We have a story over at Military​.com this morn­ing about the much-​​touted (by its own gov­ern­ment, though) Iranian smart bomb the mul­lahs vow to use against our ene­mies when the time comes…

Iran vowed Sunday to use a new 2,000-pound “smart” bomb against its ene­mies and unveiled mass pro­duc­tion of the new weapon, state tele­vi­sion reported.

The gov­ern­ment first announced devel­op­ment of the long-​​range guided bomb Thursday, say­ing it could be deployed by the country’s aging U.S.-made F-​​4 and F-​​5 fighter jets.

“We will use these (bombs) against our ene­mies when the time comes,” Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on state tele­vi­sion Sunday.

Iran often announces new weapons for its arse­nal, but the United States main­tains that while the Islamic Republic has made some strides, many of these state­ments are exaggerations.

See a video news report of the Iranian smart bomb…

The broad­cast included a brief clip of a fighter jet appar­ently drop­ping one of the bombs, which destroyed a tar­get on the ground.

The defense min­is­ter con­tin­ued his threats as state tele­vi­sion showed him unveil­ing a mass pro­duc­tion line for the weapon in Tehran.

“We will use this weapon where we want to … hit enemy’s strate­gic and defense tar­gets,” Najjar said. “This will be used against our ene­mies, against those who vio­late our land and air space…“ 

Ooooo…scare me. For some rea­son I dont think the Pentagon is los­ing a lot of sleep over the specter of Iranian F-​​5 Tiger and F-​​4 Phantom fight­ers lum­ber­ing their way across the moun­tain­ous bor­der into Iraq with these smart bombs.

My ques­tion is: why make this ridicu­lous claim? Probably for the con­sump­tion of the Gulf states which recently received tens of bil­lions in Defense equip­ment from the U.S. But in the end, the PR blitz could back­fire on Tehran, remind­ing crit­ics why U.S. sup­port is so impor­tant in the Gulf region.

– Christian

There have been a num­ber of nom­i­na­tions for firearms in the Deadlies, our poll to find the worst gad­gets ever devised. Anyone who has ever heard gun buffs argu­ing the mer­its of dif­fer­ent weapons will know what a fer­tile ground this is for prej­u­dice, ques­tion­able anec­dote and reams of com­pet­ing sta­tis­tics with­out any agree­ment ever being reached. So if you dis­agree with any of what fol­lows, you’re prob­a­bly right.

Some have nom­i­nated the Chauchat, long hated as the worst weapon ever issued to US forces. It was French WWI light machine-​​gun which was noto­ri­ous for jam­ming. The US tried a ver­sion cham­bered for 30–06 which was pro­duced with the wrong sized cham­ber due to a man­u­fac­tur­ing error. Only short bursts could be fired before it over-​​heated, lead­ing to claims that you could get a bet­ter rate of fire with a bolt-​​action rifle.
Early mod­els of the M-​​16 used in Vietnam have also been nom­i­nated on the basis of the weapon’s ten­dency to jam at every oppor­tu­nity. The bore and cham­ber were prone to cor­rode, and the low-​​quality ammu­ni­tion wors­ened prob­lems.
But for weapons which were likely to be the death of their user, I would have to nom­i­nate the FP-​​45 Liberator pis­tol. This was mass pro­duced in large num­bers in WWII and intended to be dropped into occu­pied Europe for Resistance fight­ers. It fired a sin­gle .45 round from an unri­fled bar­rel, giv­ing very short effec­tive range (10 feet or so). Reloading involved pok­ing out the used car­tridge with a stick.
Any use of the Liberator would be near-​​suicidal: you leap out, shout­ing “Eat lead, Nazi scum!” and pull the trig­ger, and unless you man­age to kill your tar­get with a sin­gle shot, you are now unarmed and fac­ing an armed enemy at close range. ((Maybe it was US revenge for the Chauchat?))
The Liberator was not dropped in Europe as planned, but small num­bers were appar­ently dis­tibuted in China and the Phillipines.
Got a nom­i­na­tion for the ‘Deadlies? Send us your idea by E-​​mail or post it here.
– David Hambling

