somone who wants to fire a LCCM on New York.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
and the hawks at the Defense Department are trying to revive the star wars project ...
...
lets hope the laser satellites won 't be running MS stuff
*sigh*
Do i REALLY need to clarify the moral difference between owning guns and owning cruise missiles?
i mean seriously.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Shouldn't that read: "the only way you can take my cruise missle with weapons grade plutonium is from my cold trembling dead hand!!" ? He does have parkinsons disease after all...
You're a bit late, Heston stepped down as the President of the NRA a short while ago.
Nice discrepant shot at gun ownership though! I'll bet it took you a whole four seconds to dream up.
Yes but charleton heston is still a jackass who believes in everything the constitution says even if its out of date and doesnt apply to modern day society.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
seriously though, this is interesting. on the one hand, theres the scientific me who thinks its academically to kow how to build a cruise missile, then theres the anarchist me who thinks it might be fun to launch in the woods, and on my THIRD hand, theres the scared-straight-arrow me who thinks this post could be used against me in the future.
He says that he talked to military folk and they mentioned there was "no effective defense." Bull. He's planning on using GPS guidance, GPS is in control of the US military, so when threat is imminent they can shut down the GPS bands in the area. This is, of course, assuming a tip-off- but it's still a defense (and you almost ALWAYS need a tip-off).
*sigh*
Do i REALLY need to clarify the difference between a normal statement and a joke?
i mean seriously.
you're right. Let's take away the entire bill of rights. i mean, it was written 200 years ago, who needs it? the second amendment, just like the rest of them, still apply to modern society. just ask the US Supreme Court. I sincerely doubt i have to explain much further.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
Ok well I misunderstood your introducing line.
Sorry 'bout that!
Anyway, my point was more that even tough the technological challenge to build this missile is a great one, I cannot understand why someone would want to start such a project, since there are so much more things that could be done that could really be more useful, or at least less *harmfull* from a social point of view.
oh well, since its out of date we'll just forget about freedom of speech, assembly, religion, 4th Ammendment protections and such. Only crazy militia people running around in the woods believe in such old crusty ideals anyway, as they have no application to our modern society. :p
Just go ahead and put out the plans for a rudementary cruise missle. Your country is in no danger of getting attacked. Oh wait, al Qaeda hates Australia and New Zealand now, too! Damn, that's going to be ironic indeed when you get smoked by your own design.
By the way, it doesn't matter if the missle has a guidance system or not. Just as long as any civilians are killed, Osama and his minions are happy. Very much like the Nazis with the V-1/V-2. Didn't matter if it hit anything important, just as long as it killed a few people in London.
I know that this isn't on the scale of building a nuke, but this pisses me off. Creating a cookbook on how to make a virtually anonymous precision weapon is sickening. The majority of the deranged in this world who would love to launch such a thing are not intelligent enough to piece one together until someone comes along and publishes instructions and guidelines.
Just when does this become illegal or a threat to the public?
Yes. Please do.
Right to bear arms (poor bear...) is to protect yourself from a tyrannical government... when the government has smart bombs, nuclear weapons, and the brand-new F-22 Raptor at it's disposal, a 30-06 rifle is about as useful as a shiv made from an old spoon.
It's very nice-a."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
However, I don't think it's nearly as easy as he paints it out on his website. He may have a working rocket design, but that's not the hard part. The hard part is getting the guidance system to work with your rocket. That doesn't come "off the shelf", and he's going to have to do a lot of software hacking in order to get it all to work together. Not only does this guy have to be a quasi-expert in rocket design, he's going to have to know a lot about software design.
He's trying to do something that most nations in the world can't even do. It takes entire nations years to come up with even a short-range cruise missile. This guy thinks he can do it in under $5000, by himself? Building a rocket-propelled go-kart is one thing. Making a cruise missile with an accuracy of +/- 100 yards is a whole different level.
And this doesn't even take into account FAA regulations he's going to have to comply with if he plans on lobbing one of those missiles on a 100 mile flight path.
I am currently, as an experiment, producing ricin, anthrax, sarin and vx in my basement to prove it could be done with $15.00 and some green stamps.
Since I come off like a ecentric geek, I'll be left alone and fawned over by other geeks.
I'll be posting a how to for anyone who wants to pay.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Yes, you do. I want the FREEDOM to own my own cruise missiles. You pinko commie bastards can't take that liberty away from me.
This is all about some old kook trying to get attention for himself. He's prostituting himself so hard on that site that you have to feel sorry for him and hope that nice Maoris will send him a care basket.
This is all about some old coon trying to get crack for himself. He's prostituting his woman so hard on the street that you have to feel shit for him and hope that some nice mofo will send him a cheap casket.
That or you could just bloody stop training terrorists to begin with.
Bush, nothing! It's up to /. moderators to mod down anything which could be informative or useful in any way to building WMD! They must be alert and seize the moment in the name of Freedom!
"Oh, they already do that? Never mind..."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If some guy could think this up on his spare time, what makes you think that a dozen of highly-educated graduates of America's and Europe's top schools wouldn't be able to figure something like this out on their own as well? Because that's what a large number of these terrorists are.
That is, if there even -are- terrorists. What's to say it's not something fabricated by the government? They -did- know about 9-11.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I think that if the steps for building a 5000 dollar DIY cruise missile are going to be made freely available on the internet, I think the responsible thing to do would be for someone to post plans for a 5000 dollar DIY Phalanx Close-In Weapons System so we can shoot the damn missiles down. Any takers?
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Slashdot is a tool. This proves that the potency of those anti-whore shots you're being given is wearing out.
a playstation 2 haha
or at least that is what the gov would have u think
how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?
Dammit, a bunch of teenagers with box cutters have fly jumbo jets in the WTC. They had about 200 times more explosive in these jets than in one of these missiles and their equipement cost was box cutters and airplane tickets. Why would they want to build one of those missiles?
You have to solve the weakest link, not the sexy link.
Now I'm putting my aluminium foil beanie back on.
doing what ? bombing slashdot's hosting provider ? ...
... a pandora box is open ...
now talking seriously : this is much more complex that it may seems at first sigth
You are 150% correct. What worries me is that this guy lives on the middle of the steppes of NZ, completely dislocated from any harm his project could cause.
We no longer live in a world of IF's, we live in a world of WHEN's. This guy is expediting the inevitable. He's a jerk.
A thermonecular warhead ain't much good when some guy sneaks up behind you and bashes your head in with a rock.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
I was wondering if someone like Ossama could just buy some cheap missles and load them onto a barge and fire them at a major city? He as 10 ships already that deliever supplies. Airplanes are like missles but are near impossible to hijack today.
15 of these for example being shot from the New York City habor would be awefull and so easy to do. It may not bring down tall building because the explosive packs would have to be small but would cause a huge physcological damage affect.
It could also be used agaisnt Israelis. We have seen Hezebollah fire missle after missle from Lebannon into Northern Israel for years. I heard a former NBC reporter who lived in Northern Israel that attacks happened on a weekly and sometimes daily basis back in 94 and 95. When Israel retaliates agaisnt this al-jeazera shows them as the aggressor and arab support for terrorism continues. In fact over %80 of lebanese think suicide bombings are ok for the defense of islam. These weapons would be great if they were fired into Israel day and night while Israel could not retaliate because it would make them look bad. Either way it would be impossible to enforce without invading the whole Arab region.
This shit is scary.
http://saveie6.com/
Is it entirely legal for him to be building something of this sort?
you made a very valid point!
Anyway, the aircraft went through its inevitable weight growth (like software bloat when you keep adding features to a package) and it has outgrown the Williams jet engines, and they begged Williams to come up with a higher thrust version, but Williams has a good thing going with the cruise missile and said nothing doing about changing their design. Trouble is that the next tier of jet engine costs ten times as much which means the half mil price tag on the jet plane is out the windows, so I don't know what is happening.
I thought the people who fed script kiddies were bad. I suppose next someone will show how to make your own chemical weapons at home. Of course we can assume that's been done somewhere - please don't respond with links.
This man is a fool trying to get money and attention by doing something stupid. My two year old would know better.
When the bad guys can buy Stingers or SAM-7's if they have enough coin, I think the hobbyist cruise missile is far down on the threat list.
Will declare New Zealand to be part of the Axis of Evil.
Before this story gets mainstream media coverage the government will shut this project down. They certainly don't want the average citizen to realize that a large portion of the US $1,000,000 price tag for a Cruise Missle is probably wasted.
Where the Music Matters
Wow, he's going to teach the world how to build cruise missiles for $5000. I'm sure no one will mind that sort of information getting around.
My cruise missile is for hunting and self defense only.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Let us comfort ourselves in our ignorance.
Let us be manipulated by the propagandizing of our leaders.
Let us know when to support their personal agendas because times are safe.
Let us know when to support their personal agendas because the terror alert is high.
Let us be blind.
Let us be dead.
No. No, I say.
Let me be FREE.
See you at Guantanamo, beeotch!
We must slashdot this page before the information gets into the wrong hands!
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Why don't we just open our borders and let the terrorists waltz in and blow up whatever the heck they want? Build your own cruise missile... geez, what is the world coming to? If you ask me this guy should be shut down and put in jail for a long long time without a trial, as is the American way to fight terror.
(Special note: the above was sarcasm and should be regarded as such.)
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I think while it's within easy reach to build what amounts to a large RC model powered by a pulsejet engine and guided by GPS, there are a number of issues he needs to address:
1. The pulsejet ain't going to be quiet. The motorboat sound of pulsejet engines are going to be dead giveaways of its presence. It'll be better to use a small RC jet engine with careful exhaust design to muffle the jet engine sound or a modified RC piston engine that drives a multibladed propeller so the engine runs at a lower speed to reduce engine noise.
2. A 10 kilogram warhead isn't going to do much in the way of damage, unless it dispenses a really toxic biological agent like botulin poison.
3. Guiding the DIY cruise missile is going to be a very tricky proposition. While GPS will get the missile to the general target area, the lack of the ability to avoid obstacles and to fly very low to avoid most radars means the missile will have to cruise at about the same altitude as the V-1 (about just over 1,000 meters off the ground), which means it can be intercepted by modern ground AA systems.
