Gerald Bull

Gerald Vincent Bull (9 March 1928 – 22 March 1990) was a Canadian engineer who trained at the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment (CARDE) and went on to develop sophisticated and accurate long-range artillery. It was Gerald Bull's ambition to launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece, the Supergun, to which end he designed the Project Babylon for the Iraqi government.

Gerald Bull was assassinated outside his apartment in Brussels, Belgium on 20 March 1990. It is commonly thought that he was killed by the Israelis, concerned not so much by the Supergun work but rather dynamics research Bull was doing to improve Iraqi ballistic missiles. Three weeks later British Customs seized the final eight sections of the Project Babylon gun.

On 2 August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, precipitating the Gulf War which ended Western covert sponsorship of Iraq.

Space Research Corporation

In 1967, Gerald Bull set up a new company, Space Research Corporation (SRC), which was incorporated in both Quebec and Vermont. Bull became an international artillery consultant with a number of contracts from both the Canadian and US military research arms helping the company to get started. At SRC Bull continued the development of his high-velocity artillery, adapting the High Altitude Research Program (HARP) smoothbore into a new "reverse rifled" design where the lands of a conventional rifling were replaced by grooves cut into the barrel to make a slightly larger gun also capable of firing existing ammunition. Normally artillery shells are sealed into the rifling by a driving band of soft metal like copper, which demands that the shell be shaped so that it balances at its widest point, where the band is located. This is not ideal for ballistics, especially supersonically where a higher fineness ratio is desirable. Bull solved this problem by using an additional set of nub "fins" near the front of the shell to keep it centred in the barrel, allowing the driving band to be greatly reduced in size, and located wherever was convenient. Re-shaping the shell for better supersonic performance provided dramatically improved range and accuracy, up to double in both cases, when compared to a similar gun using older-style ammunition. He called the new shell design "Extended Range, Full Bore" (ERFB).

GC-45 howitzer

Starting in 1975, Gerald Bull designed a new gun based on the common US 155/39 M109 howitzer, extending it slightly to 45 calibre through modifications that could be applied to existing weapons, calling the resulting weapon the GC-45 howitzer. Bull also purchased the base bleed technology being developed in Sweden, which allowed for further improvements in range. With the ERFB round the GC-45 could routinely place rounds into 10 metres (33 ft) circles at ranges up to 30 kilometres (19 mi), extending this to 38 kilometres (24 mi) with some loss in accuracy. The gun offered ranges far in excess of even the longest-ranged heavy artillery in a gun only slightly larger than common medium-weight guns.

ERFB shells for Israel

SRC's first major sales success was the sale of 50,000 ERFB shells to Israel in 1973 for use in American-supplied artillery pieces. The Israelis had successfully used a number of 175 mm M107 guns in the counter-battery role against its Soviet counterpart, the 130 mm towed field gun M1954 (M-46), but the introduction of long range rockets fired from Lebanon outranged them. The ERFB shells extended the range of the already formidable M107 to as much as 50 kilometres (31 mi), allowing the guns to counter-battery even the longest range rockets. Bull was rewarded for success of this program by a Congressional bill, sponsored by Senator Barry Goldwater, making him retroactively eligible for a decade of American citizenship and high-level American nuclear security clearance. He was only one of three people ever granted citizenship by an Act of Congress.

Arms to South Africa

Another early success for SRC was the sale of 30,000 artillery shells, gun barrels, and plans for the GC-45 howitzer to Armscor in apartheid South Africa. The South African Defence Force's arsenal of vintage howitzers - antiquated by the UN arms embargo - had been outperformed by BM-21 Grads during Operation Savannah in Angola in 1975. In order to counter the modern Soviet artillery deployed in Angola, South African officials began seeking longer-ranged weapons systems and were referred to SRC. Armscor trialled the GC-45 with a new mounting to allow for increased powder loads and installed an auxiliary power unit for improving mobility in the field. The resulting G5 howitzer was vital to South African campaigns against Cuban expeditionary forces in Angola, allowing them to target infrastructure and personnel with phenomenal accuracy.

American policy on arms sales changed dramatically with the assumption of office of Jimmy Carter in 1977. Combating communism was no longer the primary consideration, and South Africa's poor human rights record under apartheid became a major concern. Enforcing rules that had always been "on the books", Gerald Bull was arrested for illegal arms dealing in violation of the mandatory UN Security Council Resolution 418. Expecting a slap on the wrist, Bull was surprised to find himself spending six months in the US Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood, Pennsylvania in 1980. On his return to Quebec he was sued and fined $55,000 for arms dealing.