In our com­pe­ti­tion to find “Deadlies” — tech­nol­ogy which may be fea­si­ble but still looks like a really bad idea — there have been plenty of atomic nom­i­na­tions. In the 50’s and 60’s there were plans for nuclear pow­ered ships, trains, air­craft, mis­siles and space­ships which have attracted nom­i­na­tions for the “Deadlies.” But nobody has men­tioned the Atomic Automobile yet.
These days we’re a bit wary about nuclear power, but back in it’s hey­day it was sell­ing like (radioac­tive) hot cakes. Nuclear power was the future, it was cleaner than fos­sil fuels, end­lessly abun­dant and so inex­pen­sive that Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, fore­cast that: “It is not too much to expect that our chil­dren will enjoy in their homes elec­tri­cal energy too cheap to meter.“

Perhaps the orig­i­nal source of atomic bad ideas was the Atoms For Peace ini­tia­tive, a delib­er­ate attempt to turn nuclear power away from mil­i­tary uses and har­ness it in con­struc­tive ways. The inten­tions may have been good — or not. In Britain the pub­lic were per­suaded that the Calder Hall atomic power plant would pro­vide them with cheap energy, and it was not until 1961 that the gov­ern­ment admit­ted that its main pur­pose was to man­u­fac­ture plu­to­nium for nuclear weapons. In the US, the gov­ern­ment tried hard to con­vince peo­ple that atomic was good. (The full story is told in the chap­ter on Ultimate Power in my book Weapons Grade).
So the idea spread that every­thing which used power would be atomic in the future. The obvi­ous end point of this is domes­tic atomic power for every­one. In 1940 Dr RM Langer, a physi­cist at Cal. Tech, pre­dicted that home nuclear power plants for heat­ing, light­ing and elec­tric­ity would arrive “in our own time,” and that a nuclear plant “the size of a type­writer” would power cars.
So when the Atomic Age really got under way in 1958 it was no sur­prise when the Ford Nucleon con­cept car was rolled out. This had the pasen­ger com­part­ment placed well for­ward to keep away from the nuclear plant at the back. The com­pany sug­gested that the Nucleon would travel 5,000 miles before need­ing to have the atomic core replaced at a charg­ing sta­tion, the future equiv­a­lent of a gas sta­tion. Unsurprisingly enough, the car never went beyond con­cept stage.
Atomic car? You’ll be want­ing the addi­tional “radi­a­tion leak and mas­sive area con­t­a­m­i­na­tion” insur­ance cover for that, and maybe some lead-​​lined under­wear. No, I think we should leave atomic-​​powered cars to Batman.
Got a nom­i­na­tion for the ‘Deadlies? Send us your idea by E-​​mail or post it here.
– David Hambling

Readers of my book, Weapons Grade will have seen the chap­ter on tech­nolo­gies which looked promis­ing at the time but which failed to deliver. Perhaps the most lethal exam­ple is the German WWII Me163 Komet, a rocket-​​powered inter­cep­tor which is surely a hot con­tender for The Deadlies.