He didn't look into the fact that civillian GPS recievers crop the data stream if the speed gets over abour ~300mph or the altiture exceeds a preset amount (15kft?).
After his pulsejet is lit and going for a minute, he'll ahve a damn hard time driving it without any guidance information other than dead reckoning...
This is not a sig. this is a duck. quack.
God forbid anyone have a hobby and share with people how to do it! It's just immoral.
Especialy when it's obvious that terrorists are way to stupid to figure any of this stuff out themselves.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Seriously...technical challenge aside,this guy has got to be stupid if he doesn't think the fed's are gonna want to talk to him.
I mean, model rockets can practially land you in jail...
wouldn't it be easier to make a solid-fueled rocket with motorized flaps for guidance? Why a pulse jet? I would just make a bunch of black powder, add a metal pipe, and voila instant DIY solid rocket booster for under $100. You could probably make a more powerful and cheaper propellant with ammonium nitrate and zinc dust, though. That's not so safe though because one drop of water will set it off.
Repeal the DMCA!
Ever notice how we are all worried about terrorists building bombs, missles, etc and they just crash a plane into a building?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Not that I wouldn't put it past those wankers Bush and Ashcroft to try.
i am not looking at this link in this post. the reason is that i fear being smitten by some over-cautious government too much to risk it. i apologize to my free speech brethren but this is a ridiculous idea to promote or condone. first off free speech protects our right to say whatever we care to, but not when the government is being run by a regime that cares nothing for privact except its own.
in this day of propaganda news reporting anything touching this post will attract negative attention, especially slashdot! as sure as the constitution guarentees protection of speech, this post is going to attract the wrong kind of attention. don't forget we live in a capitolist society. there are powers other than the government that might see this, and still have power enough to bring bad press upon this blog (which i regard as one of the best).
(not that i condone or promote the dixie chicks, but) look what happened to the dixie chicks, they got f*#%ed up. media sources had interests which opposed their opinions. without going into the details of this process their main objective is to scare people into watching or reading their broadcast by scaring them, and blaming it on someone else. i pray thius thing doesn't blow up in our faces. i love this site passionately. i would hate to see something happen to it. maybe i am being over-cautious (i often am)on this issue but i see trends going in this direction and any volatile statements could create terrible precedents.
The problem is, as 9/11 illustrates, we don't know when. If somebody sufficiently convincing had illustrated the particular mode of attack (hijack airplane, crash into building), and possibly even showed a simulation of how the WTC is so susceptible to high temperature fires, maybe something would've been done to prevent it.
Obviously, I don't know his motives, but I wouldn't fault anybody for putting together off-the-shelf components to show us a terrible weapon. The question is will this warning shock somebody into action.
Hezbollah resisting Zionist incursions into the sovereign territory of Lebanon and Palestinian groups like Hamas resisting the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Jews do not count as terrorists, they are Freedom Fighters legitimately resisting the daily crimes of occupation, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace perpetrated the Jews.
Perhaps if you and your neighbours in New York took the time to pull your head out of your arses long enough to take a good look at the world around you, with particular focus towards your Government's despicable international relations record, you might discover that avoiding further terrorist attacks can be achieved by changing your fucked-up attitude.
or how about: they placed the article there to later on start complaining ("it is not safe for our freedom!") about it and to tighten the internets freedom even more... y'know, cencorship?
Yeah right. I knew a couple techs who work at the plant making Apaches, they both fear for their jobs as everyone there is being laid off! I also know a guy who was a SysAdmin at Raytheon where they make cruise missiles and he just recently got laid off.
The difference is that the cruise missile without warhead is just a remote controlled aircraft, while a phalanx system is an automatic weapon.
After all you have a much better chance of building something just as successful as the real thing!!
I stole this Sig
Based on the stuff he's buying, he doesn't have to even *try* to do it surreptitiously. It's all stuff that's used for many mundane purposes. Until it's all put together, it's as harmless and commonplace as dirt.
You don't have to commit suicide to use one of these. It should make a good weapon for a less dedicated terrorist.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
A Tom Cruise Missile?
Help! The Scientologists are after me!
As a matter of fact, check out this site. GPS navigation of model airplanes has been around for at least seven years already. The only difference I see is that this guy is using a jet powered craft, and is calling it a cruise missile. Other than that, it is the same thing.
Oh, and by the way, the FAA has no jurisdiction in New Zealand.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Well that's what happens when English is your third language and you don't know all the lingo yet. At some later time, I found out that I should have asked for a utility knife. Well, that could fit in your pocket, couldn't it?
I didn't buy that knife, by the way.
Well, isn't this like saying "I don't want this to fall in the hands of the terrorists, so I put it on the web."?
Here is the kind of person who the authorities love to cite in favor of censorship and maybe rightly so in such cases. Everything has its limits.
Just like that sniper shooting spree made some people opposed to capital punishment to rethink their stance on the issue, this case also may make people who are normally against censorship to say "Hey, this is taking it a bit too far! Let's lock up this STUPID guy and tape his mouth!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Bruce Simpson blown up testing home made cruise missile!"
-from the homemade-scuds-are-fun! dept.
They would have to kill almost everyone onboard to try this trick again, and move quickly, as Fighter aircraft have lost their inhibitions on shooting down airliners after 911.
Or, worse still, an idiot. Lots more of those than there are terrorists - harder to track, too. Anyone here remember the kid who built a crude nuclear "reactor" (i.e. put together something that sent Geiger counters off the top of the scale, and his sperm count off the other end)? Now imagine a similar kid building one of these, and accidentally firing it into a building. Even just firing it into the air could air traffic control and missile early warning systems, causing chaos!
Yeah, but I'll get that guy on my patent on head-bashing rocks.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
It always starts the same way. I am in the garden airing my terrapin Jetta when he walks past my gate, that mysterious man in black.
'Hello Roy,' I say. 'What are you doing in Dusseldorf?'
'Attending to certain matters,' he replies.
'Ah,' I say.
He apprises Jetta's lines with a keen eye. 'That is a well-groomed terrapin,' he says.
'Her name is Jetta.' I say. 'Perhaps you would like to come inside?'
'Very well.' He says.
Roy Orbison walks inside my house and sits down on my couch. We talk urbanely of various issues of the day. Presently I say, 'Perhaps you would like to see my cling-film?'
'By all means.' I cannot see his eyes through his trademark dark glasses and I have no idea if he is merely being polite or if he genuinely has an interest in cling-film.
I bring it from the kitchen, all the rolls of it. 'I have a surprising amount of clingfilm,' I say with a nervous laugh. Roy merely nods.
'I estimate I must have nearly a kilometre in the kitchen alone.'
'As much as that?' He says in surprise. 'So.'
'Mind you, people do not realize how much is on each roll. I bet that with a single roll alone I could wrap you up entirely.'
Roy Orbison sits impassively like a monochrome Buddha. My palms are sweaty.
'I will take that bet,' says Roy. 'If you succeed I will give you tickets to my new concert. If you fail I will take Jetta, as a lesson to you not to speak boastfully.'
I nod. 'So then. If you will please to stand.'
Roy stands. 'Commence.'
I start at the ankles and work up. I am like a spider binding him in my gossamer web. I do it tight with several layers. Soon Roy Orbison stands before me, completely wrapped in cling-film. The pleasure is unexampled.
'You are completely wrapped in cling-film,' I say.
'You win the bet,' says Roy, muffled. 'Now unwrap me.'
'Not for several hours.'
'Ah.'
I sit and admire my handiwork for a long time. So as not to make the ordeal unpleasant for him we make small talk on topical subjects, Roy somewhat muffled. At some point I must leave him to attend to Jetta's needs. When I return I find he has hopped out of my house, still wrapped in cling-film. The loss leaves me broken and pitiful. He never calls me. He sends no tickets. The police come and reprimand me. Jetta is taken away, although I get her back after a complicated legal process.
There is only one thing that can console me. A certain dream, a certain vision...
It always starts the same way.
Before you say that this is nuts, think about this: helicopters are far more dangerous than any airplane. There have been a total of 21 deaths to date in U.S. commercial airplanes this year according to the NTSB. That's based on up to 150,000 flights per day.
So far, the U.S. Military, has already seen 29 helicopter deaths (and 8 additional British casualties in one of those crashes), and at least one other minor crash with no fatalities, and this is not including any that resulted from being under fire. That's based on a few hundred flights per day in Iraq, so I'm guessing a few thousand worldwide. Oh, and that's total flights, not helicopter flights. I doubt the percentage of helicopter flights is particularly high... maybe a couple of hundred helicopter flights per day as a high estimate.
That would make helicopters about 1,000 times as dangerous as airplanes. Lest you think this is a fluke of the way the military uses aircraft, the statistics on the crash rate of helicopters in Alaska should tell you otherwise. The only problem is that airplanes fly too fast for people to get a good view of what's going on in terms of ground traffic.
Enter the cruise missile. Fly ten of them around, snapping pictures and shooting video clips and periodically dumping the footage back via 802.11b networks on the ground. Near-instant gratification, and without putting your staff at risk.
Not to mention that if a blimp is cool, a missile must be... well, really cool. :-)
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
There's an open sourced missle guidance app called seeker that was made in the early 90s as a project at howell university. It was later used to guide p-30 rocket powered projectiles to a target some 450 yards away from launch point. The source is out there and easily googleable for. I wonder if it would apply for this project?
I find it insulting that you suggest that our government would have the depraved indifference to human life to permit 3,000 of it's own citizens and rescue workers to die in some sinister conspiracy to scare the public and increase their own power.
Of course there are many civil rights being trampled on in the name of terrorism prevention legislation, and I deplore that. But for you to suggest that our government purposefully turned a blind eye to the actions of the hijackers is rubbish, and it's demeaning to all those in the government (and I'm one of them) who are hard at work trying to catch the people who perpetrated this atrocity on our friends and family members.
The failure of the prevailing government bureaucracies to piece together the clues they had in hand in time to prevent the attacks was a great tragedy, but I am extremely offended by your suggestion that anyone would have the craven indifference to turn a blind eye to an impending terrorist attack on our own people.
