Project Babylon: An Intelligence Assessment of the Iraqi Supergun Program

Project Babylon was a confirmed, state-sponsored weapons development program initiated by the government of Iraq and active between 1988 and 1990. The program’s objective was the design, clandestine procurement, and construction of the largest conventional artillery pieces ever conceived. Contrary to some popular misconceptions, the technology was based entirely on established ballistic principles and chemical propellants, not on theoretical electromagnetic or railgun systems. The program was the brainchild and life’s work of the brilliant but controversial Canadian artillery engineer, Dr. Gerald Bull, who found in Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a patron with the ambition and resources to fund his vision.   

The program’s stated purpose was dual-use: to provide Iraq with a cost-effective, independent capability to launch satellites into low Earth orbit, while also possessing an inherent, undeniable potential for strategic long-range bombardment. This dual nature was a source of significant international concern, as the weapon’s theoretical range placed key regional adversaries, including Israel and Iran, within its reach.   

Project Babylon successfully produced and test-fired one functional, sub-scale prototype known as “Baby Babylon”. However, the full-scale weapon, “Big Babylon,” was never completed. The program was abruptly and decisively neutralized in the spring of 1990 through a sophisticated, multi-pronged counter-proliferation effort. This effort culminated in two key events: the assassination of Dr. Gerald Bull in Brussels in March 1990, which decapitated the project’s technical leadership, and the subsequent coordinated seizure of critical gun components by customs authorities across Europe in April 1990.   

Following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the government of Iraq admitted to the existence of the program. All remaining hardware, including the completed prototype and the unassembled components of the full-scale gun, were located, documented, and systematically destroyed under the supervision of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). The existence, technical specifications, and ultimate fate of Project Babylon are not matters of speculation or conspiracy theory; they are a thoroughly documented chapter in the history of unconventional weapons proliferation. This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the program, from its conceptual origins to its final dismantlement.  

II. The Architect and the Autocrat: Dr. Gerald Bull and the Ambitions of Saddam Hussein

The genesis of Project Babylon cannot be understood as a simple arms transaction. It was the result of a unique historical convergence: the meeting of a singular scientific genius, ostracized by the West and driven by a lifelong obsession, with a ruthless autocrat possessing grandiose regional ambitions and the financial means to realize them. Dr. Gerald Bull provided the vision and the technical expertise; Saddam Hussein provided the political will and the funding.

A. Dr. Gerald Bull: A Lifelong Obsession with Super-Artillery

Gerald Vincent Bull was, by any measure, a prodigy in the field of ballistics and aeronautical engineering. His career was defined by a relentless pursuit of a single, audacious idea: using massive cannons as a low-cost alternative to rockets for launching payloads into space. This was not a late-career fancy but the central theme of his entire professional life.   

Early Genius and Project HARP

Bull’s early work in the 1950s and 1960s established his reputation as a visionary engineer. His most significant achievement during this period was the High Altitude Research Project (HARP), a joint venture between the United States Department of Defense and Canada’s Department of National Defence. Officially, HARP was an upper-atmospheric research program intended to study the ballistics of re-entry vehicles, a critical area of research during the Cold War space race. Bull, however, always saw it as a stepping stone toward his ultimate goal of a true “space gun”.   

Operating primarily from a test site in Barbados, chosen for its proximity to the equator to leverage the Earth’s rotational velocity, Project HARP achieved remarkable successes. Using modified and extended 16-inch U.S. Navy battleship gun barrels, Bull’s team systematically pushed the boundaries of artillery. The projectiles, known as “Martlets,” were sophisticated finned vehicles encased in wooden sabots that would break away after leaving the muzzle. These were not simple shells but instrumented research craft carrying payloads for atmospheric study.   

The project’s technical accomplishments were undeniable. By 1963, a HARP gun had set a world altitude record of 92 km for a gun-launched projectile. The program culminated on November 18, 1966, when a HARP gun at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona fired a 180 kg (400 lb) projectile to an altitude of 180 km (110 mi). This launch crossed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, and set a world record that remains unbroken to this day. Project HARP proved, beyond any doubt, that the fundamental physics of Bull’s space gun concept were sound. The primary obstacles were not theoretical but matters of engineering scale and political funding.   

Fall from Grace and Turn to the Private Sector

Despite its technical triumphs, Project HARP was canceled in 1967. The termination was a result of shifting government priorities, bureaucratic opposition, and the political climate of the Vietnam War, which strained Canadian-U.S. defense relations. Bull was left deeply embittered, viewing the cancellation as a shortsighted betrayal by the “amateur scientists” and “bureaucratic redtape” of the Western military-scientific establishment he had once served.   

