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Hardware

Build Your Own Cruise Missile 601

Posted by michael from the super-scud dept.
WegianWarrior writes "Bruce Simpson, the man behind one of the more interesting site about pulsejets on the web, has launched a project to build a US$5000 DIY cruisemissile - just to prove that it can be done, since some said his earlier article about it was off the peg. Bruce has also designed and placed on his site a non-weld pulsejet you can build with simple tools, a 2D airflow modeling rig and a new valve/injector design for conventional pulsejets (according to the first page on his site, this new design is placed in the public domain)." We linked to his pulsejet pages about two years ago.
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Build Your Own Cruise Missile More

Build Your Own Cruise Missile

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  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by SugoiMonkey ( 648879 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:38PM (#5866865) Homepage Journal
    And I thought sites with pipe bomb recipes were revolutionary! Man, will Mr. Smith be suprised when he opens his mail box this time.

    The Monkey Pages [lazyslacker.com]: Not just another personal site...okay, so I lie.

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:39PM (#5866870)
    An anti-spam solution that's bound to work....

  • hmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis&utk,edu> on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:40PM (#5866872) Homepage Journal
    I bet I could get some nerds to build one of these and send a hamster into space.

    As the apprentice of Prof. Chaos said, "SIMPSONS DID IT!!!!"

    • Re:hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

      by UnixRevolution ( 597440 )
      even military cruise missiles can't reach low orbit. That's impossible :P

      Incidentally, i noticed his margin of error for targeting is +- 100 yards. YARDS, people. a football field either way. for terrorists this won't matter too much, but i imagine greater accuracy should be a primary goal.
      • > +- 100 yards. YARDS, people. a football field either way
        All americans will thank you for converting this to an understandable format!
        How heavy is it? 1/10 of a VW Beetle?

        • Re:hmm (Score:3, Funny)

          by UnixRevolution ( 597440 )
          It's a football field either way, half as long as a VW Beetle, weighs as much as 4 cowboyneals, and gets to its target quicker than a win2k server box can be slashdotted :P

        • Re:hmm (Score:3, Funny)

          by maxentius ( 603949 )
          I just send them up
          I don't know where they come down
          That's not my department
          Said Werner von Braun
          --Tom Lehrer

  • HAHAHA!!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by trotski ( 592530 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:41PM (#5866878)
    Now I'll show my loser neighbour down the street who's boss! One tomahawk coming up!
  • Seriously,

    Intel Inside

    AMD

    Designed for Windows 95

    Though, personally I like a peace sign.

  • One question.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord Fren ( 189373 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:43PM (#5866891) Journal
    Where do you put the warhead? Some of my Korean friends were asking...

  • Chinese Silkworm cruise missile (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phr2 ( 545169 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:44PM (#5866894)
    I'm told you can buy Chinese Silkworm cruise missiles for $25K or so at your friendly arms bazaar. The Silkworm is basically a Mig-17 airframe with the pilot replaced by a guidance system. Man, this stuff is scary.

    • Re:Chinese Silkworm cruise missile (Score:5, Informative)

      by dvk ( 118711 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:07PM (#5866986) Homepage
      The Silkworm is basically a Mig-17 airframe with the pilot replaced by a guidance system. I'm not quite sure if that's true, judging from the images:
      Silkworm [kimsoft.com] doesn't look too close to MiG-17 [russian.ee]

      However, IIRC, USSR did have a cruise missile developed based on MiG-17 - AS-1 "Kennel" [wonderland.org.nz].

      BTW, a minor nitpick - correct spelling is MiG (which is shorthand for Mikhoyan i Gureevitch, two of the designers wgo started the bureau).

      -DVK

    • I'm told you can buy Chinese Silkworm cruise missiles for $25K or so at your friendly arms bazaar.

      Where exactly is my local arms bazaar? I can't seem to find it in the yellow pages. (And do they take credit cards?)

      The Silkworm is basically a Mig-17 airframe with the pilot replaced by a guidance system.

      Rather it's an anti-ship missile based on the Soviet made Styx, which China acquired from the USSR in the late 50s/early sixties. Since then a lot of variations have been made on it. The Silkworm and

  • Time for big brother to stop this (Score:4, Funny)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:44PM (#5866897) Homepage
    Well at least we know what happened when he stop publishing his daily newsletter.