I think that may be the most distasteful thing I've ever read on Slashdot.
I must say, I think the odds of any self-respecting terrorist thinking about building a cruise missile is... quite remote. A surface-to-surface missile lets you put a bomb in anywhere within range; this is a scare value in itself, though it seems to me highly impractical. A group seeking to spread fear might be better off spending their $5,000 purchasing weapons (I believe a recent NPR report identified black market assault rifles costing $200-400, if you know where to go do the math) and launching a series of suicide-killing sprees. Sporadic rocket attacks seem far away, but still make the blood boil, when seen on TV, but a greater volume of murders and shootouts has the potential to hit closer. Still, the best way to prevent terrorism doesn't have much to do with blocking access to weapons or restricting information; its to not give people a reason to be so angry.
As the $5K budget shows, this is within the range of an individual or small organization.
I've been expecting something like this for the last several years, but I expected to find out about it on the news, i.e. somebody used it on somebody, not on the Web.
Tech Public Policy stuff
You see, the URL ending in .nz denotes New Zealand. Ashcroft has no jurisdiction there. Of course, if I were this fellow I wouldn't plan on any vacations to the states for a while, but frankly if I lived in a fair country such as New Zealand I'd be loath to waste my hard earned (and undervalued) dollars coming to this place. Seems to me that those in the know are considering escape.
ehintz
As you say, you could use a PIC. You can't get something as accurate as a tomahawk this way; you will have to settle for hitting a building as opposed to flying it through a window of a building. (Since GPS is supposed to be accurate to about 15 meters or so, worst case, with SA off, and most buildings are more than 30 meters in at least one dimension, hitting the building is pretty reasonable.)
The craft will of course not always be making a straight, level flight. There are environmental issues. But a course correction every second or two should be sufficient.
The GPS can deliver hyper-accurate time, and fairly accurate position. From these things one can compute one's airspeed and the direction one is heading. It is then a simple matter to determine which direction one needs to turn to correct one's course.
One would plot a series of waypoints with some sort of computer software, possibly some sort of freely available GIS package, using maps available from the USGS. Once the craft is launched it will immediately begin determining which way it must turn to head to the waypoint. The little gyro replacement will provide straight and level flight when desired. Servos are trivial to control with off the shelf hardware, like a basic stamp for example, it's nice to use a dedicated microcontroller just for servo control so you don't have to tie up your primary microprocessor doing something that silly. You could also just build some custom hardware for it since they're pulse rate (or pulse width?) controlled. It would be a relatively uncomplicated task.
Now, a tomahawk missile is capable of recognizing its target by image, and it can dodge things in its path. Obviously it has significantly more processing power than the machine we're describing. However, my point was hitting a building is easy, not flying through a window, again, as the tomahawk supposedly can. (They claim a 1 meter square hit box.) All we really need to do is follow waypoints, which we can precompute on our launch control system. As the comment above this one points out, doing so will be amazingly trivial. I suspect the poster mentioned a PIC chip because they are insanely cheap and they speak RS232 serial with nothing more than something to raise voltages, for which there are several standard solutions readily available. This allows trivial interfacing to the GPS. IIRC the Basic Stamp also provides RS232, so a pic with enough legs could speak serial to both the servo controller (at a suitably high speed) and the GPS. You only need TX and RX for each connection, because the only other connection to do about 19.2k on a good day is a ground. With four wires to the servo controller you could do higher transfer rates, or reliably get 19.2k, which should be plenty.
In other words, using GPS makes this fairly trivial. The only real defense against it is GPS jamming, since it will be small and reasonably radar-transparent to the point where if it is flying low enough the only way you will spot it is visually, and good luck to you on that front.
The next step beyond this is using radar or laser imaging to find the ground and various obstacles, and apply enough processing power to the problem to make it able to dodge trees, phone poles, aircraft (unless they're your target), and so on. That does make the problem dramatically harder, and raises the cost of the electronics by several orders of magnitude, but of course it is still within the ability and budget of the more determined and wealthy hobbyists. This necessarily means that a hostile organization with some fairly lucrative funding source, such as drugs or oil (similar compounds from a financial standpoint) could put whole fleets of them into the air.
The next step after that would be inertial tracking so that it could still operate when GPS is jammed. After that, you want to do EMP hardening, which is probably more expensive than everything else put together.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...and the Stanford plane in the article has a 12 foot wingspan - certainly big enough to carry something dangerous.
To make an effective 'cruise missile' (i.e. effective weapon) you don't need jet engines or thousand mile ranges, all you need is enough distance from the target to launch covertly and enough aircraft to carry the weapon to the target. You can do that with an off the shelf prop plane that can fly more than a few miles. Use GPS for guidance, or heck, put a video camera on the thing and fly it via remote control.
This stuff really isn't rocket science, you know.
Well they have a nuke and the plans to build a cruise missile. I feel so much better.
Thanks to this guy for providing us with a perfect example of a site that the Three Letter Agencies will take an extreme interest in. What do you want to bet that NSA is keeping a close eye on this website and all its visitors/subscribers?
Annoying dog? Annoying arch-nemesis?
Build your own Cruise Missle and take care of that pesky rodent problem once and for all!
Complete this project in just under a weekend!
Great for Do-It-Yourself'ers!
But seriously, does this now count as a Boy Scout badge? "Ohh what kinda badge is that?" "The build-your-own-cruise-missle badge"
If Bush doesn't want to lose all those potential sales of WMD to them, then he better intervene. No, this isn't a troll. Please keep in mind that the U.S. has in the past repeatedly sold/provided weapons to countries and individuals which end up turning on them -- al Qaeda, Iraq, etc.
If you go to his diary page, you'll see that he's in new Zealand. Aside from that, I kindof wonder what the meaning is of the little "Dragon" written in Russian at the top-right-hand side of the page here on his website.
http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
dood back off. My rights have already been infringed since I can no longer purchase Assualt weapons.
So How the fuck can I compete with big brother when they go too far?
How do american citizens plan to defeat a military which has already been shown to be run by an incompetent president?
I should have every right to own and operate every weapon the american military can utilize aginst neighboring countries, and possibly on it's own citizens when they need to protect the operation of an just government aginst the people that they should serve.
Only when the citizens can keep the government honest by fear of immediate reprecutions will they finally work in our best interest.
Terrorists aren't going to go through the trouble of machining and programming their own missiles--they are just going to steal or buy the real thing.
Maybe morons like Bush think that all of this stuff is so terribly complicated that if they lock up a few scientists, nobody can develop it. But this stuff is really no more complicated than what any reasonably skilled welder and programmer can build from civilian parts.
Terrorism can only be stopped through social change; restricting access to technology is impossible. And that's one of the points this Kiwi is effectively making. You just don't get it.
In answer to your second question, I don't believe these pulsejet cruise missiles will ever become a threat to the public, at least not an extraordinary one. These pulsejets are not weapons, they are delivery systems. This guy is mostly just building the engine; the cruise missile for him is an afterthought, and he has no great expertise I think in UAV design. His designs don't go "boom", they merely arrive. (And there is some question about whether they would even do that, for long ranges or long durations.) Compare a pulsejet cruise missile with a $5000 car, crashed into the front of your house. (For a warhead, I could put a nuclear bomb in the backseat of the car as you have suggested as a warhead of choice for your weapon, or anthrax, or ricin. But gosh, those sure are rare and expensive things! Why not just fill 20 extra plastic jugs with gasoline or what-have-you and pack them inside? You will either be just as dead, or at the least extremely terrorized.) Why choose a home-built aircraft with a very noisy engine of questionable reliability, and a limited payload for your delivery system, when a reliable and unobtrusive car will do? Perhaps you are an engineer (you read slashdot); then certainly you too can think of something better than a custom-built aircraft powered by a custom-built engine? Remember, you're choosing a delivery system, not a warhead.
Do not rail at this pulsejet guy. You instead should be pissed off at whomever gave the terrorists technology, raw materials, and equipment for building biological, chemical, or nuclear warheads. That guilty party might turn out to be one part or another of the USA government, or perhaps the Chinese, or the French, or ... Depends on the terrorist du jour, and the warhead they will choose. But no, it was not the pulsejet guy.
"In short, defense does help employment, and it helps keep blue-collar and engineering jobs going all over the country."
In a limited sense, yes. However, defense hardware is largely useless economically: it just gets blown up or rusts aware somewhere. We might as well put all those defense contractors on welfare. (It's pretty ironic, actually, that with their push for defence funding, Republicans are so opposed to welfare--it amounts to roughly the same thing.)
If, instead, all that effort went into building factories or other civilian machinery, it would not only keep defense workers busy, it would make a greater contribution to the economy.
... just a glorified model airplane. This guy will no doubt confirm our fears that any terrorist with half a bachelor degree's worth of experience in control systems design can slap a GPS receiver and a cheap inertial system on a model plane and design it to fly autonomously into a populated area. Scary, yes. But nothing new; just look at any of the hundreds of amateur and university autonomous UAV projects. Developing and/or procuring a propulsion system capable of carrying this thing more than 100 miles is the real challenge for amateurs and our friends on other continents. That, or sneaking a small, 100-mile version through the port of Los Angeles. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be in my bunker.
Gotta love this guy, build a cruise miskle and charge people to read about it, 'properly authorized' of course.
I think he can do it, hell IA weapons could have been this way LONG ago.
If cruise missles were built the way TV's are, they'd be $1,000 US and 80% would last almost long enough to reach the target. They'd be built with JITM and delivered in 30 days.
So, lets see 500 miskles and 350 hit the target with the same force as one.
Don't you just DROOL over CURRENT military procurement proceedures?
I better shut up or they might pay attention.
You ought to search for the proposed new procurement the military is trying to choke down and listen to them. It ain't a gonna happen in my lifetime I bet.
This is a good thing, really, war should be flashy, and extremly expensive. It's not something one should expect their government to do on a whim.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
APPROPRIET action?
..cruise missles are cool, but do they run on linux? You may have gotten a slashdot posting under false pretenses.
If you check the guy's website, he's proposed a variety of methods to reduce the sound from pulsejets. However, even if it can be heard, that's still a fair way from being able to *do* anything about it.