On paper it looked great; the first plane to break the 1,000 kph (625 mph) bar­rier, it seemed like the ideal weapon to take on Allied bomber for­ma­tions. It would be much too fast for the fighter escorts to stop.
In prac­tice it was the dead­liest plane ever built.
At the heart of the Komet was a rocket motor which mixed oxi­dis­ing agent (a hydro­gen per­ox­ide mix­ture known as T-​​stoff) and a fuel (hydrazine hydrate, methyl alco­hol, and water, called C-​​stoff). These were com­bined explo­sively. The small motor gen­er­ated 1,500kg of thrust for an air­craft that only weighed 1,900 Kg, twice the thrust-​​to-​​weight ratio of the Me262 jet fighter which was itself con­sid­ered awe­some for the time.
But it was the sheer vari­ety of ways that it could kill you that made the Komet unique.
– The con­trols tended to lock up, leav­ing the plane going in a straight line. If this hap­pened dur­ing the attack dive, the Komet could accel­er­ate to high speed and broke apart. Otherwise, it just ploughed into the ground like a thun­der­bolt.
– The exhaust plumb­ing could crack on take off. A leak into the cock­pit would fill the cock­pit with steam mak­ing vision impos­si­ble.
– T-​​stoff, con­cen­trated hydro­gen per­ox­ide, is a pow­er­ful cor­ro­sive and the pilot pilot sat between two tanks of it.
“One pilot did get dis­solved by T stoff flow­ing into the cock­pit after the air­craft crashed on take-​​off and inverted,” says DefenseTech reader Pat Flannery.
– The com­mon­est and cru­ellest prob­lem was the con­trolled explo­sion which drove it. The Komet had a skid rather than wheels, so land­ings were hard (many pilots suf­fered back injuries). If there was any fuel left in the tanks, the shock of land­ing could mix it sud­denly, and the return­ing hero would go up in a fire­ball.
Three hun­dred and sev­enty Komets were built; they shot down nine Allied bombers between them. About five per cent of the Komets were lost to Allied fire in the air; fif­teen per cent were lost due to prob­lems with the con­trols and hydraulics. The other eighty per cent were vic­tims of explo­sions.
No won­der pilots nick­named it The Devils Sled” — a fast ride straight to hell.
Can any­thing beat the Komet for the “Deadlies?” If you’ve got any ideas E-​​mail or post it here.
– David Hambling
Thanks to Pat Flannery for the corrections

Nominated by Robot Economist
There are some pairs that are pos­i­tively made for each other, don’t you think? The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Johnny Cash and June Carter. Pick ups and gun racks. Bongs and Playstations.
To that noble list, let us add another pre­des­tined duo: tanks and glider wings, our newest nom­i­nee for the “Deadlies,” Defense Tech’s search for the most insanely haz­ardous gear, ever.
In World War II, Soviet mil­i­tary engi­neers sure thought tanks and wings could work well together.
Throughout the 30’s, Stalin’s forces were look­ing for ways to deliver their tanks from the sky. The prob­lem is, air-​​dropping vehi­cles means “that their crews drop sep­a­rately, and may be delayed or pre­vented from bring­ing them into action,” Wikipedia notes. Gliders, on the other hand, “allow crews to arrive at the drop zone along with their vehi­cles. They also min­i­mize expo­sure of the valu­able tow­ing air­craft, which needn’t appear over the bat­tle­field. So the Soviet Air Force ordered Oleg Antonov to design a glider for land­ing tanks.“
And thus was born the Antonov A-​​40 “Tank Wings” — a set of large wood and fab­ric biplane wings, fas­tened to a two-​​man, T-​​60 tank. The idea was tow the tank into the air with a heavy bomber or other large plane, and then release the thing on to the bat­tle­field. A pro­to­type was built and tested in 1942.
Now some might argue that Antonov’s Wings shouldn’t be a “Deadlies” nom­i­nee. Robot Economist says that the “Ruskies weren’t dumb enough to drop a manned tank.” But this site seems to sug­gest oth­er­wise:

In its only flight, the weight and drag of the tank caused its tow plane’s engines to over­heat very badly and the glider had to be released ear­lier than planned. Anokin flew the tank over a small, rough field and started the engine. He then engaged the drive mech­a­nism and sped up the tracks before mak­ing a smooth land­ing. He detached the fly­ing sur­faces and drove back to base where he gave the KT-​​40 an enthu­si­as­tic review.
But despite the tech­ni­cal suc­cess of the test, the fly­ing tank was not to go into pro­duc­tion. The Soviets lacked a plane up to the task of tow­ing the heavy KT-​​40. Also the T-​​60 tank wasnt much of a tank. In order to lighten the tank suf­fi­ciently and get it off the ground, it was allowed very lit­tle armour, and had to be stripped of most of its arma­ment and fuel. Such a poorly equipped tank wouldn’t have sur­vived long.