    How do you want to calculate [webcalc.net] today?

  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MacDork ( 560499 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:49PM (#5866916) Journal
    Bill Gates: "Hmmm... 50,000,000,000/5,000 = 10,000,000 cruise missles... Imagine a beowolf cluster of these you hippies!"

  • man.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ewhenn ( 647989 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:50PM (#5866919)
    At a million dollars a pop, the US govt. sure gets ripped off on theirs.

    • it's really not funny. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) *
      if you are an American, especially an unemployed one (which thankfully I am not), it's not funny at all.

      Nothing like launching tons of these into .iq during the "war".

      Why not spend that money on getting the 8.8 million people that are currently unemployed some jobs?
      • What? That's mostly where the economic benefit from conflict comes from. Blow up the old shit, buy new, more high tech, more expensive new shit.
      • This is spending money to keep people employed.

        Cruise Missile production keep people in California, Kansas, Missouri and Washington employeed through the primary assembly and secondary assembly and R&D.

        Subcontractors are scattered around the country.

        Apache helicopters are assembled and tested in Arizona.

        M-1 tank upgrades and factory caretaking is in Michigan.

        F-15E, I, S and Ks are assembled in St. Louis MO.

        JDAM kits are also made in St. Louis.

        Captial Warships are built in Maine, Virgina, Rhode Is

        • Re:it's really not funny. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by atam ( 115117 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:54PM (#5867213)
          While this money spent on weapons does translate to some employment, it should be noted that a lot of the defence budget are actually spent towards R&D. You could waste billions of dollars to test run dozens of the experimental weapon in order to get it work correctly. This money does not necessarily create that many employment. It is much better off spending the money on infrastructure projects, such as repairing broken highways, bridges, schools, etc. It will not only get more people to be employed, but also improve the general living standard.
          • When you put money in R&D, you are paying for saleries.

            CAT, PET, MRI are all spin-offs of Nuclear Weapon design tools.

            Roads, Bridges and Schools, while are somewhat funded by the Federal Government are for the most part the resonsability of the State and Local Governments.

            There is a flier up at PSU of a cartoon in which the teacher is ranting that the US is going to start a war while Portland OR schools are having a funding problem with the implication that it's Washington's problem.

            It isn't.

            The pr

      • Why not spend that money on getting the 8.8 million people that are currently unemployed some jobs?

        Because then you risk spiraling into socialism by doleing out tax dollars...

        Note: I'm not trolling, I'm serious.

        neurostar

  • this raises some interesting questions indeed ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DataShark ( 25965 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:52PM (#5866927) Homepage
    besides the obvious *geek* factor this kind of *experiments* and demonstrations should make us all stop to think a bit ...

    how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?

    limiting acces to knowledge (with DMCA style laws)?

    creating a orwellian policial state where all are suspect ans subject to vigilance (and who controls the vigilantes) ?

    limitating the publication of (now) public-domain stuff ('cause it can be used to devilish ends) ?

    the RIAA/DMCA people already want to control what could go on the net, and that is, maybe, only the beggining (see China - although there 's hope there - see the massive failure of the SARS coverup) so maybe it is time to start thinking about how to mantain the net free and at the same time this planet a safe planet to stay ...

    just my two uros,

    cheers from Portugal

    • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:4, Insightful)

      by taxelxii ( 52767 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:07PM (#5866983)
      The real question is not 'how do we prevent terrorist from using this king of stuff' , since if joe-nobody can build a cruise missile in his backyard, you can be sure that terrorist organisations could have built it years ago. However, they do not need to buy their own missile. They have enough money to buy *quality* missiles from kind multinational corporations when they want to.

      The question this article raises is why would somebody who is not totally out of his mind would want to build a cruise missile. I don't think the *geek* factor alone would be a correct answer. A cruise missile... as if the world needed more of those. I cannot believe the man could not find anything more useful to build.

      • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mkldev ( 219128 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:55PM (#5867420) Homepage
        With a little bit of effort, assuming the engine can be started and stopped at will and has reasonably accurate guidance, this could be used for other things... like replacing traffic helicopters over urban areas with relatively safe rocket-powered cameras that fly around over the city until they're low on fuel, then fly to an appropriate location and land for refueling.

