DIY Cruise Missile Grounded

PSaltyDS writes "The DIY Cruise Missile project from New Zealand has been previously covered on /., but the BBC now reports that Bruce Simpson has been forced to shutdown by his government. His project web site says 'The New Zealand government has moved aggressively to shut down this project -- and by using quite unscrupulous methods which appear to be in breach of the law.'"

Comments

Some discussions of the project and its shutdown..

[tcopeland]

...are on his forums.

He has some ideas for civilian uses of the technology, i.e., "the use of small squadrons of UAVs to assist off-shore search and rescue operations."

Full, first hand story

[Michael Woodhams]

Bruce Simpson runs a daily on-line column called the "Daily Aardvark", which gave lots of details on the bankrupting in installments last week. (Normally it is commentry on New Zealand internet related stuff - see this week for a taste of what it is normally like.)

Dec 1
Dec 2
Dec 3
Dec 4
Dec 5

I believe that Bruce appears on Slashdot as "NewtonsLaw" - I expect he'll put in an appearance.

From my understanding, it is an IRD vendetta that has bankrupted him, unrelated to the "cruise missile" project.

Re:Full, first hand story

[NewtonsLaw]

Yea, I'm the guy -- and to answer a few of the points raised here already:

No, I was not making it easy(er) for terrorists to build a cruise missile. In fact people should read the project's FAQ for more information on why this project was started.

For those who haven't read it, the original article I wrote which produced a number of "put your money where your mouth is" responses can be found here

As for the suggestion that I'm just a scummy tax-dodger, the links to the relevant editions of my daily internet column will help put that matter into perspective. Suffice to say that I have repaid the tax I owed and have been left with a "penalty" bill that I have continued to repay (having paid another $20K towards this just weeks before the government made its move).

Perhaps the most dissapointing aspect from my own personal perspective is that I went out of my way to:

• Decline a grant of $36K in taxpayer's money that was offered to assist with my jet-engine development work -- I figured that those waiting for medical treatment or expecting a decent education could use the money more than me.
• Notify the Secret Service that I'd been contacted by an Iranian Aerospace/Missile company seeking to gain access to my jet engine designs in return for an "investment" (the figure quoted was US$100K).
• Query the advice I was given by the export-licensing part of the NZ government which told me that if I wanted to export my technology to Iran there would be no problem and there was no restriction on such sales -- even though the technology had clear military applications.

No, I did not export anything to Iran and I never had any intention of doing so -- despite the governments insistance that it would be all right.

Once I became aware that the government were very serious about shutting this project down, I made sure that the missile was removed from my possession and is now elsewhere. I can also say in total honesty that I do not know where it is.

My tongue may be firmly in my cheek when I say this but -- would you turn over a missile to a government that endorses the export of military technology to Iran? If they were going to sell it in an attempt to service my tax penalties I shudder to think who they might flog it to :-)

Quite honestly, I suspect that the government thought I would not be able to build this missile and that when I made an official application to the Defense department for some space in which to perform the tests -- they suddenly realized that the whole situation could get even more embarrassing if it were proven that the damned thing worked.

Since they had openly admitted through the media that what I was doing was not illegal, their options for shutting the project down were very limited. I suspect they were all overjoyed when they found that I had not yet fully repaid my tax-penalties (although I was still regularly sending off cheques to service the debt). This, combined with the taxman's own agenda, gave them the perfect mechanism for solving what was rapidly becoming an embarrassing situation.

As you'll see in my daily column, the tax departments actions are clearly a breach of the tax laws which require the department to recover the maximum amount of any debt owed.

By bankrupting me they effectively chose to forego their right to collect the outstanding penalties and, since I had already sold most of my realizable assets (house, hobby-items, many tools, etc) to ensure my tax-repayments were kept up to date, there was no way they'd get a single penny from that bankruptcy action.

What's even worse is that in July I went to the USA and signed a heads-of-agreement with a US company who were going to commence manufacture of my X-Jet engine for use in UAVs and RPVs. This deal alone was worth a huge amount of money to the NZ taxman and wo

Re:Full, first hand story

[NewtonsLaw]

This jumped out at me right away as an appeal to pity/spin attempt/I don't know what. I question your true motivation for not accepting the money. 36k devided amongst the many school children in your nation surely would not go very far per student

That is indeed true - but then again, the small amount of tax-penalty I had not finished repaying would not go far either.

You must understand that New Zealand's public health system is so underfunded that many people are left suffering on waiting lists for surgery that could greatly improve their quality of life -- if not save that life. The government cries "poor" when nurses in this country ask for a reasonable living wage -- and that same government pretends to be surprised when so many of our trained medical staff emmigrate to the USA or other countries that pay three or four times as much.

Given that, at the time the grant was offered to me, my technology was at little more than the "good idea" stage and still represented a huge degree of risk, I could not see how it would be fair and reasonable to have the government gambling taxpyer funds on a "maybe" at the same time we were refusing dialysis treatments to elderly patients (thus ensuring their early demise) because of funding constraints.

