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."

Comments

travel?

[mabu]

I won't charge you millions of dollars like the big-boys might. I won't question your politics or religious beliefs. I simply ask that you provide me with travel to your location plus safe, warm, comfortable accommodation for the duration of the project, and employ me at an agreed rate for my services.

Somehow I suspect this guy might have some trouble travelling anywhere now....unless he can ride on his cruise missile.

If this guy has trouble finding accommodations, maybe he can share rooms with all the agents that will be tailing him.

Re:travel?

[Rei]

I'm sure Vanunu was told the equivalent about the Israeli government.

Seriously, when you're doing things that tick incredibly powerful governments off like crazy... you pretty much have to expect sting operations against you.

I used to room with someone who used to work in army intelligence as a translator (she speaks fluent Russian and German, and bits of dozens of other languages; when the war in Afghanistan broke out, she lectured me on how to properly form plurals in Pashtu). The sort of devious things they used to do to get signal intercepts alone is enough to make one paranoid if they're doing something that will make a government mad at them.

Then there's the specific examples. For example, the one and only anti-Dudayev missile made from a modified HARM. The assasination of Yahya Ayyash via an exploding cell-phone (they could have simply killed him outright, but that had a much more profound psychological effect). Etc. And these are just some cases that involve death.

I'll reiterate. If you really tick off a government, you better expect a sting operation. If you don't, you're A) just plain dumb, and B) going to end up in jail or dead rather quickly.

Cost efficiency

[amliebsch]

Rather than having CIA pay a bunch of intelligence officers to monitor this guy, maybe the DoD should just hire him first.

Where's the big boys?

[goatstuffer]

Surely this guy should be swimming in offers from the aerospace industry, or any related field. If he can hammer out a homegrown cruise missile, there must be some talent there.

Perhaps he doesn't want to work in such an environment and wants to go solo. Fair enough.

Re:Buh Bye

[jabberjaw]

There is more truth to that than you know.

Re:Buh Bye

[Scrameustache]

In other news, a New Zealand man, possibly Bruce Simpson, was found dead by neighbours this afternoon.

There was this canadian in the 80's who had this obsession with building a giant cannon to cheaply launch satellites in orbit. It would obviously not do for humans because the initial acceleration would kill them, but for hardware, all you have to do is make sure everything is screwed tight. The economy on launch would be much greater than the extra cost in solidity. The added bonus is that you wouldn't have to launch from the tropics, it could work from as high up as canada, eh.

Well, he had the design, and some funding from the canadian military, he was building it. Then, the united states objected, and told its submissive neighbour to the north to stop it with the revolutionary launch technology: if canada wants to put stuff in orbit, all it has to do is ask and the states will let them hitch a ride from florida.

So the canadian military cut the guy's funding. He then fought like a madman trying to gain back the funds he needed to make his dream come true, but try as he may, nothing was enough. Until a certain wealthy dictator from the middle east agreed to fund his research. So our canadian swallowed his pride (and his ethic, he wanted to launch satellites, not make weapons) and headed off to Iraq to build his giant cannon. And build it he did.
he made a couple prototype, one of which was conspicuously pointed in the general direction of Israel. It wasn't working properly yet, when you make this go BOOM with this much force, it tends to take a bit of trial and error before nothing breaks when you do, but it was progressing.

Long story short, the guy was found dead in front of his hotel room, the keys in the lock, the very clean gun next to the body, with a single bullet in the back of the head.

The moral of the story: When the united state's military says you are not to build a giant cannon, you do not build a giant canon, be it by lack of funds or surplus of lead.

The end.

Re:Sounds like he has lots of options to me

[traskjd]

I live in NZ and the short answer is No.

We don't build anything like that - heck, it was a massive national debate because we brought 3 second hand frigates! The guy really does need more international exposure to get a job but I think if he didn't get the offers he wanted when it was on the news he ain't going to get them now.

Re:Non terrorist users of criuse missiles?

[Flamingcheeze]

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?"

Re:Old News, Old Technology...

[Billy the Mountain]

Cruise missile technology is hardly new

Old != Useless as you seem to imply. Bruce's original stated goal was to alert the global community of the threat of cheaply built jet-powered missiles capable of traveling 400-500 M.P.H. Such a device would be very challenging to guard against. And let's not forget the incidents where Mathiast Rust landed a Cessna 172 in Moscow's Red Square or the other guy that landed the Cessna on the Whitehouse lawn.

Personally, I don't like Bruce. He's an asshole with a lot of gaul and he scammed me out of $45 U.S., but he's got a valid point.