        Before you say that this is nuts, think about this: helicopters are far more dangerous than any airplane. There have been a total of 21 deaths to date in U.S. commercial airplanes this year according to the NTSB. That's based on up to 150,000 flights per day.

        So far, the U.S. Military, has already seen 29 helicopter deaths (and 8 additional British casualties in one of those crashes), and at least one other minor crash with no fatalities, and this is not including any that resulted from being under fire. That's based on a few hundred flights per day in Iraq, so I'm guessing a few thousand worldwide. Oh, and that's total flights, not helicopter flights. I doubt the percentage of helicopter flights is particularly high... maybe a couple of hundred helicopter flights per day as a high estimate.

        That would make helicopters about 1,000 times as dangerous as airplanes. Lest you think this is a fluke of the way the military uses aircraft, the statistics on the crash rate of helicopters in Alaska should tell you otherwise. The only problem is that airplanes fly too fast for people to get a good view of what's going on in terms of ground traffic.

        Enter the cruise missile. Fly ten of them around, snapping pictures and shooting video clips and periodically dumping the footage back via 802.11b networks on the ground. Near-instant gratification, and without putting your staff at risk.

        Not to mention that if a blimp is cool, a missile must be... well, really cool. :-)

    • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by EinarH ( 583836 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:14PM (#5867014) Journal
      how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?
      You can't protect yourself 100% from the fact that terrorist could construct and use a LCCM. The illusion of security is something that you just have top deal with. The illusion that a nation can protect itself 100% from a terrorist attack is quite naive.
      limiting acces to knowledge (with DMCA style laws)?
      Won't work. The information someone needs to do this is already public. Everything one needs about electronics, mechanics, jet engines, physics, math, rochet science etc.; it's all avalible as for someone to "piece togheter".
      creating a orwellian policial state where all are suspect ans subject to vigilance (and who controls the vigilantes) ?
      With PATRIOT ACT and the enchanced PATRIOT II you will probably get there faster than you know of..
      limitating the publication of (now) public-domain stuff ('cause it can be used to devilish ends) ?
      Well I doubt that would work since someone who wants the information could get it from Europe, Russia or/and Asia.
      And the cost of putting a limit on informatin in areas such as electronics or rocket science would be *way* over what anyone would accept.


      The best way to prevent a terrorist attack with LCCM's is to keep an eye on who's who in rocket scienc, jet propulsion and turbo jets.
      The powerplant on the rocket is the one single component that i difficault to get(buy) or construct.

      Or better (like thats gonna happen); try to eliminate the reason behind the fact that there actually are (probably) somone who wants to fire a LCCM on New York.

      • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:4, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:35PM (#5867346)
        Or better (like thats gonna happen); try to eliminate the reason behind the fact that there actually are (probably) somone who wants to fire a LCCM on New York.
        I doubt you could appease Kim Chong-il, Timothy McVeigh, Bin Laden, and the Unibomber all at the same time, even if you tried.

        • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:5, Insightful)

          by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @01:24AM (#5867687) Journal
          I doubt you could appease Kim Chong-il, Timothy McVeigh, Bin Laden, and the Unibomber all at the same time

          First of all, they're not all terrorists, so there are different ways to engage each threat. Let's assume you're talking about terrorists.

          They need a friendly environment in which to hide and train. This is easy today, with many people hating the US. The hatred can be tempered by deeds: perceived sensitivity and fairness in dealing with Palestine; transparent and fair rebuilding of Iraq. Basically, improve the chances that a righteous Arab would call the cops on the terrorists living next door.

          They need money. People angry at the US give money to terrorists. Decrease this anger, and they are left with a few independently wealthy fundamentalists, whose assets are much easier to track down and seize.

          They need weapons. You might be aware that the US is one of the biggest exporters of weapons. You don't have to cut it out, but you do want to be more careful who you sell them to.

    • how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?

      We can't, per se... we can only try our best to be alert for any warnings.

      limiting acces to knowledge (with DMCA style laws)?

      That would only stop law-abiding citizens from accessing the information. People who are going to break the law will still find this stuff out anyways.

      creating a orwellian policial state where all are suspect ans subject to vigilance (and who controls the vigilantes) ?

      To sacrifice essential freedoms with the

    • Re:this raises some interesting questions indeed . (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gfilion ( 80497 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:35PM (#5867129) Homepage

      how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?