Huh? Over rural areas or suburbia it wouldn't have to fly any higher than 100 metres, surely - and you could surely add a radar altimeter to the plane to allow it to do some basic terrain-following. If there's a big mountain in the road, program the GPS with the coordinated and make the thing fly higher over that section. Not to mention that you could probably equip the thing with a video camera and use that as terminal guidance. In any case, how many cities have "modern ground AA systems" anywhere near them?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
> besides the obvious *geek* factor this kind of >*experiments* and demonstrations should make us > >all stop to think a bit ...
...
zzzzzzzz
>how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?
You don't, you kill them first as brutally and as publicly as possible.
Unfortunately it's not in a governments best interest to totally eradicate them, one terrorist is worth several cruise missles.
>limiting acces to knowledge (with DMCA style
>laws)?
Then only terrorists, governments and other criminal types have the knowledge.
>creating a orwellian policial state where all are >suspect ans subject to vigilance (and who >controls the vigilantes) ?
What? We don't have that yet?
I'm of the opinion that the hardware to run the state's monitoring makes cool routers and stuff and putting a publicly addressable camera in the senators bedchamber is perfectly acceptable in a big brother society. Consider it accountability through pornography.
>limitating the publication of (now) public-domain > stuff ('cause it can be used to devilish ends) ?
I have this library....
>the RIAA/DMCA people already want to control what
>could go on the net, and that is, maybe, only the
>beggining (see China - although there 's hope
>there - see the massive failure of the SARS
>coverup) so maybe it is time to start thinking
>about how to mantain the net free and at the same
>time this planet a safe planet to stay
Is the fact of SARS a cover up or the fact of what SARS really is a cover up.
The RIAA has become vicous because it's nearly insolvent.
>just my two uros,
And just how much gold will it buy today?[1]
Actually that's not disrespect, I don't know where to find it out. Gold rather than another currency is a good measure of how well it's doing. Better is the street value of the gold, a raw gold or coin dealer is a good choice, the people the little guy uses.
[1] No, BillG's is "This is how much gold will you send me today."
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Hey, it could happen :)
First of all, they're not all terrorists, so there are different ways to engage each threat. Let's assume you're talking about terrorists.
They need a friendly environment in which to hide and train. This is easy today, with many people hating the US. The hatred can be tempered by deeds: perceived sensitivity and fairness in dealing with Palestine; transparent and fair rebuilding of Iraq. Basically, improve the chances that a righteous Arab would call the cops on the terrorists living next door.
They need money. People angry at the US give money to terrorists. Decrease this anger, and they are left with a few independently wealthy fundamentalists, whose assets are much easier to track down and seize.
They need weapons. You might be aware that the US is one of the biggest exporters of weapons. You don't have to cut it out, but you do want to be more careful who you sell them to.
Just when does this become illegal or a threat to the public
.rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces, (D) missile having an explosive or incendiary charge of more than one-quarter ounce, (E) mine, or (F) similar device" or any part or combination of parts from which a destructive device can be assembled. 28 U.S.C. 5845(f). To manufacture a destructive device in the U.S. you have to apply to the ATF for a manufacturer's license, which is $3,000 every three years and you have to register each destructive device and its components.
If you have all the parts that you need to make a cruise missile, it is a destructive device under federal law and you're looking at 10 years in prison without the proper licenses. A destructive device is, among other things, "any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas. .
Of course, you can still put the info on the web...
Just mentioned on /. was a single board CPU system, but why skimp, just shove a surplus grid systems laptop in it.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
now i can call my own airstrikes on saddam
Unless backed up by several million of your closest friends.
It's just a deterent, saber rattling if you will, it doesn't stop it just slows it down and makes 'em
listen to and apply more cost effective solutions.
Lets see:
Observing the polls.
Spewing spin doctoring.
Reviling opponents or undercutting their gripe with the solution.
etc
The better way IMHO, less bloody when they feel the need to listen.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Cheers... I've had a few replies of that nature myself already. Somebody else up above was talking about how hard it would be to get FAA clearance for testing the things. On the contrary, I rather expect the FAA could care less. Of course, the NZCAA might care, but that's another topic...
Hope all is well down there. We're back up here for the time being, my halfassed jobhunt didn't garner any immediate results.
ehintz
Per dollar spent, it seems to create the least jobs. Trust me, those $3 billion fighter jets are not creating as many jobs as $3 billion should.
You fall asleep for 1 seconds while flying a helecopter, you're fucked.
It seems we have a bit of a paradox here:
But the above hasn't happened. With the spectacular exception of September 11 (which wasn't achieved through high-tech means), the best terrorists have been able to do is conventional bombing, and they haven't been able to kill that many people, even Israelis.
So, what's the problem with the above argument?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
He split the beer atom in his backyard for a lot less money. Now THAT's something to be terrified of!
Which means, ummm, wait over an hour to launch those fighter jets, and let them fly 1/5th their of speed. All that happened was the most important building in the history of civilization got destroyed. No big hurry.
Do you guys really think that countries in the world don't have a clue on how to build cruise misslies?
Comrad - slashdot has posted someone elses article on how to build cruise missiles.
El Presidente - eh? well you got on that browser and dl that material and have it sent to our defense division immediately. This is just the breakthrough we've been looking for,
Comrad - Si Si!
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Ok, but where does the bubblegum wrapper and candybar fit in?
Oh wait that was MacGyver.....never mind.
In Soviet Russia, Nigel makes plans for you!
how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff?
That's easy! Everbody gets a cruise missle! Mututally Assured Destruction on a personal level.
Stop turning religious zealots into terrorists by funding the existance / behaviour of israel?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
How do you explain why the Clinton administration covered up the fact that the plane that was downed in NY during his administration was shot by a rocket-launched missile? There is video evidence showing such a missle coming at the plane from a boat on the river. And the government did nothing - they made the situation 'go away'. The plane was ripped appart, the engines not even near the rest of hte plane. The only way that could have happened is if it were shot. "Air turbulence", as was officially claimed, doesn't hold water.
If they'd cover up such an instance, and then not heighten security to prevent 9-11, what makes you think that someone, somewhere, in the US government, didn't know about the impending doom to the WTC and did nothing? They knew about bin laden, and yet they let him live. The list goes on and on.
This is a serious inquisition, not a troll or such. Neither wsa my previous statement.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'd have to say it wouldn't do very much at all.
It wouldn't have a very large radar cross sectional area, and ATC radar picks up all kinds of junk with weak echoes. Small private planes are pretty small blips without a transponder.
There aren't any missile early warning systems set up to discover domestic launches, either.
The fact that triggering chaos from long distances away is becoming easier is worrisome-- whether we're talking about arson by CO2 laser or cheap cruise missiles (heck, I think you could do it for well -under- $5k largely using parts for small model aircraft).
You know posting directions one how to build a cruise missile may not be the best idea. Palestinian freedom fighters like Hezbollah and Hamas have been actively pursuing missile technology so that their fighters could fire missiles into Israeli settlements. This to me seems just like a terrible idea.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
The United States Navy sponsored a test project with a ~$500,000 budget in late 1998 to see if an independent team could build a reliable cruise missile weapon using off the shelf technology. I suppose that since the project failed they quietly cancelled it or declared it a success (since the independent team failed to develop a useful weapon) and ended it. Things may be different now but $5,000 probably won't be enough to build an effective military grade cruise missile, especially when one considers the advanced counter-measures employed by the United States and other Navies. I doubt that a $5,000 homemade cruise missile would defeat the Aegis system employed by the United States Navy. I was able to find only this small snippet of information on the web regarding the whole affair:
missile defense
"14 Apr 98 The Kraken cruise missile built by the BMDO Countermeasures Hands-On Project crashed on take off from Point Mugu, California. The Kraken was built to test the ability of a rest-of-world country to develop this type of weapon."
Minor correction-- to discover domestic cruise missile launches. Something that goes up high and fast on a ballistic trajectory will get plenty of attention from USSPACECOM, and even more so from foreign infrared imagery and radars. But a cruise missile just acts like an airplane-- and an airplane flying without talking to ATC in uncontrolled airspace is just fine. And it looks small enough on radars it could be mistaken for a bird or ground reflections.
First, building your own cruise missile is a sure way to get stuck in prison longer than Kevin Mitnick, so watch your ass.
Second, if you're thinking about using GPS guidance, think again, consumer GPS receivers are designed to cut off when the speed is higher than a set value (precisely to prevent their use in this fashion).
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You are the weakest link, goodbye.
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</Disclaimer>
<!-- Please don't kill me -->
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
(1)people should be studying for their MBA(2)'s and try hard to get football scholarships instead of wast(3)eing the(4)y're time trying to learn about the world.
No kidding.
Infuriate left and right
What state is New Zealand in?
Bzzzzt! wrong!
Sorry, that was a trick question, actually New Zealand, the home of our intrepid missile-builder, is an independant nation. US federal law carries no more legal weight there than a fatwah from the Ayatollah Khomeni does in Texas!
0 1 - just my two bits
To produce something now would be easier, particularly if the resulting vehicle was smaller.
I agree that the FAA might be an interesting obstacle. I wonder what kind of waiver R/C enthusiasts have with some of them flying four-engined bomber replicas and also now jets.
Besides, for ground-hugging travel and targeting it is well known that an expressway and parking meter are sufficient technology.
well, US has been shitting all over the world for a century (very so right now) and are because of that the primary target for terrorism. Seen Switzerland, Belgium or Sweden being targeted lately?
Wouldn't small unmanned planes be more reasonable? I mean, you don't see many cruise missiles with landing gear. A lot of the tech involved in the cruise missile could be used in an unmanned plane though.
Given the hypersensitive climate in the U.S. today, why would one try to build a weapon of mass destruction, just to prove it could be done. I can see it now in the CNN headline: "President Bush declared today that Bruce Simpson is a threat to national security and bombed his house."
Died in helicopter crash? didn't you know that that is BlackOps-speak for, "Oops, that operation didn't work." Pay attention the the number of "helicopter" crashes during time of "peace" sometime.
A 'cruise missile' without an explosive payload is just a model jet with a sophisticated guidance system.
