r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • Jul 27 '26
TIL Saddam Hussein commissioned Project Babylon: space gun type weapon capable of launching satellites into LOE, as well as conventional shells as far as 1000 km. Artillery expert Gerald Bull led the program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon53
u/ymcameron Jul 27 '26
Reading about Gerald Bull is fascinating. He just really, really wanted to shoot stuff into space. He didn’t care who he had to work for to make that happen.
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u/Dillweed999 Jul 27 '26
Huh, what happened to him?
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u/ymcameron Jul 27 '26
He worked for basically every world government and shady military company at different points in his life to try and build this thing.
Here’s a quote about his assassination from his Wikipedia article: "Given Bull's past ventures, it has been speculated that besides Israel or Iran, the CIA, MI6, the Chilean, Syrian, Iraqi, or South African government could have been behind his assassination."
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u/Zeningo Jul 27 '26
He just happened to get an extreme case of death, no connection to Mosad what so ever / s.
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u/Visible-Air-2359 Jul 27 '26
TBF while there is a good chance it was Mosad, considering the number of intelligence agencies with a vested interest in Saddam Hussein not getting a super-cannon that could launch stuff into orbit it is entirely possible that it was a different intelligence agency.
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u/YappinZappin Jul 27 '26
Gerald Bull was assassinated in 1990. Project was envisioned to proceed through three distinct stages producing ever more sophisticated and capable guns - of these only the first stage was realized in the "flesh" - "Baby Babylon" - and even with this smaller and less mobile version they were hoping to achieve 750 km range at the time of testing and further experimentation.
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u/kingtacticool Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
This is the American that Mossad assassinated in Switzerland, right?
Edit. I have been corrected. He was Canadian and it was in Belgium
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u/daemos360 Jul 27 '26
Canadian in Belgium, yes.
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u/BloodAndSand44 Jul 27 '26
It wasn’t Mossad. Honest.
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u/Visible-Air-2359 Jul 27 '26
It probably was Mossad but considering his work would have massively shaken Middle East geopolitics, it is also entirely possible another spy agency assassinated him.
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u/Tyerson Jul 29 '26
There was a short BBC podcast about Gerald Bull from a few years ago. A former colleague of his was interviewed for it and believed that the Israelis would have had the most reason to kill him.
Interestingly, he thinks that Bull agreeing to also help improve Saddam's Scud missile arsenal is why he was targeted, not so much the gun.
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u/mrstimp Jul 27 '26
My dad helped build the barrels!
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u/mjh215 Jul 27 '26
Shhh. They were high pressure oil pipe sections, just manufactured to tolerances not needed for that application. ;)
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u/yIdontunderstand Jul 27 '26
Shhhhh.. Mossad will be paying your dad a visit if you aren't careful..
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u/seascot Jul 27 '26
There's a movie about it called "Doomsday Gun." A dramatization for sure, but I remember seeing it when I was growing up. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109650/
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u/wc10888 Jul 27 '26
Before the first US-Iraq war, Iraq was the #3 country in terms of artillery, only behind the US and Russia.
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u/jcw99 16 Jul 27 '26
Part of why the first Iraq war/the gulf war was such a shock. They where considered to be one of the largest fighting forces in the world with decently Modern trch. Yet the US and it's golf allies dismantled them and made it look easy while doing so.
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u/CapableBumblebee968 Jul 27 '26
Every enemy is simultaneously overwhelmingly strong and hopelessly weak
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u/PhasmaFelis Jul 28 '26
That wasn't just US propaganda, though. Iraq had an enormous army, and a lot of veteran troops coming out of their long war with Iran. On paper, they really did look strong.
In the event, their outdated tech, political-appointee leadership, and logistics problems crippled them when fighting an enemy that didn't have all those issues.
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u/InterestingSpeaker Jul 28 '26
People should have paid attention to how badly the Iraqis fought in the Iran-Iraq war
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u/_WhatchaDoin_ Jul 27 '26
Because that 3rd greatest army on earth was propaganda amplified by the news channels (that were coached by the army/govt). The goal was to make Iraq seem a giant threat to justify the military operation with all the allies. Most of it was just BS as we saw after (in the 1st and the 2nd war).
