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

Buh Bye

[mfh]

In other news, a New Zealand man, possibly Bruce Simpson, was found dead by neighbours this afternoon. Officials present stated that Mr. Simpson died from an apparent tooth brushing incident, rendering his neck severed due to an accidental slip/fall, caused when a shampoo bottle fell over and mixed with some dripped shower water on the floor. Sadly, Mr. Simpson's efforts to provide cruise missiles to Iran and North Korea are all but a distant memory. New Zealand investigating officials have ruled out any foul play, and have ruled it an accidental death. Iranian and North Korean officials had no comment.

Re:Buh Bye

[Rei]

Good idea mentioning Bull, but a really, really bad description of his life.

Gerald Bull was a revolutionary ballistics designer; he was insturmental in pioneering such fields as sabot-launched projectiles (including the use of such projectiles for to replace hypersonic wind tunnel testing of objects). He also developed the concept of "base bleed" - in general,using a small rocket motor on the back of a projectile, not to provide thrust, but to fill the vaccum created as the projectile moves.

His first job after graduation was with CARDE, a Canadian research institution funded mostly by government projects. He worked on a few projects there, and due to his somewhat tactless nature (such as publicly questioning the intelligence of his funders at times), created his first enemies (in what was to become a long string of them).

While working at McGill University after CARDE, he got Pentagon and Canadian funding for the infamous HARP (High Altitude Research Project) (read Astronautix.com's summary of it - it's a very interesting read). HARP developed guns both in Barbados and Canada, with the Canadian guns used for testing, and the Barbados guns used for launches to take advantage of the Earth's rotation. The net goal of HARP was to get a projectile into orbit. Their main gun was a huge smoothbore made from two welded 16' naval guns, burning ungodly amounts of cordite; its fireball when it went off was huge ;) The cost of the project was tiny compared to most rocket programs, and they almost succeeded. Fascinating program, really.

A lot of stuff happened. Partly because of political differences over the Vietnam war, and partly because Bull had made several influential people in the Canadian government mad, funding got pulled. Their last dash to get a projectile into orbit failed, and the gun has been sitting idle ever since.

Bull took all of the tech that he could and founded his own company. While he wanted to keep pursuing what HARP was working on, he basically had little choice but to make artillery pieces if he wanted to stay afloat. Using base bleed, he created some of the world's longest range and most accurate artillery pieces of the time. The US allowed (some say encouraged) him to sell weapons to South Africa, which were funnelled into Angola. However, an (overzealous?) customs agent brought charges against him; he served a short term in prison, and was released, bitter.

He moved to Brussels and agreed to sell weapons to the highest bidder, anyone except the USSR. He sold several systems to countries such as China, before finding a sponsor in Saddam Hussein. However, to be allowed to implement the ballistic-launch concept, he agreed to work on several other projects, most notably the al-Hussein missiles (enhanced SCUDs).

The gun he worked on - often called the Babylon Supergun - wasn't much of a threat to anyone. It used the concept of slow combustion - basically, having your explosives move along the barrel with the projectile, limiting the force on the barrel at any given point. A smaller version was completed, and the larger version was under construction.

What got him into trouble, however, was the al-Hussein project. While some try and cast it into doubt, there is generally little doubt that his assasination was carried out by the Mossad. His family reported that several times, he had his apartment broken into, and furniture randomly rearranged as a warning. In the end, he was found dead outside his room, five bullets in the back of his neck.

Bull wasn't a well organized person, and both of his projects fell apart without him there. Sanctions against Iraq further led to the confiscation of parts to build the gun (which he had tried to disguise as pipe components). The supergun was finally destroyed after the Gulf War.

The real moral of the story is, if you're a ballistics expert, A) don't tick off your funders, B) don't tick off Israel, and C) learn to take a hint.

Re:Buh Bye

[identity0]

Nah, it'd go something like this, depending on what country did it:

Israel: "A local man was found dead this afternoon of an apparent shooting accident. Police speculate that Bruce Simpson was playing with his .22 pistol when he accidentally placed it at the back of his skull and shot himself."

CIA: "The U.S. Airforce has promised an inquiry into the recent incident where local resident Bruce Simpson was accidentally bombed in his house and killed. Officials believe the air force may have been ordered to "send Simpson one of thier new cruise missles for review" when a technician misinterpreted the orders and fired at the coordinates instead."

MI6: "A recent high-speed chase involving local police and a Aston-Martin fitted with rockets, machine guns and oil slicks ended in tragedy when Mr. Bruce Simpson of New Zealand was lasered in half by the driver, a man police say was dressed very well and ordered a martini shaken, not stirreed at a local club before going on the rampage."

New Zealand: "The New Zealand intelligence service has admitted to bludgeoning Mr. Bruce Simpson to death with sticks. New Zealanders have expressed shock that their country actually posseses an intelligence service."

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: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?"

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]

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.

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