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Project Babylon – Supergun for satellites

This post is an important clarification on Saddam Hussein’s Project Babylon “supergun” that would have been built by Gerald Vincent Bull...
This “supergun” wasn’t designed as a weapon but to put satellites into orbit; now that would be a real threat!


Isaac Newton first envisaged the concept of a “space gun” in his 1728 book “A Treatise of the System of the World”. A better known representation of the “space gun” is in Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the Moon”, in which astronauts fly to the Moon aboard a ship launched from a cannon on the surface of the Earth.

In the First World War, Max Dräger and Fritz Rausenberger built the Paris Gun so that the German army could bomb the French capital at 75 miles. Its projectiles were the first human-made objects to reach the stratosphere.
In the Second World War, Albert Speer approved plans for a gun to fire on London from the coast of Calais - the V-3 cannon – it supposedly fired 142 rounds that resulted in (only) 10 dead and 35 wounded.
At the end of the war, the gun tubes were disassembled and shipped to the US for testing, before they were scrapped in 1948.

After Gerald Bull finished his Ph.D. thesis in 1950, he started to work at the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment (CARDE), which was researching various rocket and missile projects. On 1 April 1961, Bull resigned after he got into an argument with his superior over paperwork.

Gerald Bull continued his remarkable career, in a partnership with Charles Murphy and Arthur Trudeau (director of US Army Research and Development) in Project HARP (High Altitude Research Program; that´s not HAARP!).
Their most important test site was on the Caribbean island of Barbados. In January 1963, the first succesfull tests ran; the third of these launched a Martlet-1. Two days later, a second Martlet-1 reached 16.8 miles with a radio transmitter beacon attached.
By the end of June a world-record altitude for a gun-launched projectile was reached of 57 miles. The Martlet was equipped with electronics to measure upper-level winds and magnetic fields.
On 18 November 1966, a Martlet-2 was launched that reached 111 miles high  —  a world record until this day for a gun-launched projectile.

See a depiction of Gerald Bull’s vision of launching satellites into orbit from the surface of the Earth.


After the US Army was forbidden to conduct launches above 62 miles, and the Canadian government stopped Bull’s funding in 1967, he founded the Space Research Corporation.
The company needed money, so Bull immediately signed arms deals with the Canadian and US military research arms. Bull designed ammunition so US Naval destroyers and battleships could fire from miles off the shore of North Vietnam. Became an American citizen by act of Congress so he could be granted top security clearance.
Throughout the 1970s, Bull worked as an international artillery consultant for the US, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Israel, Holland, Italy, Britain, Canada, Venezuela, Chile, Thailand, Austria, and Somalia.

In the late 1970s, the CIA encouraged Bull to build a new gun for South African, despite the US arms embargo.
As a result of a change in its foreign policy after Jimmy Carter became US president Bull's arms business with South Africa was declared illegal, and he was sentenced to jail. Bull spent six months in prison.

After his release, Bull moved to Brussels and worked for China and Iraq.
After designing a pair of artillery pieces for the Iraqis, in 1988, he persuaded the Iraqi Minister of Industry that Iraq could become a genuine space power, with "Think of the prestige".
Saddam Hussein greenlighted the project, which called for a space gun that was 512 feet long, weighed 2,100 tons, and had a 3.3-foot diameter. It was designed to be capable of placing a 4,410-pound projectile into orbit. The segments, which were being constructed in Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

See a 1964 depiction of Bull’s HARP supergun. Note the jeep (mid-left) that looks tiny in comparison.


Because of its size the Iraqi space cannon would have been nearly useless as a conventional weapon: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/...d-bull.htm
(archived here: http://archive.is/0k28q)


Interestingly after in 1967 project HARP was cancelled by lack of government funding, Gerald Bull found new sponsors in none other than Peter and Edgar Sr. Bronfman.
The main shipping company for Space Research Corporation was Israel's Zim Shipping Company (that moved out of the Twin Towers a couple of months before 9/11).

The Pakistani chairman of the infamous Swiss-based Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI), Saad Gabr, bought Space Research after Bull was locked up in prison: https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1990/...contra.pdf