Determined to continue his work, Bull privatized the remnants of HARP, founding the Space Research Corporation (SRC) with facilities straddling the U.S.-Canada border in Quebec and Vermont. While he continued to lobby Western governments to fund his space-launch concepts, he increasingly turned his genius to the more lucrative field of conventional artillery development. His company developed some of the most advanced artillery systems in the world, including the GC-45 howitzer, which offered ranges far exceeding contemporary NATO systems.   

This path ultimately led to his downfall in the West. In the late 1970s, Bull used SRC to illegally sell artillery technology and tens of thousands of shells to the apartheid regime in South Africa, which was under a strict UN arms embargo. The deal, which some evidence suggests was undertaken with the tacit knowledge of elements within the CIA, resulted in Bull’s prosecution and conviction in the United States. He was sentenced to six months in a minimum-security prison in 1980. Upon his release, he felt permanently alienated from North America and moved his operations to Brussels, Belgium. This sequence of events—the cancellation of HARP, the turn to the private arms market, and the criminal conviction—was critical. It transformed one of the West’s most brilliant ballistics experts into a freelance agent, a man with unparalleled and dangerous knowledge, available to any government willing to fund his ultimate ambition.   

B. Saddam Hussein’s Post-War Strategic Imperatives

In 1988, Iraq was a nation shaped by eight years of brutal, attritional warfare with Iran. The Iran-Iraq War, which ended in a bloody stalemate, left Saddam Hussein’s regime with a complex and challenging strategic reality. While the Iraqi Army had swelled to become one of the largest and most battle-hardened in the world, the country was economically devastated and saddled with massive foreign debt. In this context, Saddam pursued a two-pronged strategy: solidifying his domestic power and projecting Iraqi strength abroad to establish the nation as the undisputed hegemon of the Persian Gulf and a leader of the Arab world.   

A Drive for Strategic Weapons

A central pillar of this strategy was the aggressive pursuit of advanced and unconventional weapons systems. This was not a new policy, but it accelerated dramatically in the post-war period. Iraq’s strategic weapons programs were designed to deter its primary regional adversaries, Iran and Israel, and to elevate Iraq’s international prestige.

During the latter stages of the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq had engaged in the “War of the Cities,” launching modified Soviet-made Scud missiles at Iranian population centers, including Tehran. This experience solidified the regime’s belief in the political and psychological value of long-range strike capabilities. Consequently, Iraq invested heavily in modifying its Scud arsenal, extending its range to create the Al-Hussein missile, which could reach targets deeper inside Iran and, crucially, Israel.   

Beyond ballistic missiles, the regime was actively developing a formidable chemical weapons program, which it had already used with devastating effect against both Iranian troops and its own Kurdish population. Parallel efforts were underway to develop biological and nuclear weapons, though these were in earlier stages.   

It is within this established pattern of seeking game-changing, high-prestige strategic weapons that Project Babylon must be understood. The supergun was not an anomaly; it was the logical, if grandiose, extension of an existing strategic imperative. The project found fertile ground in a political environment where Western governments, particularly the United States under the Reagan and Bush administrations, viewed Iraq as a necessary strategic counterweight to the revolutionary regime in Iran. This policy, which led to Iraq’s removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1982 and the provision of intelligence and dual-use technology, created a permissive international environment where a project of Babylon’s audacity could be initiated with a degree of covert Western acquiescence.   

The relationship between Bull and Iraq began in 1981 but solidified in 1988 with a $25 million contract for the supergun project. Bull’s initial work for Iraq, which involved successfully upgrading their existing artillery systems for the war effort, had built a foundation of trust and demonstrated his immense value to the regime. This paved the way for him to propose his ultimate dream. The project was a symbiotic relationship born of a perfect storm of circumstances. Bull, the ostracized genius, finally found a patron with the ambition and the nine-figure budget to build his space gun. Saddam, the ambitious dictator, found a scientist who could deliver a weapon of unprecedented scale, a tool of immense psychological power and international prestige.   

III. Anatomy of a Supergun: Technical and Engineering Analysis

Project Babylon was not a single weapon but a phased development program. It began with a large-scale, functional prototype to validate the design and engineering principles, and was intended to culminate in the construction of two full-scale, operational superguns of unprecedented size and power. The entire program was a testament to Dr. Bull’s mastery of conventional artillery science, pushing known principles to their absolute engineering limits.

A. “Baby Babylon” (The S-350 L150 Test Gun)

The first physical hardware produced by the project was a prototype cannon officially designated the S-350 L150, but widely known as “Baby Babylon”. Its purpose was not to be an operational weapon but a crucial engineering testbed. It was designed to provide real-world data on the complex challenges of constructing and firing such a large-caliber, long-barrel weapon. This included validating the structural integrity of the segmented barrel design, testing the seals between sections under immense pressure, and refining the formulation and geometry of the specialized propellant charges.   