Perhaps the term 'missile' is a term that carries a negative connotation, but semantics should really not affect the fundamental issue that it is OK to experiment with aeronautics and electronics in your back yard because its your back yard and we (well, Bruce does) live in a moe-or-less free society.
Personally, i would think a more interesting goal would be to build something akin to a Predator UAV than a cruise missile, but that is just me.
John Carmack is trying to build a fucking InterContinental Ballistic Missile in his backyard, but everyone seems to love that project.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
just continue living in a country that doesn't step on everyone toes because of megalomaniac reasons, and terrorists will happily send their missiles somewhere else.
in the worst case, eventually the terrorists or a megalomaniac country will take over yours, but as the result will be pretty much the same, there's no point in worrying about it too much.
There's just 2 problems with using GPS guidance:
1) The US Government deliberately makes the GPS satellites report false positions on the civilian channels. During wartime (like now) the error is fudged +- 150 meters. During times of non-war, the fudge factor is set to +- 15 meters. The actual accuracy is +- 3 meters, which it always correctly reports on the military frequencies.
2) Civilian GPS units have a government-mandated firmware limit and will not indicate faster than (IIRC) 600 Mph nor over 1000 ft. to keep people from using them for exactly this purpose.
Of course, the real solution is to get your hands on a real military GPS unit...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
nt
Last I heard, the non-military fuzz had been turned off for civilian GPS. I seem to remember hearing recently that the Europeans were thinking of launching their own GPS array, which would clearly make a fuzzed system non-competitive. I'm sure our military would rather own the satellites of a non-fuzzed system than have a ten-years-later system owned by someone else available.
As for the 600MpH/1000ft limit, I can't verify that. I can verify that when I attended the 2000 ISSCC, a coworker had a GPS and his laptop along, connected. By holding the GPS up to the window of the 747 he could chart the plane's progress on a map of the US on his laptop.
On my last flight, a few weeks ago, I seem to remember hearing that they didn't want us operating GPS on the plane at all, not just during takeoff and landing.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Well apparently it has already badly started... No to throw stone at ther US but it looks like more a conquest than a liberation war from outside. And seeing the protest it looks the same from inside.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Maybe the Internet could have been done without the military, but it clearly could not have been done by American business in the current (and recent past) climate.
American business can't cooperate and craft an Open Standards solution worth spit. Even the Internet which we sort of have, American business is busily trying to destroy.
They look at the huge pie that the Internet is today, and imagine that they can own it. They don't realize that a fundamental essence of its hugeness is it's very non-ownership. Either that or they'd rather have all of a small pie instead of a piece of a much, much bigger one. This seems to hold even when the piece of the bigger pie is bigger than the whole pie they could have on their own.
It seems to be conventional wisdom to criticize government for stupidity. IMHO, they have no monopoly on that property at all. I wonder if it's IP laws or what that allows stupid business practices to survive in the face of obviously better ways.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I doubt you could appease Kim Chong-il, Timothy McVeigh, Bin Laden, and the Unibomber all at the same time, even if you tried.
We don't have to appease them.
Timothy McVeigh - Dead
Bin Laden - Probably dead, power structure destroyed.
Unabomber - In a cell for the rest of his life.
Kin Chong-il - Looking pretty nervous.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
There are already proposals on the drawing board to put satellite-type radio services onto solar-powered high-altitude automated airplanes. They would then fly in circles giving coverage to a given area. Kind of a low-altitude non-orbital satellite, with lower latency, to boot.
(What happened to the 'post as AC' button?)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
No, those mentioned in the parent post ARE terrorists. They all target(ed) civilians to further political ends. Kim Chong-il kidnapped Japanese civilians to help train his spies. Now he's essentially using his nuclear weapons program to hold a gun to the worlds head (give me food and oil, so I don't have to get my own, freeing my money for my weapons programs, and I won't sell this shit to terrorists). Timothy McVeigh blew up a building that had a DAYCARE center in it. He qualifies in my book. Bin Laden, well, no need to explain that one. The Unibomber? A whacked out leftist tree hugger, but still a terrorist. He wasn't mailing his little hand-carved contraptions to the military, was he? So yes, these people are all terrorists, unless you have a definition other than the one in the dictionary.
There is no way some kid could synthesize opium after taking a HS chem class. Crystal Meth, maybe... but opium?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Let me get this straight. We should nuke Israel, and all of the Muslim terrorists will go away? Go back to raising goats and camels, or chewing khat all day? They'll stop attacking India and beheading tourists and missionaries in the Phillipines? Hell, maybe they'll stop butchering the Christians in Indonesia! Or stop slavery in the Sudan! All would be right with the world! Dumbass.
Launch in the US, and it's domestic to US systems - but very much foreign to Russian, Chinese and other systems. Depending on size and flightpath, I think it could still worry a lot of people you don't want to piss off!
Something that goes up high and fast on a ballistic trajectory will get plenty of attention from USSPACECOM, and even more so from foreign infrared imagery and radars. But a cruise missile just acts like an airplane-- and an airplane flying without talking to ATC in uncontrolled airspace is just fine. And it looks small enough on radars it could be mistaken for a bird or ground reflections.
I'd expect it to be rather bigger than a bird, and I'm sure someone will make one which flies a ballistic trajectory instead - accidentally or otherwise. I bet there are already Darwin Award contenders going "Cool, I can yank NORAD's chain if I change this bit, and fire it like this..."
Or, as a previous poster suggested, you just get some terrorist firing one into a building. Or building an infra-red seeker head, and mangling a 747. (Yes, they've already tried using black-market Stingers, Al Queda recently in Kenya and a Palestinian group in Rome in the late 70s - but Stingers really suck for taking out airliners. A modified version of this thing might not...)
The whole "Terrorist fly planes full of explosves" concept had been floating around the pentagon for quite awhile
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You are replying to someone who thinks that the constitution and/or its amendments are out of date and do not apply to "modern society". You may as well try to explain a quasar to someone who thinks the earth is flat.
I agree... Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Likewise, just because he has the know-how to do this, doesn't mean he should. I tend to think that his arrogance and bragging may very well cost people their lives somewhere, because he published this information.
What ever happened to personal responisibility?
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Richard Dawkins describes some cheaper and more battle-proven guidance systems in this article.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
So what's the hitcount on this webpage from the middle east?
10234855 - IE 5 - Cave Complex Afganistan
21478998 - IE 6 - Cave Complex Iraq
2194890538 - One Ring - Oval Office
Maybe Theo de Raadt will approve of this, since it's open source.
Take out the motivation to be a terrorist: make the world a good place for all. Oh, but that would mean that the top 2 % of people would have to sacrifice their power, wealth and whatever... Sorry, my bad.
If he's not careful the US Government will shut him down for releasing information that jeopardizes 'homeland security'..
No need for warrants or a judges approval to make his stuff, and him disappear.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The 1000 ft. can't be correct. Anyone can buy an aviation GPS unit, and they would work at any altitude.
According to NTSB records, with search criteria from dates 1/1/02 through 1/1/03 there were 72 helicopter accidents (report status as final), with only two of those accidents including fatalities (three fatalities total). I dunno about you, but that seems like a pretty decent record. It's not really practical to compare civil aviation for airplanes to military helicopter operations in wartime conditions.
It'd be far more difficult and expensive to maintain and operate dozens of rocket powered aircraft as camera platforms than it does now for helicopters and planes.
Yeah, unmanned aerial vehicles are probably the future, but not rocket powered cruise missiles. Piston powered and turbine powered aircraft are much more efficient than rockets.
My other SIG is a 9mm.
This information has been available for years and can be worked out from magazine articles by anyone who could gradaute high school. His attempt to do this will only show how easy it is - pretending it's hard and that it is not a threat doesn't make it so.
A cheap cruise missile is not that hard or expensive - especially if the objective is to just kill people and you don't care which group of people it is, or even if it's really a large group. When the terrorist scum destroyed the WTC, they simply wanted to kill as many people as possible to have an effect on the remainder - they weren't targetting a specific leader or a specific objective, though the financial impact of the investment banks was a bonus.
This is the difficulty in defending a large country against terrorism - killing groups randomly causes a much larger population to alter their behavior. When you don't care who you kill, but only how many and the effect that it will have on the living, then you can exert your will on a population, and affect the well-being of that which you attack.
It's much harder to wage a war with precision - it takes significant resources in intelligence, weapons, training, and greater acceptance of risk to attempt to target those in-charge while minimizing the effect on the remainder, while insuring the defense of your own people, and at the same time insure sufficient resources will be brought to bear to permanently alter the course of events.
Liberty means freedom to do things, but safety means restriction from doing (i.e. controls). Liberty and safety can only co-exist in sufficient (read: expected modern American) levels with the third -ty item: prosperity. Prosperity is the water level that can raise or lower the levels of both. A prosperous people can enjoy many of the benefits of liberty while affording the costs of being unsafe (insurance ... basically, paying for the things you break), along with the associated costs of safety systems.
Given the current trends of wealth concentration and the corresponding need to create millions upon millions more wage slaves, prosperity is not in the cards, hence I have no expectation that liberty will be the preferred factor in the equation. Safety is coming, but reducing all risks is overall the riskiest of behaviors. Overall safety is going to paid for with a dull and vicious civilization that convulses into periods of violence in reaction.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
I should clarify, im not saying the entire constitution is out of date, most of it is still relevant, im saying the second amendment is out out date.
i.e. I really dont think it is neccesary for civilians to carry assault rifles. There are other ways to protect yourself or overthrow a government.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
painfully obvious that anyone with half a mind and a bit of ingenuity can create a decent weapon. What's left? Perhaps we all stop being gready sods and start treating others in the world with respect...i.e. give them a fair shake.
The security issue is a classic excuse to eat ones own tail. Secrecy solves nothing as basic information and some intelligence is all that's required to come up with some new and nasty way to off your fellow human.
So, how do we manage to do group therapy on the national scale? It's obviously required. The fear, the paranoia, the willingness to become more ignorant and let others deal with your "freedom" is a sure sign that the island is sinking. Get help...now before you do something that you regret. Oh wait, that's already happened....drats!
cruise missiles are built to hide YOU!!!