      Dammit, a bunch of teenagers with box cutters have fly jumbo jets in the WTC. They had about 200 times more explosive in these jets than in one of these missiles and their equipement cost was box cutters and airplane tickets. Why would they want to build one of those missiles?

      You have to solve the weakest link, not the sexy link.

      Now I'm putting my aluminium foil beanie [zapatopi.net] back on.

  • How to screw up the world in 3 easy steps! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:59PM (#5866945) Homepage
    There was a time when I believed that "information wants to be free" and all that. In some ways, I still believe in the ethic, but to put some levels of knowledge in the hands of those who aren't disciplined enough to use it well is just a bad idea... especially in this day and age.

    The world is full of wanna-be-s and a few who actually are. The few who actually are will not be stopped by restricting information -- it will get out and be had anyway. But at least restrictions will help slow down the amount and frequency of those wanna-be-s who will be to a pace that could potentially be handled by counter-forces.

    Putting out information such as "home-brewed cruise-missiles" is just unbelievably irresponsible... especially when the purpose is "just for the hell of it." I'm no fan of censorship or restriction of free speech. That just sucks because when you start acting against one opinion, all other opinions are fair game. But this somehow doesn't qualify as an opinion... it's more like a wish or hope that someone else out there could use this as a means to express him/herself in a way that murders hundreds or thousands of people. ...what's next?
    • You make a very good point. However, I believe anyone wishing to use a cruise missile to kill somebody wouldn't look up the plans on the internet. Someone that villanous would probably have connections to people who know how to do it. They also probably wouldn't build it from scratch on their own, not knowing whether or not it would work.

      It is still a risk though. This brings up many moral issues, because censorship and free speech are both very sensitive topics. I can really go either way on this one, and I don't really know which side I'd go on.
      • Not necessarily.

        1) I'm pretty sure i could build out of parts if I had the funds. However, i'm also 100% sure i'd never in my life have connections to buy ready-made weapons of that class. Hell, I don't even know where to guy buy an illegal pistol in NYC.

        2) A lot of the "buy on weapon bazaar" type of transactions can be either monitored (if your intel is right), or at least easily backtraced.
        You can gain a great advabtage if you can bypass both of those worries by building the thing yourself.

        So, yes, po
    • OK...look.

      The R/C jet engine crowd is alive and well. Plus there is no shortage of aerodynamics knowledge, construction techniques and materials, and powerful computing, control, and guidance hardware. Heck, all I'd need is to find one R/C buddy, and we'd have 3/4 of the necessary materials already on hand.

      Someone is going to do it, and it's best that we find out BEFORE it comes as a total surprise. Maybe we can figure some way to intercept.

      Hmm, anyone in the model rocket crowd ready to develop a defense array? This is going to be fun! Pitting toys against each other, except with real lives at stake! Now do you wonder why some people go into the military?
      • Parts of it have already been done. When terrorists working for US protege Augusto Pinochet (then the newly emplaced dictator of Chile) assassinated Orlando Letelier (that country's ambassador under the former democratic government) and Ronni Moffett in Washington DC, they did it with a R/C car bomb. IIRC the R/C gear was purchased at Radio Shack.

        For protection, we need to ban civilian use of R/C gear. And to prevent terrorists from making their own, we should ban possession of radio receivers and infor
    • You're right, of course, this sort of information is much safer when it's in the hands of someone who'll use it responsibly.

      Like Donald Rumsfeld, for instance. :o/

    • As an aerospace engineer in training, I find this rather cool. You CS guys get to play with all the toy programs you want, but us AEs have to make our fun when we can :)
    • So what you are advocating is the censorship of irresponsible education.

      But who defines what is responsible and what isn't? Should we not teach computer science students about operating system internals because it gives them the resources to hack into other computers? After all, all the good operating systems have already been written, it's not like today's students would be writing any new ones. [sarcasm mode off]

      Putting information like this, no matter how it ultimately gets used, is a good thing b

    • I think you have a point. These aren't opinions. Advocating something that is illegal is one thing, but showing people _how_ to do an illegal thing that happens to be deadly certainly isn't the same.