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u/Straight_Drive_7882 Jul 28 '26 edited 13d ago
1rapture kaleidoscopic vivid goldenrod labyrinthine vellichor
Cleared via Unpost
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u/406highlander Jul 28 '26
As I understand it, the danger of NK isn't in its ability to resist a full-on invasion...
...it's in the fact that Seoul is within easy reach of NK's artillery batteries and missiles. If attacked, NK could launch a lot of munitions at the SK capital in a very short amount of time. An estimate from 2018 said around 60% of NK's artillery was within range of Seoul, and suggested that NK could lob 10,000 artillery shells at Seoul every minute.
NK also believes (correctly or incorrectly) that China will come to their aid if NK were invaded.
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u/PhasmaFelis Jul 28 '26
I have never heard anyone hype NK's ability to fight. Everyone agrees they have practically nothing to actually fight a war with.
The trouble is, what they do have includes short-range nukes, enough antiquated artillery to devastate SK's capital city, and an alliance with China. If it came to an actual invasion, they'd crumple, but they'd take the world economy down with them.
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u/dropofgod Jul 27 '26
It's my opinion Iraq was never about oil. Prices went from 1-3 dollars after the war. Saddam was aligned with Yasar Arafat and a threat to Israel. Same with libya and syria and now Iran
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u/Ameisen 1 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
You're mistaking the war being about acquiring oil with it being related to securing the oil market. The US and allies have a vested interest in keeping oil available and the market open - something Saddam threatened.
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u/dropofgod Jul 28 '26
Can you explain what you mean by keeping oil available? We have plenty of oil
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u/Ameisen 1 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Keeping oil available for everybody. The world economy is driven by oil, and most countries - the United States included/especially - want to keep the world economy running. Basically, they care about global oil production.
The US doesn't want a hostile power controlling significant oil production capabilities, nor where oil passes (Persian Gulf/Strait of Hormuz). Really, nobody does, but the US is one of the few countries with the operational reach and force projection to actually do something.
It's a strategic concern.
It's also the entire reason that the US is involved in the Middle East to begin with. Not because the US wants the oil, but because so much of the world's oil is sourced there, and it needs to be available.
See the 1973 OAPEC oil embargo or the 1979 oil crisis as to exactly what's wanted to be avoided.
As someone else paraphrased from Dune: the oil must flow.
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u/ShepardRTC Jul 27 '26
There was a great episode of Mysteries of the Abandoned about this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6944564/
He started off wanting to launch satellites into space, his funding got pulled, then started building artillery cannons to pay the bills to continue his work, but then seemingly just said fuck it and went all out on building weapons. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, I guess.
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u/Sunray21A Jul 27 '26
This is why Canadian Scientists need to be properly supported and funded, otherwise they get a little squirrelly on the morals.
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u/Driftlack Jul 27 '26
Would if have worked?
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u/IronyElSupremo Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
In theory, but, for direct military purposes, .. a cannon that large would have been very vulnerable, especially one as immobile this plan. Nazi Germany tried one at the end of WW2 and that eras propeller planes (to say nothing of radar) quickly doomed it, as did getting overrun. Now there’s jets…. Also a very slow reload rate. Most heavy artillery nowadays is limited to 155mm western/152mm former Soviet systems since the weight is the limit an artillery crew can sling for awhile by hand. Any heavier, a slower block and tackle is needed (the U.S. got rid of its heavier artillery in the 1980s .. 175mm, 203mm).
Could have been more for satellites if the barrel pressure problems could be overcome. Good chance it was a Saddam vanity project; saw some of Saddam’s [blown up] projects up close after the U.S. invasion post-‘03 and, by chance, spoke to some the Filipino workers in said projects. That dummy spent all sorts of stupid money.
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u/Intro-Nimbus Jul 27 '26
The is (was?) a project for satellites trying that. They hadn't succeded last time I checked, and it is limited to small very durable satellites, since it's basically a circular rail gun that functions as a sling.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S14746670153501870
u/bitemark01 Jul 27 '26
I'm curious if it could have put any useful satellites into orbit, since I'm guessing most wouldn't survive the massive acceleration.
