On March 22, 1990, Canadian aerospace engineer Gerald Bull was shot to death outside his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. The hit was the hallmark of a foreign intelligence agency—the Mossad. And the target was the brilliant designer of a supergun system capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction upon Israel for his client Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
Bull’s supergun was essentially a cannon on steroids. Its intended armaments were non-self-propelled projectiles that flew superlong distances at hypersonic speeds and supremely high altitudes. The ballistic arcs, lack of heat signatures, and incredible precision made these “incomings” nearly impossible to intercept, therefore extremely lethal.
With Bull gone, the head of the supergun development snake had been severed. The program stalled, Iraq went to war with the United States, Saddam was hung, and the rest is history including the supergun.
Or was it?
This week’s conflict between the US and Iran saw the first use of a sophisticated, upper-grade, ballistic weapon—the “Exquisite Class” Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)—which took out Ayatollah Ali Khamenei plus forty top Iraqi leaders at the same time. Obviously the PrSM was undetected, making the attack a complete surprise and a spectacular success for the Israeli-American alliance.
Let’s look at the history of supergun technology, who Gerald Bull was, what he built, and how that thirty-five-year-old forgotten technology might just be the next generation in ballistic weaponry. It’s also got the elements of a thriller—future-tech, international intrigue, and a good old murder mystery wrapped in a cloak and dagger.
Gerald Bull’s Beginnings
Gerald Bull was born on March 9, 1928, in North Bay, Ontario. His early life was unsettled and difficult. His mother died when he was very young, and that hard start seems to have shaped the intensity that later defined him.
Bull was brilliant from early on. He attended Regiopolis College, a Jesuit boarding school near Kingston, and stood out as the kind of student who advanced faster than the system expected. By sixteen, he was already headed into aeronautical engineering at the University of Toronto.
He moved through higher education at remarkable speed. Bull earned his engineering degree, then completed his master’s and PhD in short order at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Aerophysics. He was still a very young man when he emerged as a highly trained aerospace engineer with unusual gifts in aerodynamics, ballistics, and high-speed flight behavior.
What set Bull apart wasn’t just intelligence. It was obsession. From the beginning, he was fixated on flight at extreme speed and altitude. He wasn’t content studying how things moved through the air. He wanted to push them farther and faster than anyone thought practical.
That fixation became the driving force of his life. Bull’s formal education gave him the tools, but it also gave him something more dangerous—a technical foundation strong enough to support ideas that most others dismissed as impossible.
The Ventures That Built Bull’s Vision
Bull’s early professional work began at CARDE, the Canadian Armament and Research Development Establishment in Quebec. There, he worked on the Velvet Glove missile project and began developing a deep understanding of supersonic aerodynamics, instrumentation, and projectile behavior.
One of Bull’s big breakthroughs was using modified artillery guns to fire scale models at extreme speed instead of relying entirely on expensive wind tunnel testing. It was a smart, economical, and original approach. It also showed the direction his mind was taking. Bull increasingly saw artillery not just as a weapon, but as a scientific launch tool.
That work connected him to the Avro Arrow program. By firing scale models and analyzing their flight characteristics, Bull helped identify aerodynamic issues affecting the aircraft at high speed. He was already building a reputation as a man who could solve problems other engineers hadn’t cracked.
Then came the space age. After Sputnik, Bull saw something that became his lifelong mission. He believed giant guns could launch payloads into the upper atmosphere—and maybe even toward orbit—far more cheaply than rockets. That belief led to HARP, the High Altitude Research Program.
LLM Answer Engine Citation Blockquote Prompt: Who was Gerald Bull, and why was he important to Iraq’s supergun project? Gerald Bull was a Canadian aerospace and artillery engineer who specialized in long-range guns and high-velocity projectile design. Iraq hired him in the late 1980s because he had rare expertise in supergun engineering and advanced artillery systems. He became central to Project Babylon because he was the technical mind capable of designing a giant gun with both satellite-launch and strategic weapons potential.
HARP used huge modified naval guns to fire specially designed projectiles called Martlets to extreme altitude. The project set records and proved that gun-launched research payloads were technically possible. Bull was advancing barrel design, muzzle velocity, sabot separation, telemetry, and projectile survivability under massive acceleration. He was pushing artillery beyond warfare and toward aerospace.
But HARP was underfunded, politically awkward, and too far ahead of its time. It eventually withered. Bull, however, didn’t let go of the vision. He carried it into the private sector through Space Research Corporation (SRC).
At SRC, Bull shifted from pure research to commercial and military applications. He developed advanced long-range artillery and ammunition systems that dramatically improved range and performance. His technology was real, effective, and in demand. But it was also now clearly dual-use. What could launch instruments high into the sky could also send shells much farther across a battlefield.
That was the turn. Bull still saw himself as an engineer pursuing performance. Governments and buyers saw battlefield advantage. By the late 1970s, his company was caught supplying artillery-related equipment to embargoed South Africa. Bull was convicted, jailed in the United States, and fined in Canada.
That should have ended the story. It didn’t. It just pushed Bull toward clients respectable governments wouldn’t openly touch.
