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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...
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?
Isn't it possible for a country to NOT be an ally on the US and ALSO NOT be a terrorist country? Is that now the definition of a terrorist... "not an ally of the us?"
Nope. Bush said it himself: "You are either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
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)
Not every government (friend of foe) wants to spend $600,000 per missle for a Tomahawk. That price doesn't include the launch system for a Tomahawk. The other US built cruise missle is the Air Launched Cruise Missle (ALCM) that the Airforce launches off of B-52s and B-1Bs. That missle isn't used by any other country because they don't have a good bomber to use as a weapons platform. I'm not even sure if we even offer the ALCM for export. So far, the only other user of the Tomohawk is the British Royal Navy.
The Russians have cruise missles (both sea and air launched) and I'm sure they are cheaper but their accuracy is an unknown quantity. The French also have their Air-Sol Moyenne Portee (ASMP) cruise missile.
The point this guy makes is that he can make one that is reasonably accurate and MUCH cheaper.
Hypothetically, it wouldn't be a bad idea for a nation like Taiwan, who has a limited defense budget but a much larger adversary right across the straight, to come up with a medium range and cheap cruise missle that they could produce in large numbers. If they had a couple thousand of these, Bejing might think a second or two longer before coming after them.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
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.
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
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.