I also don't see how it is embarrassing to any government if an individual builds a missile.

Once again you must appreciate that the NZ government is in an unusual situation.

We have a long-standing ban against nuclar equipped vessels entering our ports and, since the US fleet will neither "confirm nor deny" the presence of nuclear weapons on their ships, they are effectively barred from our harbours.

That has clearly put us off-side with the USA.

Then, earlier this year, our Prime Minister leveled a stinging insult against Bush during an interview with the media. This also didn't exactly rack us up any points.

Let's not forget also that we refused to send troops into the Iraq conflict -- further alienating us from the USA.

And, when news of the cruise missile project first broke, a US official was quoted on NZ TV as saying that they considered the project "unhelpful" -- I'm sure most readers can translate that from diplomacy-speak to the real intended meaning.

But now we have the spectre of the USA forging a free-trade agreement with our nearest neighbor (and largest competitor for our key export markets). Naturally our government doesn't want to find that the Aussies end up with preferential access to the massive US market so they're now bending over backwards to do whatever it takes to win favour again. One very simple way to earn a few brownie points is to scuttle the very project that the USA deemed to be "unhelpful".

It certain that if I had been allowed to go ahead with the testing and proven that the missile really worked as expected, this would have further upset the US government -- at a time the NZ government could least afford to do so.

Note!

[Mullen]

Take note, this guy takes donations:

Donations

On a side note, I was really hoping this guy would have built this thing.

Expat Kiwis can mail the politicians

[Internet Ninja]

If any expat Kiwis feel up to it they can mail the NZ politicians to lend support to Bruce.

Jim Anderton

Michael Cullen

Helen Clark

Basic Summary

[Chris Brewer]

This isn't too much about the cruise missile, it's more of the IRD (IRS to you) being right asshats. The general gist is:

- Bruce had some bad (clumsy, not evasional) book-keeping and finds out he's got a large tax bill
- He starts paying off the tax bill
- After a court hearing where the IRD is told off for being idiots (not having a record of a $16k payment and for not having his name right), an IRD employee threatens "We'll get you" in the courtroom
- Bruce sells his assets (including his house) to pay off his increasing tax bill (interest and penalties - the IRD always seemed to find new debts)
- Bruce signs up with a deal with a US company to manufacture his pulse-jet engines for a project. This deal is important because the manufacturing was going to be in NZ, creating jobs and bringing in lots of income.
- While Bruce was in the US signing this deal, the IRD gets him declared bankrupt, despite not being in the best interests of NZ - writing off a $100k debt instead of bringing in potentially millions
- Bruce contacts the Minister of Finance and Minister of Economic Development in an attempt to overturn the bankruptcy so the deal can go ahead (get-out clause is if either party goes insolvent)
- Deal expired on 1 December. Now that Bruce is insolvent and is not allowed to run a company for 3 years, he gets to go on the dole (social welfare) instead of creating dozens of jobs and bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars into NZ.

While this was happening, he received enquiries from Iran about the pulse-jet engine. He contacted the NZ Trade organisation to find out about selling this technology to countries like Iran, and was told "no worries". This didn't sit right with Bruce so he contacted the SIS (NZ Secret Service) and they said "yeah, that's wrong. He's been interviewed by the SIS and says that they're reasonable guys, it's the IRD who are being wankers.

Re:Are we even sure he really built it?

[NewtonsLaw]

They might be going persecuting him for talking to the Iranians rather than because they think his missile works, and they'd still refuse to comment for Security reasons

After being told by the government that it was okay to export military technology to Iran I immediately went to the Secret Service (SIS) to report this seemingly incredible fact. I never had any intention of dealing with anyone on the wrong side of the "War against Terror" and was gobsmacked that the government would allow such a transaction to take place.

As for the "trivial details", these are more to do with the launch-system than the missile itself and really are fairly trivial. It would take no more than two days work to complete the necessary work (the missile is already painted :-)

As for the veracity of the tax charges -- newly introduced sections the the NZ tax law make it very clear that the taxman must maximise the recovery of outstanding tax from a taxpayer.

Bankrupting me clearly violated that requirement -- since they already knew that I'd sold all my assets of value (house, car, etc) so as to meet my commitments to repay the debt. They also knew that the debt would be fully repaid within a few short months and that I'd never failed to meet a payment date.

By simply waiting a few months they would have gotten *all* of the money owed. By bankrupting me they effectively had to write off the balance of the debt. Tell me how that isn't a breach of clause 176.

Is it any wonder that I (and many others) aren't left to draw the obvious conclusion in respect to the real motives behind this move?

Ah! Oops.. Here's the URL:

[MikeCapone]

http://www.aardvark.co.nz/pjet/donations.shtml

Bruce Simpson on Scrapheap Challenge

[riedquat]

This may be of interest, Bruce Simpson appeared in an epsiode in the current series of Scrapheap Challenge (the UK version of Junkyard Wars)