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DIY Cruise Missile Designer Turns Freelance
js7a writes "Bruce Simpson of New Zealand, the designer of a homebrew cruise missile as reported here, has been left destitute by hastily-imposed restrictions of his national authorities, and is now offering his services to any non-terrorist willing to provide room, board, travel, expenses, and a negotiated rate. There is no question that cruise missile, UAV, bio-warfare, chemical weapons technology, and probably nuclear technologies will all continue to fall in cost significantly for the foreseeable future."
Personally if I could design and build cruise missles I wouldn't want it well known. I don't need to give Al Qaeda reason to kidnap me my strap electrodes to my balls and lock me in an underground machine shop in the middle of the Tora Bora.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Royally screwed by the government, I think he's just trying to say "this is what I COULD do, think about it."
I just happens that having already built a cruise missile does add some weight to his comments.
Governments that are political friends of the USA have access to officially made missles... and any government that's not one is also usually not allowed to possess such missiles thanks to international embargos...
So, just who exactly is his target audience. Who, other than a terrorist organization or government able to order the official version would want a missile?
Come on now, it sounds like this guy is a very capable engineer and he's saying this? Aren't there any firms in his country that can use someone smart enough to build these things?
I guess he can't build missiles there which is a bummer, but surely his skills can be applied to many things such as aerospace engineer. If anything, I bet he'd have better chances in Australia, which isn't too far away.
Let me see if I can get this straight...
This guy can homebrew cruise missiles, embedded electronic guidances systems, program firmware, craft things out of blocks of wood and other materials, work with fiberglass, understands chemistry, electronics, metal fabrication and various other skills, and he's claiming that unless he can build MISSILES he can't provide for his family?
Did Werner Von Braun got his security clearance ? This guy made Saturn V, he was in Gemini and Apollo projects, no problem for a talented engineer who made who also made V1 and V2 for Hitler.
IMHO Security clearance should not be the problem.
...But he wouldn't really be building them if the NZ Government hired him, he'd be designing them, and maybe overseeing the construction of a few for the purpose of models or test subjects. Neighbors would only get shifty-eyed if you started mass-producing them. They don't see what goes on in your laboratories.
Also, if they'd hired him, they could have prevented all the hubbub. Their neighbors wouldn't know anything about him if it hadn't been made into a big deal.
Of course, he began working for the US after he built the V1 and V2, which the US couldn't match at the time. Since the US already has cruise missiles, I suspect the reception will be rather cooler.
It is probably more technologically challenging to build a nuclear device than it is to build a basic cruise missile, so those countries that posses nuclear weapons - Israel, Pakistan, India could quite easily build cruise missiles...
-- Fuck Beta
True. And also, for him to say the NZ gov is preventing him from getting a job in his area of experise in NZ is just crap. NZ does not have any rocket / missle manufacturers.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Uhh, wtf are you talking about? He's not build the cruise missile to sell to anyone, but rather, to prove to ignorant governments that anyone with enough money and expertise could do the very same. He is presenting a threat which has not yet surfaced, so we should be thanking him, because we will really be screwed if some terrorist or anti-U.S. group unleases a few dozen cruise missiles with many pounds of high explosives or bio/chem payloads on major U.S. cities or sporting events or whatever. He's trying to make a point, while nearly 99% of folks think he's doing this to sell to terrorists or show them how it's made.
A blog like any other.
Depends on what you mean by non-terrorist organization, do you count countries? Countries always want to have what the other big kids have, ala India, China, France, Russia, etc.
The fact of the matter is more likely that most people wouldnt want such a loose cannon working for their respectable firm. If you were an aerospace firm would you want the guy who just pissed the government off working for you, ensuring that you lose contracts etc.? Not likely. Perhaps he should of thought twice before he did something that would obviously piss off the powers that be (aka biting the hand that fed him), regardless of how right or wrong it may be (in the utopian fantasia where it doesnt matter if everyone can build a cruise missle).
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Seeing as he hasn't actually constructed anything, but rather just released vague plans on the internet, I think that rather bolsters my case that this guy is just another net.kook.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
FYI- 9/11 hijackers used 2 757s and 2 767s, there were no 747s involved. The size difference alone between a 747 and a 757/767 let alone fuel carrying capacity would have caused a much bigger disaster if 747s were used.
No, I didn't say that Israel was a terrorist nation, I simply said I wouldn't accept offers from that country.
I don't like the way Israel (or Palestians) have conducted themselves in that part of the world and would therefore not like to be party to that type of eye-for-an-eye kind of stupidity.
Bruce Simpson of New Zealand, the designer of a homebrew cruise missile as reported here, has been left destitute by hastily-imposed restrictions of his national authorities, and is now offering his services to any non-terrorist willing to provide room, board, travel, expenses, and a negotiated rate
Hooray - what a fawking hero. He builds weapons because he's just such a geeky nerd, and you know, it is really interesting from a tech POV !