Whoaaaa there. We are? I'm assuming you're talking about small arms fire here. If you weren't talking about small arms fire then just ignore the following.
You've seen terrorist groups in TV right? They're almost always sporting an AK-47. They're cheap, reliable, simple, and made by many many countries. Here in the US they suck. Badly. They're so watered down no self respecting terrorist would want to buy one if he had a choice. No threaded barrels, "thumbhole" stocks, and sometimes non-conventional magazine ports to only accept single-stack 10 round magazines. No thank you. Hell I'm an American and I won't buy one of these -- I'll take my Egyptian made AK any day.
We might very well be the largest exporter of firearms, but that would most likley come from companies like Remmington, Winchester and maybe Smith and Wesson. Hunting rifles/shotguns and handguns. When it comes to build Homeland Defense Rifles (formerly termed Assault Rifles) we're pretty crappy at it due to government restrictions. Although, Bushmaster makes a damned nice AR-15 clone. Still sucks that I can't get a threaded barrel on it though.
Here's to hoping the 1994 Crime Bill doesn't get renewed next year.
does he think that he won't be arrested for building a weapon like this?
Yes, there are. Rocks. Heavy machine guns. Cruise missiles :) I think that, with adequate checks, civilians should be able to buy military weaponry. Be adequate I mean "really damn detailed", and that honestly is the case now for most types of weapons. Which is why (hopefully) my neighbors don't have any howitzers in the garage. My real problem with the current situation is amount of red tape required for an individual inventer who is not associated with a defense contractor to develop an idea that is considered a "destructive device". As a senior design project in college, I developed a three-shot burst mechanism that used only 3 parts to control the burst, and 4 more to control full-auto, burst, and semi-auto operation. It worked, when tested using CO2 to drive the mechanism. It works fine... cheaper and more dirt proof (at an artificially high rate of fire) than anything else I've seen... take an MP5 apart sometime. Then I made the mistake of talking to the ATF about a manufacturing permit to do a proof of concept using and existing firearm. Was it a good idea? I think so. Did it work? Yes. Will it ever see the light of day? No, those blueprints are going to sit in my advisor's safe until either I get an investor who is willing to develop the project and PAY for all that red tape (meaning starting a defense contracting company) or the liscense fees get brought back down to a reasonable level. Clinton jacked them up to the point that only a company with serious financial backing can take the risk; an individual can't. Of course, there is also the ethical issue: my design would be most useful for third-world countries trying to save ammo in their cheap submachineguns, so would I really want to develop it? Point is, someone like John Browning wouldn't get far in this day and age unless he already worked for a defense contracter.
It's allowed because it's outdated as an weapon since the Vergeltungswaffe Eins.
New ones are still slow if based on pulse-jet. But if turbines Uncle BushBush will disallow it and even nuke you.
It could be nice to water isolated oases in the middle east.
Commercial aircraft operate in a relatively safe environment.
... In this environment, the pilot's attention is OUTSIDE the cockpit. He doesn't get to look at his instruments nearly as often as other pilots. If he did, he'd run into something in seconds. Now add night vision goggles, which kills a lot of depth perception. I have a lot of respect for those rotor-heads.
Combat helicopters spend a lot of their time close to the ground, hiding behind ridge-lines, trees, buildings, medium sized rocks, tall tarantulas,
You simply cannot compare commercial aviation with combat avaition. If you want a comparison, you need to look at commercial rotorcraft vs. commercial aircraft... or some other apples & apples comparison.
With profits high enough to warrant a $5000 expense, I'd worry more about smugglers using kit like this and sending the dope straight over the border. Drop the payload on a predetermined point and ditch the airframe somewhere remote.
Offcourse you could do the same with a boat and transport much more payload...
There a many more smugglers than terrorists.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
This guy says he can do it:
t m
http://www.chicagotechnologies.com/killcruise.h
Cruise missiles basically ARE small unmanned planes.
Only with high-precision guidance system and payload.
Cruise missiles are NOT rocket powered. For example Tomahawk is powered by a turbofan engine, it's basically a small jet airplane. It does have small rocket, but that's only used to give enough airspeed for main propulsion system to kick in.
Even this DIY version used a pulse-jet (somewhere in middleground between "true" jet and rocket) instead of plain rocket.
Rocket fuel economy isn't anywhere near good enough for distances these babies must fly.
Under our Second Amendment Rights, we should all get to own anti-aircraft weapons, just so we can fight these terrorists. Remember an armed population is a safe population.
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
so the terrorists can do the same.
not by very much. The thing is made mostly of foam and fiberglass. The only metal bits are the insturments and the pulse jet engine. That doesn't amount ot much of a radar signature.
When you take into account the altitude that this thing will be flying, it might not even have a radar signature.
"The only problem is that airplanes fly too fast for people to get a good view of what's going on in terms of ground traffic.
Enter the cruise missile. Fly ten of them around, snapping pictures and shooting video clips and periodically dumping the footage back via 802.11b networks on the ground. Near-instant gratification, and without putting your staff at risk."
Exit the cruise missile, because it travels "too fast for people to get a good view of what's going on", the same as an airplane, and likewise would be totally unsuitable for low altitude, highly obstructed city flight. Any small rocket powered aircraft would have the same problem, and considering the burn times of rocket engines today, would have to refuel after about 15 seconds.
Enter the unmanned rotorcraft, like the Sikorsky Cypher, the EADS Seamos, the Bell Eagle Eye (tilt rotor!), Northrop RQ-8 FIre Scout, Canadair CL-227, Yamaha RMAX, and no doubt others. They don't risk any lives, and have all the flexibility that comes with helicopters (and in the case of the Eagle Eye, the speed of a fixed wing aircraft). They can hover to monitor a developing situation, and fly in any direction to avoid obstacles. Find me a cruise missile that can do that.
I'm pretty sure that you can get around the fuzzy GPS part by using differential mode GPS. I've heard that you can get down to millimeter resolution with a properly callibrated differential unit.
Don't forget, they need recruits. Say what you want about terrorists, they are still a purely voluntary service. The motivation behind they're decision to blow themselves up needs to be addressed, as well (the real ones, not the stuff they preach).
I've got several Rockwell DGPS units here - thanks for reminding me, I'm gonna bring them to the Hamfest in Dayton and try to sell 'em.
Those use FM broadcast signals that are time-synchronized and phase-locked to the GPS signals, and I know surveyors use them. I think the accuracy goes down to a meter (or less?) but I'm not sure about millimeter accuracy.
Theoretically, you could resolve down to the 1/2 the wavelength of the FM carrier frequency if the time-locking was stable enough. Nyquist, ya know.
The only problem is that you have to be in a major metro area and within FM reception distance of a participating station that is sending the signals. Unfortunately there are almost none in my city, but there are some in a city 50-60 miles away. Reception is spotty at best.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Who gives a fuck what they're up to? It isn't our business what other nations do within their own borders, or even to each other; it isn't our 'religious calling' to free the world from oppression and impose the American way of life on everyone, whether they want it or not.
I realize there are Americans who think that conquering the world sounds like a dandy idea, if only to teach the 'barbarians' how to be civilized. The British once thought the same thing, and look at what's left of their empire. As they taught us, and the rest of the world, only a fool or a megalomaniac aspires to global domination.
But I suppose with Bush, we've got both....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That's going to kill like only 4 people, who are either kinda old or very young. Ooh . . . Scary.
(Look up the SARS stats on the World Health Organization website, and see if you think it's scary).
Are you actually trying to compare accident statistics between commercial fixed-wing aircraft and military helecopters? Don't you think that the operating parameters are a little different? The very nature of the operations military helecopters undertake makes them more risky-- not necessarily the fact that they are helecopters. I won't argue that helecopters aren't more dangerous, but I'd say the bigger danger is that they're flying in close formation at low altitudes.
BTW, unmanned aircraft are not permitted to fly over populated areas.
People angry at the US give money to terrorists. Decrease this anger, and...
I don't think that is possible. News sources like Al Jezera will slant everything the US does and paint it in a conspiratorial light. They habitually blame all their problems on us.
Table-ized A.I.
Shouldn't that be "just my 0.02"?
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
Even from a distance, it sounds like
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG. Just before Easter I saw one powering a gigantic glider, and it was noisy. Plus, they don't have all that long a life. 20 hours is unusual. 20 minutes is a lot more common. Yeah, his X-jet will last longer, but this cruise missile uses a fairly normal pulse jet. And his X-jet isn't fully developed yet.
You can't have these in cities.
But aside from that, it's a nice idea.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
TWA flight 800?
There was no video of any missile.
There were a few people who said they saw an ascending flaming object that then exploded.
The NTSB Report explains that the evidence (radar and other) clearly shows that the plane climbed sharply after the onboard explosion, while it was certainly already on fire, explaining the ascending streak of light reports without any missile.
As for ripped apart, it exploded. We know there was an explosion in the fuel tank, everyone agrees that there was an explosion in the fuel tank based on the soot inside the tank and the blown apart tank bulkheads. See the NTSB report and all the critics responses. The NTSB report clearly shows how and why the airplane broke up after that explosion resulting in the debris patterns.
The only remaining question is whether it blew up due to some electrical fault in wiring in or near the tank, or due to a missile or something whackier like a meteor. There was no smoking wire recovered in the debris to prove it was an accident, but there have been a large number of fuel tank explosions in military and civilian transport aircraft due to such wiring faults. This was far from the first one to happen.
There is no actual evidence of a missile. Even psychopathic paranoid lunatics now agree on that.
Can we prove conclusively it wasn't? No. But if planes have blown up tens of times before due to wiring faults, and you don't find any actual physical evidence of a missile, Ockham's razor suggests wiring short.
Perhaps the guy lives outside the United States in a small country with an "Air Force" with no strike aircraft - thats right - NO STRIKE AIRCRAFT.
Two or three hundred of these things hidden around the country loaded up with intelligent agent software and a reasonable range would provide an effective self defence mechanism that is reasonably cheap to maintain.
Its all very well to call a guy nuts when you are protected by a few thousand ICBM's, however we have exactly zip in terms of air defence, and to be quite frank a cruise missile program would be money well spent compared to 16 or so obselete F16's.