      Of course, there's all sorts of stuff about the DMCA that sets up quandaries just like that. I also certainly don't put "could help murder people" in the same level as "could violate intellectual property". While just about anything _could_ be used to kill people, there's a distiction between an object of u

    • ditto (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shdragon ( 1797 ) *
      I agree with you whole-heartedly. ...In practice... My principles tell me however, that information is not harmful. How it is packaged is though. It's one thing to release information (acceptable). It's a complete other thing to package that information in a way that intends to do harm to others (unacceptable). The information is not harmful, the person is. While I can't control people, I CAN control information.

      I would be more willing to agree with "information wants to be free" if we as a society were ab
    • Putting out information such as "home-brewed cruise-missiles" is just unbelievably irresponsible... especially when the purpose is "just for the hell of it." I'm no fan of censorship or restriction of free speech. That just sucks because when you start acting against one opinion, all other opinions are fair game. But this somehow doesn't qualify as an opinion... it's more like a wish or hope that someone else out there could use this as a means to express him/herself in a way that murders hundreds or thousa
    • But for it to be effective as a cuise missile, it need explosives!!

      I can't read anywhere on the site where they tell you how to make the explosive part of the missle. And an empty missle is going to be about as dangerous and a light aircraft. Perhaps we should ban plans for anything that flies?

  • Not too hard (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @09:59PM (#5866948) Homepage
    He's really just building a model airplane with a pulse-jet engine. The engine technology is basically that of a WWII V-1. But the guidance will be far, far better. V-1 "buzz bombs" had trouble hitting the right city.

    The impressive thing about cruise missiles is the multi-thousand mile range. That's achieved with very clever turbojet engine design, and some of that technology is still classified. Still, it's decades old.

    (It's annoying that general aviation is still putt-putting around on reciprocating engines, decades after everything big went turbine.)

    • Williams Jet Engine (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Latent Heat ( 558884 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:44PM (#5867171)
      I heard (in Aviation Week - aka AvLeak) that some dotcom entrepreneur dudes crossed over to work on a 7-person jet taxi -- the idea was for the price of first class airfare you would have a nationwide version of a ride-share cab system. They were going for some ridiculous price point (like half a million for a jet -- you can hardly get a prop plane for those bucks these days). They were going to use a pair of Williams mini fanjet engines of the type used on cruise missiles. Those Williams engines are a whole 'nother story just by themselves -- like they take solid blocks of titanium and use an NC machine to mill out the whole rotor assembly for one of these things in one piece.

      Anyway, the aircraft went through its inevitable weight growth (like software bloat when you keep adding features to a package) and it has outgrown the Williams jet engines, and they begged Williams to come up with a higher thrust version, but Williams has a good thing going with the cruise missile and said nothing doing about changing their design. Trouble is that the next tier of jet engine costs ten times as much which means the half mil price tag on the jet plane is out the windows, so I don't know what is happening.

    • Not that easy, either (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:08PM (#5867255)
      I think while it's within easy reach to build what amounts to a large RC model powered by a pulsejet engine and guided by GPS, there are a number of issues he needs to address:

      1. The pulsejet ain't going to be quiet. The motorboat sound of pulsejet engines are going to be dead giveaways of its presence. It'll be better to use a small RC jet engine with careful exhaust design to muffle the jet engine sound or a modified RC piston engine that drives a multibladed propeller so the engine runs at a lower speed to reduce engine noise.

      2. A 10 kilogram warhead isn't going to do much in the way of damage, unless it dispenses a really toxic biological agent like botulin poison.

      3. Guiding the DIY cruise missile is going to be a very tricky proposition. While GPS will get the missile to the general target area, the lack of the ability to avoid obstacles and to fly very low to avoid most radars means the missile will have to cruise at about the same altitude as the V-1 (about just over 1,000 meters off the ground), which means it can be intercepted by modern ground AA systems.

  • emails (Score:5, Funny)

    by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:01PM (#5866957) Homepage Journal
    "Not surprisingly, that piece has produced a significant amount of feedback from the tens of thousands of people who have read it so far"

    I am a felow hobbiest, please sned me detailed plans.
    FROM: moustashiod_villian@yahoo.com

  • Will the Darwin Award cover my burial expense?

    Cause the non-weld easy build pulse engine seems doable. But I don't have adequate life insurance.

    Wait a minute, what do I care?

