Bull was certainly prescient. I recommend the bio of him, "The Man and
the Gun" (don't recall the author) to all interested in this very
interesting Canadian. I recall reading articles in the news back in the
early 80's about his estate up on the US-Can border, where he controlled
the only two private border crossings in the world (which the CIA paid
him to use to funnel artillery ammo to Savimbi's UNITAS movement in
Angola, fighting against the Cuban and Soviet backed communists, from
the US through to ships in Montreal.) It was his CIA work that got him
imprisoned when they refused to acknowledge the fact that his work on
this was under contract to them. At the time, his estate was an
artillery firing range, which he used to test his sabot vehicles for
upper atmosphere/space research work, firing out of surplus 16 inch
battleship guns, welded end to end. While it was real research, it
helped cover the CIA arms shipments nicely.
Here in the US, there is a law against exporting armed artillery shells
to non-NATO or other allied countries, but nothing against *empty*
artillery shells being exported. Canada had no law against exporting
armed shells, so Bull imported surplus US shells, machined them and
suped them up with some of his customizations, and then exported them
out of Montreal to Angola, via South Africa.
"Chen Yixiong, Eric" wrote:
>
> http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/bull.htm
>
> Gerald Bull had a vision and an obsession, a vision that led to estrangement from his native Canada, prison in America, and ultimately assassination by Israel. His vision was of an entirely new way to get into space: small rockets boosted by giant guns.
To achieve it he worked for some of the worst regimes on earth: South Africa, China, and ultimately Iraq. His work affected the course of two modern wars and revived the ancient field of artillery.
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