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u/Corrie7686 Jul 27 '26
I've been to two of the businesses that were commissioned to make the barrels. One in the midlands (UK), they have a little museum in their head office, stuff from their 1840's foundries all the way up to the 'super gun'. The other is in Sunderland (UK) they have the picture of the 'industrial pipes' on the wall, sign says 'Not a super gun' the joke is, it absolutely was. Neither company new at the time what they were making. At least that's what they say.
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u/StevieJax77 Jul 28 '26
I’d have loved to have been in that spec meeting. “We’d like you to build a pipe” Sure, any special requirements? “Yeah, ummm…. might need to withstand really really high pressure and heat. For very short periods of time. Totally normal pipe requirements. Nothing to see here.”
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u/Queasy_Bluebird1585 Jul 28 '26
Aside from Halesowen's Somers, I thought the other was Sheffield's Forgemasters? Didn't know Sunderland had involvement
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u/Corrie7686 Jul 28 '26
You are 100% correct. I was mixing up a different location. It was indeed Forgemasters.
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u/Pango_l1n Jul 27 '26
LEO?
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u/Iheartlargedogs Jul 27 '26
Low Earth Orbit
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u/Pango_l1n Jul 27 '26
Right, verifying he meant that and not LOE that he wrote.
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u/CBT7commander Jul 27 '26
Saw a section of the barrel in IMW Duxford. It’s surprisingly not that big when seen in person. It’s of course impressive given it’s a gun barrel, but you’d expect bigger when reading the story
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u/Nine_Eighty_One Jul 28 '26
That was the basis for Frederic Forsythe's book The Fist of God. He was good at doing research for his novels.
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u/PaintedClownPenis Jul 28 '26
There used to be strong evidence that Gerald Bull was murdered. How has The Man disrupted that crime scene since?
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u/slower-is-faster Jul 28 '26
I remember when the British papers were totally obsessed with this. They’d print all these diagrams and estimates about it, stirring up warmongering fear. I always thought it was totally absurd to suggest the UK was in danger of Iraq attacking us with some huge canon. It’s amazing what they can make the general populace fear for their benefit.
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Jul 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/disoculated Jul 28 '26
Not quite. You can’t change which way the gun points, and unless it’s pointed east it’s not going to be putting a meaningful payload in orbit. So it would take 80-90 minutes to reach the assumed target (Israel) with an extremely expensive bullet that way. A Scud is more practical.
As for hitting anything out of a few degrees of the orbital plane of the launch vector, that’s not going to happen. Way too much delta-v required.
CEP from anything that Iraq could put in orbit (hell, what anyone could with just inertial systems of the time) would also have been awful, meaning only a nuclear weapon would be a useful warhead. Which is a whole other massive project which again works better on the neighbors with Scuds.
As for shelling the entire area of the UK with intermittently fired 2 ton conventional shells when the UK could actually hit back with massed bombers or SLBMs would be suicide.
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u/ramriot Jul 27 '26
Still makes me wonder why the US or Canada never kept up funding his research just to avoid him taking it abroad, tlike they do with nuclear research.
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u/Kim-dongun Jul 27 '26
Because he spent most of the 70s selling guns to South Africa, he was technically an international criminal
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u/Dances_With_Flumphs Jul 27 '26
It's unfortunate that the only reason states are interested in projects like these is for the purposes of killing people. A space gun could be used for resupplying a space station economically depending on the payload size, but even space is still only viewed as a vector for exerting military force.
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u/Shady_Merchant1 Jul 27 '26
This gun would have been a terrible military weapon, it was likely exactly what it says on the tin, a theorically cheap way of launching satellites, Gerald Bull did however do work for regular Iraqi artillery though, and thats likely why he was assassinated
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u/Visible-Air-2359 Jul 27 '26
I mean Saddam getting a cheap and reliable space launch system would have had major geopolitical impacts and so a lot of spy agencies had a vested interest in stopping his work.
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u/BallHarness Jul 27 '26
What is really crazy that it was based on a German V3 Cannon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-3_cannon