Moving to Belgium

Gerald Bull decided to leave Canada and moved to Brussels, where a subsidiary of SRC called Poudreries Réunies de Belgique was based. Bull continued working with the ERFB ammunition design, developing a range of munitions that could be fired from existing weapons. A number of companies designed upgrades to work with older weapons, like the M114 155mm howitzer, combining a new barrel from the M109 with Bull's ERFB ammunition to produce an improved weapon for relatively low cost.

Bull also continued working with the GC-45 design, and soon secured work with the People's Republic of China, and then Iraq. He designed two artillery pieces for the Iraqis: the 155mm Al-Majnoonan, an updated version of the G5, and a similar set of adaptations applied to the 203 mm US M110 howitzer to produce the 210mm Al-Fao with a maximum range of 56 km (35 mi) without base bleed. Although it appears the Al-Fao was not put into production, the Al-Majnoonan started replacing Soviet designs as quickly as they could be delivered. When deliveries could not be made quickly enough, additional barrels were ordered from South Africa. The guns were built and sold through an Austrian intermediary.

Bull then convinced the Iraqis that they would never be a real power without the capability for space launches. He offered to build a cannon capable of such launches, basically an even larger version of the original HARP design. Saddam Hussein was interested, and work started on Project Babylon.

A smaller 45-metre, 350mm calibre gun was completed for testing purposes, and Bull then started work on the "real" PC-2 machine, a gun that was 150 metres long, weighed 2,100 tonnes, with a bore of one metre (39 inches). It was to be capable of placing a 2,000-kilogram projectile into orbit. The Iraqis then told Bull they would only go ahead with the project if he would also help with development of their longer-ranged SCUD-based missile project. Bull agreed.

Construction of the individual sections of the new gun started in England at Sheffield Forgemasters and Matrix Churchill as well as in Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Assassination

Gerald Bull was working on the SCUD project, making calculations for the new nose-cone needed for the higher re-entry speeds and temperatures the missile would face. Over a period of a few months following, his apartment suffered several non-robbery break-ins, apparently as a threat or a warning, but he continued to work on the project. On 20 March 1990 he was assassinated. The Supergun project was stopped when its parts were seized by HM Customs and Excise in the United Kingdom in November 1990, and most of Bull's staff returned to Canada. The smaller test gun was later broken up after the Gulf War.

Who killed Gerald Bull?

According to the journalist Gordon Thomas in The Telegraph:

Within the global intelligence community, respect for Mossad grew following the kidon assassination of Dr Gerald Bull, the Canadian scientist who was probably the world's greatest expert on gun-barrel ballistics. Israel had made several attempts to buy his expertise. Each time, Bull had made clear his dislike for the Jewish state.

Instead he had offered his services to Saddam Hussein, to build a Supergun capable of launching shells containing nuclear, chemical or biological warheads directly from Iraq into Israel. Saddam had ordered three of the weapons at a cost of $20 million. Bull was retained as a consultant for a fee of $1 million.

On the afternoon of 20 March 1990, the sanction to kill Bull was given by the then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. The head of Mossad, Nahum Admoni, sent a three-man team to Brussels, where Bull lived in a luxury apartment block. Each kidon carried a handgun in a holster under his jacket.

When the 61-year-old Bull answered the doorbell of his home on 22 March 1990, he was shot five times in the head and the neck, each kidon firing their 7.65 pistol in turn, leaving Bull dead on his doorstep. An hour later they were out of the country on a flight to Tel Aviv.

Within hours, Mossad's own department of psychological warfare had arranged with sayanim in the European media to leak stories that Bull had been shot by Saddam's hit squad because he had planned to renege on their deal.

The co-operation between Gerald Bull and Saddam Hussein posed an immediate threat to Iran and Israel as Iran had endured an eight-year long war with Iraq, and Israel had had previous military engagements with Iraq during the Arab–Israeli war. Watching development of the gun, Israel feared it could be used to launch nuclear weapons, but the re-designed SCUD missiles were of greater concern at that moment. As for Iran, it was under threat from both Bull's Supergun and his re-designed SCUD missiles.

Although it seemed obviously to be in Iran and Israel's immediate interest for Gerald Bull to discontinue his co-operation with Saddam Hussein, he had worked for many different parties in a number of critical defence projects, which could have made him a target for assassination by both US and British intelligence as well as by the governments of Chile, Syria, Iraq and the apartheid South African regime.