    I'll just leave instructions to charge it to my VISA.
  • Yeah,

    Just go ahead and put out the plans for a rudementary cruise missle. Your country is in no danger of getting attacked. Oh wait, al Qaeda hates Australia and New Zealand now, too! Damn, that's going to be ironic indeed when you get smoked by your own design.

    By the way, it doesn't matter if the missle has a guidance system or not. Just as long as any civilians are killed, Osama and his minions are happy. Very much like the Nazis with the V-1/V-2. Didn't matter if it hit anything important, just as lo

    • They may well hate Aussies, but I'd be quite surprised if they put Kiwis that high on the list. You see, NZ didn't take part in the little coalition, was more closely aligned with Germany, France, and the rest of Europe, and in fact their PM took a lot of crap for publicly stating she didn't think the war would've happened with a Gore administration. For the most part the Kiwis are keeping a low profile and minding their own business on the international stage. We Uhmehrikuhns could do well to learn from th

  • This pisses me off. (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by kevlar ( 13509 )

    I know that this isn't on the scale of building a nuke, but this pisses me off. Creating a cookbook on how to make a virtually anonymous precision weapon is sickening. The majority of the deranged in this world who would love to launch such a thing are not intelligent enough to piece one together until someone comes along and publishes instructions and guidelines.

    Just when does this become illegal or a threat to the public?

  • Good luck to him. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dj28 ( 212815 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @10:27PM (#5867091)
    However, I don't think it's nearly as easy as he paints it out on his website. He may have a working rocket design, but that's not the hard part. The hard part is getting the guidance system to work with your rocket. That doesn't come "off the shelf", and he's going to have to do a lot of software hacking in order to get it all to work together. Not only does this guy have to be a quasi-expert in rocket design, he's going to have to know a lot about software design.

    He's trying to do something that most nations in the world can't even do. It takes entire nations years to come up with even a short-range cruise missile. This guy thinks he can do it in under $5000, by himself? Building a rocket-propelled go-kart is one thing. Making a cruise missile with an accuracy of +/- 100 yards is a whole different level.

    And this doesn't even take into account FAA regulations he's going to have to comply with if he plans on lobbing one of those missiles on a 100 mile flight path.

    • Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

      by uberdave ( 526529 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:33PM (#5867339) Homepage
      It is not difficult at all, and he is using off the shelf technology. This [modelairplanenews.com] will give him straight, level flight regardless of wind, or minor design imbalances. GPS units are relatively cheap. The only other thing you need is a microcomputer to glue it all together. A PIC microcontroller can do the job for less than $20.

      As a matter of fact, check out this [stanford.edu] site. GPS navigation of model airplanes has been around for at least seven years already.
      Before a flight, Montgomery programs into a laptop computer the path that he wants the aircraft to follow. This information then is downloaded into the airplane's onboard computer. After placing the plane on the runway and starting the engine, he pushes a single button, the aircraft takes off, flies the preprogrammed course and then lands all by itself.


      Averaged over a kilometer course, the deviation in the aircraft's position from the programmed course was typically less than 0.5 meter horizontally, 0.25 meter vertically and 0.25 meters per second in air speed, Montgomery reported.

      "Carrier differential GPS is accurate enough for most purposes, so you don't need a lot of expensive equipment," he said.
      The only difference I see is that this guy is using a jet powered craft, and is calling it a cruise missile. Other than that, it is the same thing.

      Oh, and by the way, the FAA has no jurisdiction in New Zealand.

      • Re:Good luck (Score:5, Interesting)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday May 03, 2003 @12:10AM (#5867474) Homepage Journal
        Perhaps a short description of the actual process involved will illustrate your point as well.

        As you say, you could use a PIC. You can't get something as accurate as a tomahawk this way; you will have to settle for hitting a building as opposed to flying it through a window of a building. (Since GPS is supposed to be accurate to about 15 meters or so, worst case, with SA off, and most buildings are more than 30 meters in at least one dimension, hitting the building is pretty reasonable.)

        The craft will of course not always be making a straight, level flight. There are environmental issues. But a course correction every second or two should be sufficient.

        The GPS can deliver hyper-accurate time, and fairly accurate position. From these things one can compute one's airspeed and the direction one is heading. It is then a simple matter to determine which direction one needs to turn to correct one's course.