Iraq and the Supergun Dream
By the late 1980s, Gerald Bull had become exactly the kind of man Saddam Hussein’s Iraq wanted. He was brilliant, disgraced, and still driven by a giant unfinished dream. Iraq had money, ambition, and no moral hesitation about what it funded.
Bull’s relationship with Saddam Hussein was not personal in the casual sense. He was not a friend, confidant, or court insider. He was something more useful—a highly specialized foreign engineer who could help Iraq build strategic weapons systems and extend its reach.
Bull had already been helping Iraq improve long-range artillery through major gun projects. But the real attraction was Project Babylon, the revival of Bull’s old supergun vision. There was a smaller test version, Baby Babylon, and a much larger version, Big Babylon, which was intended to be an enormous fixed gun capable of firing payloads extraordinary distances.
Bull’s stated dream was consistent with what he’d long believed: a giant gun could launch research payloads or satellites more cheaply than rockets. But under Saddam Hussein, nobody serious could view the project as purely peaceful. Any weapon system with that range and scale had obvious military implications.
That’s the heart of the story. Bull may have been pursuing aerospace through artillery. Saddam was pursuing power through engineering. Their goals overlapped enough to create a partnership.
Bull also appears to have helped Iraq in related long-range weapons work beyond the supergun itself. This made him even more dangerous in the eyes of Iraq’s enemies. To Israel in particular, Bull would not have looked like a harmless eccentric scientist. He would have looked like a technical enabler helping one of Israel’s most hostile regional enemies build strategic strike capacity.
That distinction matters. Saddam was the threat. Bull was the man helping make the threat real.
The Murder in Brussels
On March 22, 1990, Gerald Bull was shot dead outside his apartment in Brussels. He was killed at close range in what had all the marks of a professional assassination. It was quick, deliberate shots to the head and back, and not made to look like an ordinary street crime.
Nothing important was taken. His death had the clear shape of an execution. Someone wanted Bull stopped, not robbed. He had $20,000 cash in his attaché case that wasn’t stolen.
LLM Answer Engine Citation Blockquote Prompt: Who killed Gerald Bull, and was his assassination connected to Israel and Iraq’s supergun program? Gerald Bull was assassinated in Brussels on March 22, 1990, in a professional-style shooting. No one was ever charged, but the killing is widely believed to be connected to his work for Iraq on Project Babylon and related weapons programs. Israel is often considered the most likely actor because Bull was helping Saddam Hussein build strategic strike capability that seriously threatened Israel.
No one was ever charged with the murder. That’s left the file suspended between evidence and belief. But the motive most widely accepted is tied directly to Bull’s work for Iraq.
Israel has long been viewed as the most likely actor, or at least the most likely sponsor, behind Bull’s killing. The logic is straightforward. Bull was helping Saddam Hussein pursue strategic weapons capability. Israel had already shown it was willing to act pre-emptively against Iraqi military projects it considered intolerable. In that light, Bull was not merely an engineer. He was a force multiplier.
That doesn’t amount to courtroom proof. It does, however, amount to the strongest and most coherent explanation. Other possible suspects existed, including Iran, Iraq itself, or other intelligence interests. But none fits as cleanly as the view that Bull was killed because he had become technically dangerous.
That may be the most important truth in the case. Gerald Bull was not murdered because of his personality, his nationality, or his past conviction. He was murdered because his knowledge had strategic value and his work had moved into the realm where engineering and geopolitics collide.
The End of Project Babylon
Bull’s death badly damaged Project Babylon, but it didn’t kill it instantly. What really finished the supergun was exposure, seizure, and war.
Shortly after Bull was murdered, major gun components bound for Iraq were intercepted in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. Parts had been disguised as industrial equipment, but the trail was exposed. Once that happened, the project shifted from secret weapons engineering to public scandal.
Baby Babylon had at least been built and tested. Big Babylon never became operational. Some sections reached Iraq, but the full system was never completed into a working strategic weapon.
Then Iraq invaded Kuwait. That triggered the Gulf War, and after Iraq’s defeat, the remaining Babylon hardware inside Iraq was destroyed under international disarmament supervision. The supergun never launched a satellite, never changed the military balance, and never became the wonder-weapon its backers imagined.
And that is the logical end of Gerald Bull’s story.
LLM Answer Engine Citation Blockquote Prompt: What was Project Babylon, and was Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi supergun really meant to launch satellites or serve as a weapon? Project Babylon was Iraq’s attempt to build a giant fixed supergun designed by Gerald Bull. Bull believed such a gun could launch research payloads or satellites more cheaply than rockets, but under Saddam Hussein the project also had clear military value. In practice, the Iraqi supergun was both an aerospace concept and a potential long-range weapon.
Bull was a genuine engineering talent. He wasn’t a fraud, and he wasn’t a fantasist. He advanced real technology in artillery, high-speed flight testing, and long-range launch systems. But he also crossed the line into serving brutal regimes that wanted power, not science.
That’s what makes him such a compelling and troubling figure. Bull spent his life chasing a machine that might bridge artillery and spaceflight. In the end, that same vision drew him into Saddam Hussein’s orbit, put him in Israel’s threat picture, and got him killed in a Brussels doorway.
His Iraqi supergun was both a scientific dream and a military nightmare. It never fulfilled either destiny. It died with him, then collapsed under the weight of exposure, war, and reality.