“It prob­a­bly would have been smarter to drop the thing on Germans,” Robot Economist quips. “It might do more dam­age that way.“
The Soviets weren’t the only folks think­ing about fly­ing tanks, in the 30’s and 40’s. In 1943, the Brits built a wooden, V-​​shaped glider, the “Baynes Bat,” meant to carry a tank into bat­tle. Before that, American mil­i­tary engi­neer Walter Christie tried to design a sim­i­lar sys­tem for the U.S. Army. As Modern Mechanix mag­a­zine exclaimed in 1932, “Imagine those two for­mi­da­ble weapons of mod­ern war­fare, the air­plane and the armored tank, com­bined into one ter­ri­ble machine of destruc­tion!“
Got an idea for the “Deadlies?” E-​​mail or post it here.

Nominated by Steve Weintz
You can’t have a con­test to find the most haz­ardous equip­ment of all time with­out includ­ing the leg­endary Davy Crockett — the tripod-​​mounted, atomic artillery launcher that inspired Starship Troopers’ nuclear bazooka.
The Davy Crockett came in two fla­vors, 120mm and 155mm. Both used the same round — an itty-​​bitty nuclear war­head, with a yield equal to “only” 10 to 20 tons of TNT (about what took down the Alfred R. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City). Maximum range was 2.5 miles for the big­ger model, half that for the mini. Which meant that the Davy’s three-​​man crew would sur­vive the ini­tial atomic blast. If they fired the shell per­fectly, that is. Unfortunately, “both recoil­less rifles proved to have poor accu­racy in test­ing,” Wikipedia notes.
But even if the Davy’s crew man­aged to make it past the first few sec­onds of their weapon’s fir­ing, they still had to con­tend with the sub­se­quent radi­a­tion. The min­i­mum det­o­na­tion range for the Davy was 1000 feet. The prob­lem is, the explo­sion kicked off an “almost instantly lethal radi­a­tion dosage (in excess of 10,000 rem) within 500 feet (150 m), and a prob­a­bly fatal dose (around 600 rem) within a quar­ter mile (400 meters).“
The Davy Crockett’s war­heads were tested twice, in 1962. 2,100 of the things were man­u­fac­tured and deployed with American armed forces, until the Davy was retired in 1971.
Got an idea for a “Deadly?” E-​​mail or post your picks.

Nominated by erewhon
Candidates for the “Deadlies” — our search to find the most dan­ger­ous tech­nolo­gies of all time — seem to come in two fla­vors. One group of gear is dan­ger­ous if mis­han­dled. The sec­ond seems almost deadly by design.
Count Darpa’s “man can­non” — a high-​​powered ejec­tor seat designed to forcibly shoot an unfor­tu­nate soul onto a roof — in cat­e­gory num­ber two. Here’s how Defense Tech described it back in May…

An inclined (ha) mem­ber of the mil­i­tary or emer­gency ser­vices sim­ply seats them­selves — and in around two sec­onds expe­ri­ences what can only be described as being ‘sneezed’ to a height of five sto­ries…
Darpa were happy to pro­vide their inspi­ra­tion in the patent:
“Circuses have amused crowds by shoot­ing per­form­ers out of can­nons. For recre­ational enjoy­ment, cer­tain tra­di­tional devices for launch­ing sub­jects cat­a­pult sub­jects to expe­ri­ence a free-​​fall sen­sa­tion sim­i­lar to the sen­sa­tion of bungee jump­ing or sky­div­ing. Aircraft ejec­tion seat tech­nol­ogy and air­craft car­rier launch­ing sys­tems, such as cat­a­pults, are also capa­ble of launch­ing pay­loads, how­ever, most of these designs have unpre­dictable and uncon­trol­lable tra­jec­to­ries and/​or can­not be imme­di­ately reset and reused.“
I’m glad to see they did their research; it’s been a tough year since ‘Captain Crazy Clowns Emergency Roof Cannons’ filed for bank­ruptcy — all those burnt cats…
“What is there­fore needed is a launcher that is con­trol­lable, and able to launch pay­loads through a repeat­able and pre­dictable tra­jec­tory. Furthermore, the launcher should have a sub­stan­tially short recy­cle time thus a user can launch another pay­load in a rel­a­tively short time after the pre­vi­ous launch.“
And con­sider his life insur­ance plans, while he’s at it.