        One would plot a series of waypoints with some sort of computer software, possibly some sort of freely available GIS package, using maps available from the USGS. Once the craft is launched it will immediately begin determining which way it must turn to head to the waypoint. The little gyro replacement will provide straight and level flight when desired. Servos are trivial to control with off the shelf hardware, like a basic stamp for example, it's nice to use a dedicated microcontroller just for servo control so you don't have to tie up your primary microprocessor doing something that silly. You could also just build some custom hardware for it since they're pulse rate (or pulse width?) controlled. It would be a relatively uncomplicated task.

        Now, a tomahawk missile is capable of recognizing its target by image, and it can dodge things in its path. Obviously it has significantly more processing power than the machine we're describing. However, my point was hitting a building is easy, not flying through a window, again, as the tomahawk supposedly can. (They claim a 1 meter square hit box.) All we really need to do is follow waypoints, which we can precompute on our launch control system. As the comment above this one points out, doing so will be amazingly trivial. I suspect the poster mentioned a PIC chip because they are insanely cheap and they speak RS232 serial with nothing more than something to raise voltages, for which there are several standard solutions readily available. This allows trivial interfacing to the GPS. IIRC the Basic Stamp also provides RS232, so a pic with enough legs could speak serial to both the servo controller (at a suitably high speed) and the GPS. You only need TX and RX for each connection, because the only other connection to do about 19.2k on a good day is a ground. With four wires to the servo controller you could do higher transfer rates, or reliably get 19.2k, which should be plenty.

        In other words, using GPS makes this fairly trivial. The only real defense against it is GPS jamming, since it will be small and reasonably radar-transparent to the point where if it is flying low enough the only way you will spot it is visually, and good luck to you on that front.

        The next step beyond this is using radar or laser imaging to find the ground and various obstacles, and apply enough processing power to the problem to make it able to dodge trees, phone poles, aircraft (unless they're your target), and so on. That does make the problem dramatically harder, and raises the cost of the electronics by several orders of magnitude, but of course it is still within the ability and budget of the more determined and wealthy hobbyists. This necessarily means that a hostile organization with some fairly lucrative funding source, such as drugs or oil (similar compounds from a financial standpoint) could put whole fleets of them into the air.

        The next step after that would be inertial tracking so that it could still operate when GPS is jammed. After that, you want to do EMP hardening, which is probably more expensive than everything else put together.

  • I think that if the steps for building a 5000 dollar DIY cruise missile are going to be made freely available on the internet, I think the responsible thing to do would be for someone to post plans for a 5000 dollar DIY Phalanx Close-In Weapons System so we can shoot the damn missiles down. Any takers?
  • I survived the horrible attacks on 9/11 in NewYork.

    I was wondering if someone like Ossama could just buy some cheap missles and load them onto a barge and fire them at a major city? He as 10 ships already that deliever supplies. Airplanes are like missles but are near impossible to hijack today.

    15 of these for example being shot from the New York City habor would be awefull and so easy to do. It may not bring down tall building because the explosive packs would have to be small but would cause a huge phys

  • Quick! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rhinobird ( 151521 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:04PM (#5867249) Homepage
    We must slashdot this page before the information gets into the wrong hands!

  • Doesn't anyone know what .nz means? (Score:3, Informative)

    by hengist ( 71116 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:17PM (#5867284)
    Look carefully, people, he's in New Zealand, the USian feds don't have any power here. And I think it would be a bit hard for the US to justify sending troops here to grab him and sling him in Guantanamo prison.

    Not that I wouldn't put it past those wankers Bush and Ashcroft to try.

  • But what about... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Friday May 02, 2003 @11:33PM (#5867338)
    A Tom Cruise Missile?

    Help! The Scientologists are after me!

  • Who needs plans? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by alizard ( 107678 ) <alizard.ecis@com> on Saturday May 03, 2003 @12:01AM (#5867440) Homepage
    The only secret about this that someone with the right skills or is willing to acquire them needs to know is that it can be done.

    As the $5K budget shows, this is within the range of an individual or small organization.

    I've been expecting something like this for the last several years, but I expected to find out about it on the news, i.e. somebody used it on somebody, not on the Web.