BTM

Uses of cruise missiles?

[menscher]

Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but what would a non-terrorist organization want with a cruise missile?

Re:Buh Bye

[Saeger]

And in related news, a statistically "interesting" number of top scientists are ending up dead or missing in recent years.

--

Re: I love the technology curve!

[Fortran IV]

Yes, mustard gas was a nasty thing--a very nasty thing--to use in war.

But did you know that msutard gas was also the very first chemical used as a successful chemotherapy treatment for cancer?

Yes, I'd guess that the first use for an LCCM (and second, and third) might be terrorism. But you never can predict what horror of today will find a beneficial use tomorrow. Not every tech advance comes from NASA.

Only stupid people would want to do it

[radtea]

There's a novel by Donald Kingsbury, The Moon Goddess and the Son (IIRC) from the mid 80's that describes the construction of a DIY cruise missile. It was plausible then (albiet by renegade MIT students) and even moreso now.

The only curious thing is that no one has yet done it. The only reasonable conclusion is that everyone who can do it, except for this clown in New Zealand, has the good sense not to want to.

--Tom

Re:no career choices?

[John Courtland]

I think that lack of skilled tradesmen is because you guys have such damn high immigration standards. Not knocking NZ or anything, but, couldn't you guys lax up a bit? It's like all you want there are movie stars and oil barons.

Donations

[Codebender]

I've been following Bruce's story for a while, and I just wish I could afford to have him build me something. I don't have an (big, evil) S.U.V., but I'd love to have a missile on my car. Perhaps a jet-powered motorcycle...

Anyway, if you're like me and you can drop a few dollars without ever missing it, here's the donations page:

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

A word from Bruce Simpson

[NewtonsLaw]

I'm Bruce Simpson, the subject of this discussion and I'd like to address some of the comments and points that have been raised here.

Question: If I'm so damned clever, why don't I have a job?
Answer:
Well, I'm 50 years old, which (even here in NZ) is past the age when it becomes difficult to just walk into a any job because, regardless of your qualifications there's always someone younger who's standing in line ahead of you.

What's more, although I have a lot of experience in a wide number of a synergistic (from a missile building persective) nature, there are plenty of people around who know more and are better at these individual fields than I am.

If an employer is looking for a good programmer, a good electronics design engineer, a good airframe designer, or a good engineer, there are plenty better than me.

My strength is that I have sufficient depth of knowledge and skill in each area to bring a very broad perspective to bear on the particular problems associated with the job of designing and building a cheap cruise missile (or UAV). In effect, I can do the job of four or five people with more efficiency and insight than such a team might.

When I have an idea, I can bring all my different areas of competence to bear on it and produce a result in a fraction the time it takes for a team of several individuals to do the same.

The problem is, there are no companies in NZ looking for this synergy of skills.

Unfortunately, this country has little or no interest in things military -- hell, the first thing the current government did when it gained power was to pretty much gut our air force by disbanding its air-defense capabilies.

This saw all our best avionics engineers, Air Force pilots and maintenance people disappear to greener pastures.

In fact, our Air Force is so run down that even its transport aircraft now break down with regular monotony. Any government that believes that an air capability is an unimportant part of defense is crazy.

As a result of this "head in the sand" attitide, Australia and the USA are both pretty pissed off with New Zealand because it can no longer pull its full weight in ANZUS, the alliance between the three parties.

But back to jobs. The town I live in is a small rural center which is largely supported by a timber mill. In recent times there have been a number of lay-offs at that mill and unemployment levels are quite high here. The reality is that not only are their *no* jobs for hi-tech workers but I couldn't even get a job flipping burgers at McDonalds due to the queue of applicants ahead of me.

Question: why not move to a bigger city?
Answer:
Well that's pretty hard to do when you're living hand-to-mouth without any money to spare. Moving is an *expensive* operation and rents in the big cities are typically three or four times that of the smaller centers. It simply wouldn't be possible for me to move without having several thousand dollars in my pocket to cover the move, rent and other costs until that first pay check came in (assuming that I could even then find a job).

I could support myself however, if I were allowed to remain self-employed -- but that's not possible due to the restrictions placed on my activities by the government.

Question: won't I be killed by Mossad/CIA/whatever?
Answer:
I doubt it -- but if I am, at least my wife gets to claim on my life-insurance policy :-)

In the past few weeks, everything that could go wrong has gone wrong so there have been times when I have to admit that I simply wouldn't care if I became the target of some hitman -- yeah, it's really been that bad!