Technical Specifications

Baby Babylon was a colossal piece of artillery in its own right, dwarfing most conventional guns. Its key specifications were:

• Bore: 350 mm (13.8 inches)   
• Barrel Length: 46 meters (151 feet)   
• Total Weight: 102 tonnes   

The smooth-bore barrel was constructed from multiple, flanged steel sections bolted together, a core design principle that would be scaled up for the final weapon.   

Operational History

Construction of Baby Babylon was completed in May 1989 at a test site in Jabal Hamrayn, approximately 145 km north of Baghdad. The initial testing phase was conducted with the gun mounted horizontally on a set of railcars. This unusual setup was a practical solution to a significant engineering problem: a recoil mechanism for a gun of this size had not yet been built. The railcars allowed the entire assembly to move backward several meters upon firing, safely absorbing the powerful recoil forces.   

During this phase, the gun was fired multiple times using solid lead projectiles and inert cylindrical test slugs designed to replicate the mass of the planned operational rounds. Following the successful horizontal tests, the gun was dismantled and reassembled on a specially prepared concrete emplacement on a hillside, fixed at a 45-degree angle of elevation. This new configuration was intended to more closely simulate the final fixed emplacement of the full-scale Big Babylon and to allow for longer-range test firings.   

The test program was a qualified success. It proved the fundamental design was viable, but it also revealed significant technical challenges, most notably with maintaining a perfect seal between the barrel segments under the extreme pressures of firing. Engineers were actively working to resolve these issues at the time of Dr. Bull’s assassination in March 1990, which brought all further development to a halt.   

B. “Big Babylon” (The S-1000 Supergun)

The ultimate goal of Project Babylon was the construction of two full-scale superguns, designated S-1000. These were to be the largest and most powerful cannons ever built, representing the culmination of Dr. Bull’s life’s work. The design was a direct scaling-up of the principles tested with Baby Babylon, but to a truly monumental degree.   

Technical Specifications

The planned dimensions of Big Babylon placed it in a class of its own, far surpassing any historical artillery piece.

• Bore: 1,000 mm (1 meter, or 3.3 feet)   
• Barrel Length: 156 meters (512 feet)   
• Total Weight: Approximately 2,100 tonnes   
• Barrel Weight: The barrel assembly alone weighed 1,655 tonnes   
• Component Weights: The breech was to weigh 165-182 tonnes, with four recoil cylinders adding another 220-240 tonnes.   

The barrel was to be assembled from 26 individual, six-meter-long, flanged tubes forged from high-grade steel, each bolted together to form the complete 156-meter length. To withstand the colossal firing pressures, the barrel walls were designed to be 30 cm thick at the breech, tapering to 6.5 cm at the muzzle. The original design envisioned the massive barrel being suspended by cables from a large steel framework, but calculations later showed this would be insufficiently rigid, and the plan was revised to a fixed emplacement excavated into the side of a hill, similar to the final mounting of Baby Babylon.   

Propulsion System

The power source for Big Babylon was a conventional, single-stage chemical propellant charge of staggering proportions. Each firing would have consumed approximately 9 tonnes (9,000 kg) of a specially formulated, high-energy propellant with a solid nitroglycerine base. The detonation of this charge would have generated an estimated recoil force of 27,000 tonnes—a force comparable to the ground shock of a small tactical nuclear weapon. The firing event would have been so powerful as to be detectable by seismographs around the world, instantly revealing the weapon’s location.   

C. Projectiles and Payloads

The versatility of the Babylon system lay in its projected ability to fire a range of advanced projectiles, a concept drawn directly from Dr. Bull’s earlier work on Project HARP. The two primary types were subcaliber projectiles and, more significantly, Gun-Launched Rockets (GLRs). A GLR is not simply a shell with a rocket motor but a complete rocket vehicle, fired from the gun barrel as its first stage. The gun would provide the initial, massive acceleration to high altitude and velocity, after which the rocket’s own motor would ignite to carry the payload further or into orbit.   

The design specifications for Big Babylon indicated two primary mission profiles:

1. Strategic Bombardment: Firing a 600 kg conventional or unconventional warhead to a maximum range of approximately 1,000 km.   
2. Satellite Launch: Firing a 2,000 kg multi-stage rocket-assisted projectile, which would be capable of placing a net payload of around 200 kg into a stable low Earth orbit. This payload capacity would be sufficient for a small reconnaissance or communications satellite.   

The development of these complex projectiles, particularly the GLRs and their required guidance systems, was a significant undertaking in itself. While designs existed, Iraq claimed after the war to have never received the necessary materials or assistance to produce functional rocket-assisted projectiles.   