Y'know, the definition of "cruise missile" means it doesn't fly a ballistic trajectory. Likewise, something with an air-breathing pulsejet isn't gonna stay ballistic very long no matter how much you alter it in other ways.
Sure, anything flying in an ADIZ would worry people. The thing is, if it crosses into an ADIZ and gets detected, it'll get shot down.
It would be hard to retrofit a cruise missile to be a decent surface to air missile. The problems are fundamentally different.
The question this article raises is why would somebody who is not totally out of his mind would want to build a cruise missile.
Defending his country against a possible US attack, perhaps?
Providing the means for some other country to defend themselves against a possible US attack?
These sound perfectly reasonable goals to me.
The thing is, you don't need a whole computer for the basics. It's not until you get into image recognition and the like that you need more power, and then you need more power than most SBCs will provide. Lower power consumption than they require would also be nice.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
God forbid anyone at the 'defense' department actually 'defend' the US instead of creating more terrorists by occupying other countries.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The real question is not 'how do we prevent terrorist from using this king of stuff'
Right. the real question is "How do we prevent George W. Bush from using this kind of stuff", since he's killed more civilians in the last 2 years than all the terrorists in the world combined have killed in the last 10 years.
Maybe an old concept called "deterrence" has some relevance.
Yes, I know that pretty well...
Likewise, something with an air-breathing pulsejet isn't gonna stay ballistic very long no matter how much you alter it in other ways.
It wouldn't have to stay ballistic very long to upset a lot of people. Likewise, the body may not have a big radar signature at present, but just wrapping it in foil will make a big difference.
Sure, anything flying in an ADIZ would worry people. The thing is, if it crosses into an ADIZ and gets detected, it'll get shot down.
Yeah. We all saw on 9/11 how quickly the USAF could shoot down airborne vehicles going where they shouldn't be... I'm sure they'd react much faster now - but fast enough to take out a missile with very little radar signature?
There are really two issues here. One is the "DoS" attack: fly it somewhere it shouldn't be, maybe dump out a load of foil in an airport flight path. At the very least it'll worry a lot of people, when big radar blips suddenly appear where they shouldn't be. The other is blowing something up or crashing into it, where that small radar signature will help.
It would be hard to retrofit a cruise missile to be a decent surface to air missile. The problems are fundamentally different.
A true SAM, yes - but smacking into a fscking big airliner on the runway, or as it taxis? Much easier: no countermeasures, no cockpit warning, and it's moving very slowly compared to most SAM targets. For that matter just hitting an aircraft at the gate, once it's fuelled, would make quite a mess...
Gagh. Now I'll have to forget all this next time I fly anywhere! Somehow, I don't think I want to know how easy terrorist attacks are when I'm sitting in a potential target. (Anyone here remember the suggestion for the new WTC building - put the UN headquarters right at the top, so they'll take terrorism more seriously?)
I've actually discussed this issue with people who know what they are talking about (professors who are acknowledged experts on missile defense technology, USAF officers who were managers of the GPS program).
You are correct that there are inihibits on commercial GPS units, but, the limits are a lot higher than what people have been guessing.
The altitude limit is somehere above 60,000 feet.
The speed limit is a couple of Mach.
Basically, it worked out so that civilian GPS would still be useful on the Concorde, but not on a SCUD.
"Civilian" isn't quite the right term, either. "Unlicensed" would be better -- GPS is definitely used on commercial satellites (and by NASA on the Shuttle), but you need some sort of explict OK from the feds to purchase a more capable system.
In theory the 60,000/Mach 3 (?) limit is an international agreement; how hard it actually is to get an unrestricted unit from foreign manufacturers, I don't know.
...how to build your own Lockheed C-5 Galaxy on the cheap.
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
I suggest that you *stop* *pissing* *people* *off*.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I'm convinced you don't know very much about aviation.
The kind of thing we're talking about doesn't have the kind of range necessary to make it an international nuisance. And the types of air defense interrogation zones that have been established for national defense against conventional fighter aircraft provide pretty good defensive measures for countries with capable air forces against internationally launched cruise missiles.
Ballistic missile detection systems typically detect objects going to very high altitudes (>20 miles), or by the infrared signature of large rocket engines. This would have neither. Of course, you could modify it by putting in a ballistic guidance system, a solid or liquid rocket motor, removing the wing area, stressing the airframe for supersonic ascent, characterizing its ballistic coeffecient, etc etc etc... but aren't we talking about building a ballistic missile from scratch at that point?
Do you understand that dumping a bunch of foil somewhere isn't gonna do a whole lot except inconvenience controllers? In fact, the vast majority of the time in aviation, pilots are responsible for avoiding each other without using radar, but just by looking outside for other planes. Controllers provide traffic advisories which are a nice service to have but aren't required.
In fact, I can tell you exactly what would happen if you dumped a ton of foil. It's be a bunch of large, unmoving blips. Because atmospheric conditions change the way radar is bent, the controllers would fiddle for a few minutes with the ground scan settings because they get this kinda stuff all the time when radar is lensed and they get ground echoes. Then the foil would drop to the ground and the blips would go away. Big whoop.
If you're going to use a cruise missile, using it against an aircraft on the ground is a pretty silly idea. LET"S THINK A SECOND. IT MOVES! IT'S RELATIVELY SMALL! THIS MAKES THINGS HARDER FOR NO GAIN. Suddenly you need target acquisition or remote control, and a whole lot more precision. If your goal is terrorism, send it into the stands at a football game; it's easier and it'll do a hell of a lot more damage. The jet fuel doesn't really make a lot of difference in the destructive power in this case.
The example I had in mind when I wrote that were the Stinger (portable anti-aircraft) missiles that the US sold (gave?) to the Mujahedin in Afghanistan who were fighting the Soviet invaders. Many are worried that these can be used against airliners.
Before that, Iran had F-14s.
Do you believe everything you hear from the Fox News Channel? If not, why not? The answer is education. The answer is ensuring that when these people gain enough wisdom (in the media interpretation and anti-manipulation sense) to see the truth, the truth is actually that the US is being fair.
Actually, the 9/11 hijackers do not fit the classic definition of a terrorist, who uses violence to intimidate or coerce a population. The al Qaeda organization appears to want to wipe America off the face of the planet, and Osama bin Laden would be better compared to Hitler than to Arafat in terms of intent. One is going for religious purity, the other for racial purity.
Kim Jong-Il is a ruthless dictator, but kidnapping is not terrorism. The kidnappings were of course tragic to the families and the victim, but they were not politicized violence. In fact, they weren't even made public until recently. Using nuclear weapons in blackmail is also not terrorism. Do you think bin Laden will be blackmailing or blowing up New York if he had nukes?
McVeigh and the Unabomber were terrorists. Their attacks were political in nature. In fact, they are classic terrorists, hoping that their violent actions would spur or force political change. They did not intend to kill everybody in the US.
You're a little confused about the term. What distinguishes a terrorist is not their attack on innocent civilians, but their political objective. A man can rape and kill a little girl - a brutal act against defenseless innocents - and that makes him a rapist and a killer, but not a terrorist. Not everything that frightens us is terrorism.
I'm convinced you haven't read the article... I wasn't talking about anything "internationally launched", or any kind of "international threat". The range is 100 miles! (I think those I've flown with, RAF and civilian, would disagree with you, too...)
Do you understand that dumping a bunch of foil somewhere isn't gonna do a whole lot except inconvenience controllers?
Yes. Do you understand that "inconvenience" is almost exactly what that kind of script kiddie aims for? Look at the chaos caused in the UK when the new NATS (air traffic control) computer failed: hours of delays, hundreds of cancelled flights, a fortune in compensation to the passengers affected. All that for something like the $5k the article mentions? A bargain, if that's the effect you're after. Lots of psychological (and financial) impact, but without all the hostility 9/11 bought Al Queda...
If you're going to use a cruise missile, using it against an aircraft on the ground is a pretty silly idea. LET"S THINK A SECOND. IT MOVES! IT'S RELATIVELY SMALL! THIS MAKES THINGS HARDER FOR NO GAIN. Suddenly you need target acquisition or remote control, and a whole lot more precision.
The jet fuel certainly will make a big difference: the warhead on this missile is 10kg. 10kg of home-made explosives really doesn't go very far, compared to a full load of fuel. Also: if you wanted to take out a football stadium, there are much easier ways. Carry a bomb in, leave it under a seat, and disappear as if going to the bathroom. Park a big truck fertiliser bomb outside, a la McVeigh.
Bear in mind terrorists are not aiming for body counts, or economic costs - they want psychological impact above all else. Taking out an airliner - after the passengers have all been through metal detectors, had their nail clippers confiscated, and been through all the other security checks - has much more impact. Especially if you choose the right target: do you really think the Secret Service could do anything when Air Force One is sitting on the ground, with the President on, and a missile is launched from a pickup 20 miles away? At the 380 mph quoted, they have about 3 minutes in which to detect and identify it, then figure out some response. For that situation, my money's on the missile...
Now: do you really think attacking a stationary aircraft, in a known location, would be so hard? The 100m accuracy quoted isn't quite enough, but could be improved - and do you really think a VIP aircraft like AF1 would be a less appealing target than a football game?!
Having spent the afternoon reading almost all of his site I've got a theory on why he's building this. He needs to raise 100K for a third-generation prototype of his X-jet engine that I bet will power the cruise missile. Most of his site is about his experiments with pulse-jet engine technology. He's done some impressive things and improved on the design enough that he has or applied for a patent. This engine has impressive possibilities even including civilian aviation. I'm sure his $5000 cruise missile will attract plenty of attention and hopefully funding. His technology is not ready for use in a manned plane. Making a drone is pointless because it could only compete on price. The cruise missile is the best option I think for what he is trying to do, which is design a new engine.
Fuck you, this is getting stupid... I like to read at +5 for trolls, since some of them are entertaining.... but this is just stupid, it's not and never was funny. It doesn't even look like a dick... stop it, come up with a new idea.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
It's gonna move a whole lot faster, and I'd guess straighter/mile, than a bird. I'd think you could pick it out if you had a regular blip. I'm guessing, of course.