What’s your pick for the most lethal gear ever? E-​​mail us or post it here.

Nominated by Nicholas Weaver. What’s your pick?
You wanna talk dan­ger­ous? What if a lit­tle radio inter­fer­ence could cause a 500-​​car pileup? Or send a jumbo jet plum­met­ing to its doom?
In the old days, to do a computer-​​controlled, “fly-​​by-​​wire” air­plane or “drive-​​by-​​wire car,” you had wires, and wire bun­dles, every­where. The wiring loom on some­thing as sim­ple as a motor­cy­cle can be a night­mare. That’s what you get, when you replace mechan­i­cal and hydraulic con­trols with dig­i­tal ones. These days, how­ever, its tend­ing towards CAN-​​based sys­tems (“Control Area Networks”), where a cou­ple of wires can com­mu­ni­cate all the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion.
But some bril­liant engi­neers seri­ously think that one wire is one too many. Yes, that’s right, pre­pare for the fly and drive-​​by-​​wireless future, fea­tur­ing Bluetooth (the same tech­nol­ogy that con­nects your mobile phone to the wire­less hand­set, oh-​​so-​​flawlessly, at all times, regard­less of inter­fer­ence, jam­ming, or a Bluetooth Sniper Rifle). That’s what some geniuses have in mind to used to con­trol those crit­i­cal fiddly-​​bits on your airplane’s wing.

The 3-​​metre-​​long uncrewed plane “AIVA” will rely entirely upon a Bluetooth wire­less net­work to relay mes­sages back and forth between crit­i­cal sys­tems
Tests flights on a partly wire­less pro­to­type car­ried out in Portugal have shown that the sys­tem works well. Cristina Santos, at Minho University in Portugal, who devel­oped the plane, says the aim is pri­mar­ily to reduce weight and power require­ments. “Also, if you do not have the cables then the sys­tem is much more flex­i­ble to changes,” she says.

But that’s not all. Don’t want those pesky hydraulic lines in your car?

Even so, Santos says the sys­tem would need exten­sive test­ing before she would be will­ing to ride in a fly-​​by-​​wireless plane. She also admits that strin­gent avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions may mean the tech­nol­ogy first appears in cars rather than planes.
“Cables are already a prob­lem in cars,” Santos says, because many man­u­fac­tur­ers cram ever more elec­tronic gad­getry into each new model.
She admits the idea of hav­ing no phys­i­cal con­nec­tions may seem scary at first but believes ulti­mately it will become an accepted way to con­trol brakes and even steer­ing mech­a­nisms in road vehicles.

Yes, you too can be liv­ing in a future where any­one with a sim­ple jam­mer — or just a few too many radios oper­at­ing on the same fre­quency — could stop everyone’s brakes from work­ing, caus­ing the Mother of All Car Crashes. A future where some pid­dling radio noise causes your plane to nose-​​dive all because it was too hard or too heavy for the engi­neer to drag a sin­gle wire (well, a sin­gle wire in addi­tion to the power cable, assum­ing you don’t have wire­less power instead) through the tail to the rud­der.
Me, given the choice? I’ll take that per­sonal copter thanky­ou­very­much. At least the engi­neers there prob­a­bly know how dan­ger­ous it is.
What’s your can­di­date for the most lethal gear of all time? E-​​mail us or post it here.

Nominees for the “Deadlies” are pil­ing up…
Michael votes for hang-​​gliding, (“killed 14 peo­ple I knew before I gave it up”) while Trainer flips the lethal thumbs-​​up to the Smart Gun.
“Any male sex device that accu­rately mim­ics any part of the female anatomy,” pants Lester. “Or the Space Shuttle.“
Haninah gives the cold eye to the inflat­able rafts they keep stowed away in air­planes. Kevin H., on the other hand, nom­i­nates the “Hungry-​​Man All Day Breakfast” — a 1030-​​calorie, 64-​​gram of fat, 2090 miligrams-​​of-​​sodium heart-​​stopper, from the gour­mands at Swanson.
Keep ‘em comin’… E-​​mail or post your picks.