  • So why aren't these attacks happening? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Goonie ( 8651 ) * <robert,merkel&benambra,org> on Saturday May 03, 2003 @01:47AM (#5867746) Homepage

    It seems we have a bit of a paradox here:

    1. Terrorists want to kill as many Americans/Israelis/whomever as possible.
    2. Anybody with access to the internet, basic levels of clue, and moderate amounts of cash, can screw together cruise missiles, dirty bombs, chemical weapons, etc etc, in complete secrecy.
    3. Chemical weapons, cruise missiles etc. are an effective way of killing people.
    4. Intelligence/police agencies are incapable of preventing such attacks before they occur.
    5. Therefore, given the above, lots of people should be dead through cruise missile/chemical weapon/insert diabolical nasty weapon here attacks by terrorists.

    But the above hasn't happened. With the spectacular exception of September 11 (which wasn't achieved through high-tech means), the best terrorists have been able to do is conventional bombing, and they haven't been able to kill that many people, even Israelis.

    So, what's the problem with the above argument?

    • Re:So why aren't these attacks happening? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by praksys ( 246544 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @01:58AM (#5867767)
      There is an old joke about economists that goes like this:

      Economist A: "Look there's $50 on the ground."
      Economist B: "Don't bother to pick it up, it's not worth the effort."
      Economist A: "How can you be so sure?"
      Economist B: "If it was worth the effort then someone would have done it already."

      The opportunity, and probably the motive, required for the September 11 attacks has been available for decades, but it took a while for the right people to get the idea and put it into action. The possibility of building cruise missiles has only been around for a few years (cheap ones anyway). The fact that it hasn't been done yet proves very little.

  • Tried and Failed Once Before (Score:4, Informative)

    by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @02:20AM (#5867807)
    The United States Navy sponsored a test project with a ~$500,000 budget in late 1998 to see if an independent team could build a reliable cruise missile weapon using off the shelf technology. I suppose that since the project failed they quietly cancelled it or declared it a success (since the independent team failed to develop a useful weapon) and ended it. Things may be different now but $5,000 probably won't be enough to build an effective military grade cruise missile, especially when one considers the advanced counter-measures employed by the United States and other Navies. I doubt that a $5,000 homemade cruise missile would defeat the Aegis system employed by the United States Navy. I was able to find only this small snippet of information on the web regarding the whole affair:

    missile defense [vce.com]

    "14 Apr 98 The Kraken cruise missile built by the BMDO Countermeasures Hands-On Project crashed on take off from Point Mugu, California. The Kraken was built to test the ability of a rest-of-world country to develop this type of weapon."

  • smartest dumb person (Score:3, Funny)

    by {tele}machus_*1 ( 117577 ) * on Saturday May 03, 2003 @04:54AM (#5868162) Journal
    Given the hypersensitive climate in the U.S. today, why would one try to build a weapon of mass destruction, just to prove it could be done. I can see it now in the CNN headline: "President Bush declared today that Bruce Simpson is a threat to national security and bombed his house."

  • Overreaction by Americans (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @07:26AM (#5868387) Homepage
    A 'cruise missile' without an explosive payload is just a model jet with a sophisticated guidance system.

    Perhaps the term 'missile' is a term that carries a negative connotation, but semantics should really not affect the fundamental issue that it is OK to experiment with aeronautics and electronics in your back yard because its your back yard and we (well, Bruce does) live in a moe-or-less free society.

    Personally, i would think a more interesting goal would be to build something akin to a Predator UAV than a cruise missile, but that is just me.

    John Carmack is trying to build a fucking InterContinental Ballistic Missile in his backyard, but everyone seems to love that project.

  • They already made a jet engine on Junkyard Wars (Score:3)

    by frank249 ( 100528 ) on Saturday May 03, 2003 @03:42PM (#5870386)
    I like to think of this project as the military version of "Junkyard
    Wars".

    Not such a far fetched project in fact half of the project was already done.

    In a recent episode of [discovery.com]
    Junkyard Wars the goal was to build a working jet bike which as it turns
    out can be done in under 12 hours using only parts from a junkyard. Add
    some wings and a guidance system and you could have your own cruise missile.

    In that episode: The Auto Amigos build a thermo-jet out of an industrial
    fan mounted at the front of an oil barrel tube. They've added an afterburner
    for an extra kick. The Dirty Drivers go for a bicycle-frame vehicle and
    create a jet engine from an old turbocharger.

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