I hope he misfires one of his contraptions, and ends up swallowing it - what a @$##@% scumbag...
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Starting with your first paragraph: do you seriously not care that he was building a cannon for saddam hussein, a man who has used chemical weapons against his own citizens, launched wars at the drop of a hat and sworn to eliminate several of his neighbors?
The CIA has said that Saddam didn't gas the Kurds. It was done with blood agent chemicals (cyanide-based gas) that he didn't have. It was probably the Iranians.
Swearing to eliminate your neighbors happens all the friggin' time. How often do people whine about Canucks and the French? Even on something as technical and intelligent as slashdot, people are always saying crap like that. That's certainly helping our reputation world-wide.
Hell, the US is trying to overthrow the Venezuala government, and they're pretty much our neighbor. Cuba is 90 miles away from Florida and we aren't inviting them over for milk and cookies. And the US Army gave citizens, servicemen, and prisoners crap like malaria & syphilis, and sprayed them with mustard gas and biological weapons (thinking of San Francisco here) without telling them. So basically, your first sentence might as well be applied to the Good Ol' USA. The chemical agents American soldiers were exposed to in the first Gulf War were made in the USA.
The real moral is, don't do weapons research. Although I think that'll be mighty hard to apply world-wide. Maybe if we all agree to just disagree the world will be a better place. And weasels will shoot out of my ass.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
smoothbore made from two welded 16' naval guns
I think you mean 16", as in the diameter.
Great post.
CIA? Mossad? Same thing.
France? Like, the country with the 2nd or 3rd largest military? Or "that other nuclear power"? France IS a big guy. Disregard propaganda. Do remember the fact that they were one of (if not the first) the first modern democratic countries, and have truly helped others (USA) become democratic. Sometimes, when a friend says "no", he's still a friend, not a whiny old bastard.
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
restrict advances in many fields including Cryptography, Aerospace, Computing, Energy (electricity generation etc), biotech, nanotech, robotics and others.
Define terrorism so that israel does not fit the definition.
evil is as evil does
If you're 50 years old, then you're old enough that you should have known better than to pull a stunt like this in the first place
Well excuse me for trying to bring a quite real threat to the public's attention.
I initially attempted to do this with this article but, although I received some feedback, it clearly wasn't reaching a large audience.
That article also produced a lot of people who claimed it couldn't be done and that I was full of hot air -- so the only way to prove my case and to properly inform the public of this threat was to go ahead and do what I said any terror group could do.
You call it a "stunt", I call it proving my case.
Read into this; now that you've pissed off the USA, which is providing a big chunk of your nation's security
But why are they pissed off?
Before I started the project I emailed the FBI and DARAP to tell them what I was planning and why. I also invited them to make any comments they might have and offered them full access to the results of my work.
What did I get in return -- an automated reply from the FBI thanking me for my email and nothing at all from DARPA.
Based on that response, it's pretty natural to think that those organizations in the US charged with the security of the nation didn't have a problem with my project. Surely they'd be smart enough to simply say "we'd really rather you didn't do this" -- but no such response was forthcoming.
Then, when the project serves its goal of raising public awareness, they get all snotty -- is that my fault?
Perhaps they're simply embarrassed now that it's clear they have no answer to such a threat -- which was the entire point of my argument. The only weapon against an LCCM is public awareness.
I hate to say this, but it sounds as if you really did this to yourself
Maybe I did -- but I'm not completely stupid and I have leared lessons from this:
1. Do not take a patriotic stance and contact the Secret Service when information possibly from a sponsor of terror comes into your possession.
2. Do not actively cooperate with the secret service and help them to obtain more information.
3. If the government gives you clearance to sell technology with a military application to a nation deemed to be a sponsor of terror, do not question this -- simply go ahead with the transanction.
4. Do not put the interests of your country (overseas investment, new jobs, export earnings, a valuable foothold in an explosive new industry) ahead of your own. Think only of your own bank balance in all transactions.
5. Do not turn down offers of money from the government as they will not thank you or even consider that by not accepting that money you are in effect in credit to that amount.
6. Do not trust the government to act ethically, moraly or even legally when they wish to achieve some end.
7. Do not work your ass off and sell your house to pay a tax debt while being fooled into believing that regular and reliable servicing such a debt to the point where it is almost completely repaid will stop the taxman from bankrupting you for no apparent reason.
Unfortunately I feel very sad that these are the lessons I have learned.
Sure, I'm not without fault -- I should have filed my returns and paid all my tax right on time.
But the overal lesson here is that it's pointless trying to remedy such a transgression -- if you ever find yourself behind in your taxes (and you've got a missile in your garage) simply sell all your assets, take a really good holiday then come back and file for bankruptcy.