But seriously, I don't think anyone will try to rub me out (even though a couple of alleged Mossad members were arrested here in NZ for trying to fraudulently obtain an NZ passport).

Question: why don't I get a job with a big aerospace company?
Answer:

Re:A word from Bruce Simpson

[NewtonsLaw]

You say you are all that patriotic but you are bankrupt because you did not pay your taxes!

That is actually wrong.

I paid every cent of the tax I owed (in fact I over-paid). I was bankrupted over a huge sum of penalties and interest that (under NZ law, and as verified by an Ernst Young tax expert), should have been waived.

However, I was repaying even these penalties (I paid a lump sum of $20,000 just weeks before the bankruptcy) and if (like most other taxpayer) I'd been alowed to continue with these repayments, the debt would have been cleared completely within 9-12 months.

In effect, the government/tax-ma refusedto let me pay those interests and penalties -- why would they do that?

DO you realize that your work is going to kill thousands of innocent people

Where's your support for that argument?

And you seem to have a very short memory (or didn't attend history classes at school).

Just think back to August 6 and 9 of 1945.

As I said, there is probably no country on the face of the planet which hasn't engaged in some form of terrorism (defined as the killing of innocent men, women and children in the name of a cause).

As I've stated -- I'd much rather focus on civilian applications for RPV/UAV technologies and there are plenty of them. I'm hoping that if someone does want my services, this is what they'll be concentrating on.

Re:A word from Bruce Simpson

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Have you considered seeking employment with one of the companies that is trying to commercialize small-scale space-flight? It sounds like your skills as a generalist in a relatively similar field would be very useful to such companies seeing as how they are mostly all small start-ups, the dotcoms of space-flight before the market took off. Such companies need people who can wear many different hats as well as keep "the big picture" in their head so as to identify unexpected interactions and possible synergies across fields.

There is probably lots of competition since the X-Prize has made them relatively famous recently, but you do have a little more street cred than most.

PS - Don't waste your time responding the people freaking about your views on terrorism, some people just can't stand it that someone might question their own passionately held beliefs and feel that they must make you look at their own personal trees to make you ignore the forest.

oh, just brilliant

[ZorbaTHut]

"Boss, we've found a guy who's able to build a cruise missile out of parts he found in his backyard. What'll we do?"

"Tricky one. I say we throw him out of his house and force him into bankruptcy."

"But won't that just leave him willing to take a job from anyone, even our enemies?"

"BANKRUPTCY!"

"But wouldn't it be better if *we* hired -"

"BANKRUPTCY!"

"But how do we know he won't get hired by, say, Iraq -"

"BANKRUPTCY!"

"Okay, okay, bankruptcy it is."

"Glad you see it my way! You'll go far in this government."

"There's also this story about a little girl and her kitten -"

"BANKRUPTCY!"

----

With intelligence agencies like these, who needs enemies?

Re:Interesting yes, amazing, no

[NewtonsLaw]

From the looks of it, he's building a modern V-1, an dteh tech used is not vastly different from that used in model aircraft. larger scale perhaps, but even taht is questionable when you look at some of the large scale a/c (sucha sthe B-52) modellers have built

This is exactly the point I was trying to make when I embarked on the DIY Cruise Missile project.

It's not rocket science and almost anyone could do it if the set their minds to it.

Besides, why build a cruise missile, which requires you stayin in one place and buying a bunch of stuff taht may arouse the interest of teh authorities when you could steal a biz jet, deliver a larger payload, and do the planning in dispersed locations?

Actually, my other point was that you could build one of these things *without* attrating a lot of attention or rousing the interest of the authorities. There's nothing involved in the construction of an LCCM that would ring alarm bells anywhere.

And your chances of using a hijacked or hired business jet to deliver a payload would seem to be pretty limited if this story is any indicator.

With a flight time of less than 10 minutes to its target and a small radar signature, an LCCM would have a much higher probability of success without the need for martyrdom.

Not particularly.

[SvnLyrBrto]

> do you seriously not care that he was building a cannon for
> saddam hussein

Look up the name "Wernher Von Braun" sometime. Probably more than anyone else except JFK, he is responsible for man going to the moon, and much of the space program we take for granted. In fact, the US space program didn't really start to go south, until after we quit relying on Von Braun's rockets, and went with that air-force-addled clusterfuck that is the space shuttle.

Now, for the final Jeopardy answer:

Wernher Von Braun worked for him before moving to America.

cya,
john