-Paul Komarek
Did you know that most accidents happen w/in 5 miles of home? OTOH, how much driving occurs w/in 5 miles of home? Until you answer the second, the first is meaningless.
72 helicopter accidents is total disaster if there were 72 helicopter flights. If there were 150,000 helicopter flights per day, then 72 might be a good number. But then, we should probably decide whether time-in-flight is important, or distance covered, etc.
FWIW, I agree that cruise missiles are probably a bad idea for traffic info. The efficiency seems poor. Blimps would do better. And in most places you could just put fixed cameras or sensors. Isn't this what traffic.com is doing?
Humans have really bad inuition when it comes to math and statistics. For a fun example, look up the Monty Hall problem.
-Paul Komarek
Then again, if the country's defenses are fairly week, perhaps he's planning to take it over himself! Mwa ha ha ha!
-Paul Komarek
There are also others that claim that it could have been a sneaker bomb, since this was a while prior to the guy getting caught trying to light his shoe.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Really? And here I thought they were all controlled by suicide pilots.
My point is that you don't want something with the kinetic energy of a rocket zooming around in a mayor city. That's just asking for an accident to happen.
Why use a rocket when a plane will do the same job better? They wouldn't use as much fuel, they can land in a manner not related to crashing, etc.
And for the record I think there are heavy regulations regarding where you can fly with an unmanned aircraft.
There are plenty of chopper crashes in peacetime, but the media don't give them much play.
For example, during Desert Shield (_not_ Storm) we planted _17_ helos during the pre-war training ops in the Gulf region.
That is not going to happen overnight, and perhaps requires interference in their gov. Their own govs don't want open thinking.
Table-ized A.I.
They guys been called a nutjob by the enire world, and now he's THREATENING the entire world with military action [declaring he is going to build weapons of mass destruction more powerfull than saddam's] Dosen't anyone else see the Irony here? This guy definately IS a total nutjob, be his discoveries true or not.
We the NEO-CONservaties of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union with God and His Nation of Israel, establish justice in His Almighty Name, override domestic election results, diminish civil liberties in the name of National Security, promote the Defence Budget and Haliburton Inc., and secure the kickbacks from Premium Unleaded to ourselves and our cotorie, do ordain and establish this NEO-CONstitution for the United States of Scumerica.
You are so right!
Personally I've given up arguing with pro-gun nuts.
Pro-testosterone, that's all it is.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Neither is an automatic rifle.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I'm addressing what you said. All that garbage you said about ballistic trajectory to get attention, was.. garbage.
10kg of explosives is comparable to what a suicide bomber carries, and the pressure wave could be more optimally located by blowing at a slight altitude. This could be pretty effective against a football game and result in hundreds of casualties and tens of fatalities, without having to pick the location that you hit too closely.
On the other hand, I'm not altogether convinced 10kg of explosives would do a whole lot to an airliner on the ground unless you aimed really, really well. Let's think a second-- 380 MPH, let's be really, really generous and say 3 GPS updates a second.. between each update it moves 186 feet! The wingspan of a 747-400 is only 225 feet, with an average width of something like 26 feet... not to mention it'd be hard to get exact coordinates of the 747 in the first place.
If you know as much as you say you do, surely you can compute the pressure wave that 10kg of explosives is going to generate, and compare it to the 670PSI of loading that the wing structure is designed to sustain. The inverse square law is gonna say you're going to have to be really, really close to compromise the wing structure. Probably closer than the RMS error of civilian GPS, not even counting the intricacies involved in getting a missile to express its energy at the right point. I suspect breaching the fuselage is even more difficult. This is completely ignoring the fact that the tanks themselves are reinforced and can take substantial loads. Do the math; the numbers are readily available and it takes less than 5 minutes.
The jet fuel doesn't make that much of a difference because jet fuel doesn't really burn all that well if not atomized first. There aren't many fatal accidents from fires during taxiing or fueling operations, and there have been quite a few fires in those situations. The kinetic energy of a fast-moving airplane is far more effective at atomizing fuel than 10kg of explosives is going to be, and this is why landing accidents and the WTC form such spectacular fireballs.
As an engineer, and a pilot... I can say that if I wanted to to take out an important aircraft.. this is about the last thing in the world I'd try.
It's a very difficult signal processing problem. When you have a series of snapshots of the positions of "blips" taken 3 seconds apart, how do you find real, faint blips? Figuring out which dots to connect becomes hard, because there's false echoes all over the place in each observation.
There's been a lot of work in this area; probably the most fruitful has been to try and provide support to humans engaging in this type of vigilance task. One system I know of keeps snapshots of radar data and then replays it at higher speed than the observation interval. The human visual system is much better at picking out that kind of blip because it looks more like we're accustomed to having objects move in the real world (smoothly, instead of jumping every 3 seconds).
indeed. it's been a recent fad to make the word 'terrorist' apply to just about anybody -- because terrorism is worse than murder, or spying, or theft, or just about any other crime ... people understand murder. they get the urge every once in a while. theft? yeah, they understand that too. but terrorism ... is not something the average joe thinks about every day. "i'm gonna blow up the trade center" ... sure, if you've seen "office space" you might remember something about burning individual buildings down ... but not terrorism. just random, directed anger.
... not assassination, but just general murder. and he didn't pull the trigger. now try to think about similar cases in our country. mobsters? other gang leaders? we didn't label -them- terrorists, now did we ... but you won't tell me the mob hasn't used murder to try to change public policy. bring down laws, stop law enforcement in certain areas, ... ?
by branding more things as 'terrorism' our government is building sympathy for harsher sentences against crimes that we wouldn't have punished nearly so much in the recent past. because it was murder, not terrorism. revolution, not terrorism. self-defense, not terrorism.
just try seeing what you think if you brand bin laden as having conspired for murder
the word "terrorism" really shouldn't be used the way it is today. it's a tool -- propaganda -- like anything else.
So you managed to look at the most irrelevant portion, crack bad joke about it, then go back to thinking they are rockets. Way to go.
I said they are planes because they aren't rockets, cruise missiles use jet engines, quite the same turbofan variety you will find in any airplane. Why? They have to flow hundres, if not thousands of miles, they are probably one of the most fuel efficient flying machines ever made (not counting solar powered).
From comment #5867255 extract --
>> 2. A 10 kilogram warhead isn't going to do much in the way of damage, unless it dispenses a really toxic biological agent like botulin poison.
Add --
>> This necessarily means that a hostile organization with some fairly lucrative funding source, such as drugs or oil (similar compounds from a financial standpoint) could put whole fleets of them into the air.
Finally, rent and watch the movie Traffic. Pay special attention to the great lengths certain multinational businesses go to attain discreet delivery of small, high value packages. It may be a good time to think about suing for peace in the war on drugs.
Absolutely right. Which is why you should start immediately.
and perhaps requires interference in their gov. Their own govs don't want open thinking.
The US government doesn't want open thinking. At least, no US citizen should simple assume that his or her government wants that. The various checks and balances, as well as the Right to Bear Arms, are all leery of giving such presuppositions of goodwill.
Question is, what right does another country have to decide that too many Americans are listening to the Fox News Channel, and "interference" is required?
Over upstate New York?
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
you couldn't really say that there was a helicopter crash in a country that we are not supposed to be in, or doing something we are not supposed to be. I'm not saying anything about this particular incident, just that it seems that soldiers are ALWAYS dying by helicopter crash.
*hippy* :P what would you suggest building?
it said he was building it just to see fi he could
You have to solve the weakest link, not the sexy link.
The problem is that we don't know what the weak links are until they're exploited. Nobody actually believed that a human being would fly a jet full of fuel and passengers into a building until 9/11. It was the stuff of techno-thriller fiction.
Now that we know it can happen, it will never happen again. Hell, it only worked three out of four times on 9/11.
The challenge is not to plug the leaks, if you will. The challenge is to know where the leaks are before it's too late.
A 30-06 rifle is better than a soup spoon and a butterknife.
What about protection from criminals? The police, as much as i like them, can't be everywhere all the time. I like knowing that if i had to, i could defend myself from attack.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
This reminds me of an issue faced in my High School years back. Shortly after the quake of '89, despite years of resistance the administrators finally approved funding for a revision of the chemistry labs storage area. This included such radical design ideas as lips on the shelves to prevent them from falling off and pooling together on the floor: an event that the science department estimated would cause an explosion large enough to destroy the entire city block the school (and surrounding businesses and homes) were located on.
Within weeks of the new lab opening, a group of students had crept in, made vials of acid, and in retaliation for an unrelated incident, spiked the coffee of the entire department with LSD. The next teacher to get a cup of coffee sniffed the pot, decided that it was too old, and threw it out to brew a fresh batch.
During the reconstruction of the lab, they neglected to put any locks on the shelves. Not that it would matter tremendously, as lock-picking is rather trivial on most of those security systems. The students, if they so chose, could have caused a catastrophy of the highest proportions. The power to level a city block stored in a notoriously insecure system shows just how much risk we must accept if we aren't going to all go mad.
If someone wanted to walk up to you and shoot you in the head, there would be nothing you could do to prevent it. Anyone can walk into a crowded location with a gun and start firing. Anyone can load a bomb into a gym bag and detonate it in the middle of your mall. Making bombs and acquiring weapons only seems difficult to those who haven't tried to do it. There is no 100% security solution, and anyone trying to sell you one just wants your money.
Live your life, but mitigate risks intelligently.
The ______ Agenda
When faced with air supremecy and weapons of mass destruction, no... a rifle is no better than a shiv.
The constitution neither says nor implies anything about protecting yourself from criminals.
As for the damage 10kg would cause: Panam flight 103 was fragmented by 300g of Semtex. Granted, that was in flight, so all the charge had to do was breach the fuselage and airflow would do the rest - on the other hand, this is more than 30 times that amount of explosive. The coordinates would be fairly easy (positions are fixed and marked at each gate) - no harder than for your football game, anyway. The update frequency doesn't determine the accuracy; line up with the target using DGPS, and all you need is precise timing, which any computer can do trivially.
This may not be a good way to take out an aircraft, but it's much better for that than for a football game!
"how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?"
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Like this: http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/articlenav.cfm?issu