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of 20th Century Superguns

To fully appreciate the unprecedented scale of Project Babylon, it is useful to compare it with its most famous historical predecessors. The following table provides a quantitative analysis of the key specifications of the Babylon guns against Germany’s World War II-era superguns.

Weapon System	Nation of Origin	Caliber (Bore)	Barrel Length	Total Weight	Max Effective Range	Propulsion Method	Mobility
Big Babylon	Iraq	1000 mm	156 m	~2,100 tonnes	~1,000 km	Single-Stage Conventional	Immobile
Baby Babylon	Iraq	350 mm	46 m	102 tonnes	~750 km	Single-Stage Conventional	Immobile
V-3 Cannon	Germany	150 mm	~130 m	N/A (Fixed Site)	~165 km	Multi-Stage Sequential	Immobile
Schwerer Gustav	Germany	800 mm	32.5 m	1,350 tonnes	~47 km	Single-Stage Conventional	Rail-Mobile

Export to Sheets

This comparison highlights a crucial distinction in engineering philosophy. The Nazi V-3 cannon was a technologically novel and complex design that relied on a series of secondary propellant charges firing sequentially along the barrel to accelerate the projectile. This “multi-charge” principle proved exceedingly difficult to synchronize and was ultimately unreliable and ineffective. The Schwerer Gustav, while massive, was a more traditional railway gun.   

Project Babylon, in contrast, did not attempt to invent a new method of propulsion. Instead, Dr. Bull applied the well-understood principles of conventional, single-charge artillery that he had refined to an art form during Project HARP.The challenge for Babylon was not one of theoretical physics but of extreme-scale engineering: designing materials that could withstand the immense pressures, managing the colossal recoil forces, and manufacturing components of unprecedented size to exacting tolerances. Bull’s genius in this project was less about theoretical invention and more about the practical application of known science on a scale never before attempted. This reliance on proven principles made the project far more technologically plausible than its Nazi predecessor, and therefore, a more credible and concerning threat in the eyes of international intelligence agencies.   

IV. A Global Conspiracy of Parts: The Clandestine Procurement Network

The sheer scale of Project Babylon meant that its components could not be manufactured within Iraq, which lacked the necessary advanced industrial capabilities. The program’s success depended entirely on a sophisticated and clandestine international procurement network, orchestrated by Dr. Bull and his Space Research Corporation (SRC). This network cleverly exploited the complexities of international trade law and the inherent ambiguity of dual-use technologies to acquire the necessary parts from specialized manufacturers across Europe.   

A. The “PC-2” Cover Story

The entire global procurement effort was conducted under an elaborate deception. The official cover story was that the components were for a major Iraqi state project designated “Petrochemical Complex-2,” or “PC-2”. Under this guise, the massive steel tubes for the barrel were manifested as sections of oil pipeline or high-pressure vessels for chemical reactors. Other complex mechanical parts were described as components for industrial machinery. This seemingly legitimate commercial enterprise allowed SRC to place orders with leading European engineering firms without immediately raising red flags about the project’s true military nature.   

B. The European Manufacturing Web

Dr. Bull’s team disaggregated the supergun’s design into a series of discrete components, commissioning different parts from different companies in different countries. This compartmentalized approach ensured that, for a long time, no single manufacturer had a complete picture of the final product.

• United Kingdom: The UK was the industrial heart of the manufacturing effort, producing the most critical and largest components—the barrel tubes themselves. Orders for the massive, high-grade forged steel tubes were placed with two prominent British firms: Sheffield Forgemasters and Walter Somers of Halesowen.Simultaneously, an Iraqi-controlled front company, TMG Engineering Ltd, purchased Matrix Churchill, a well-established British machine tool manufacturer. This acquisition gave Iraq direct access not only to the advanced machinery but also to the computer programming and expertise needed to produce a wide range of munitions, separate from but complementary to the supergun project.   
• Spain and Switzerland: Specialized firms in these countries were contracted to manufacture some of the most technologically complex components. Spanish companies were involved in building the structural support pieces and the elevating and traversing mechanisms for the planned mobile versions of the gun. Swiss manufacturers produced at least one of the high-strength breeches and critical parts for the hydraulic recoil mechanisms.   
• Other European Nations: The procurement web extended further. A Belgian company, Poudreries Réunies de Belgique (PRB), was contracted to produce the tons of specialized, high-energy propellant required for the guns.Firms in Italy, Germany, and France also supplied a variety of other essential components.   

C. The Role of Space Research Corporation (SRC)

Dr. Bull’s company, SRC, served as the central nervous system for this entire global operation. Operating from its headquarters in Brussels, SRC held the master blueprints. Its engineers translated the overall design into specific manufacturing orders, placed the contracts with the various European firms, and managed the incredibly complex logistics of shipping the finished components from multiple countries to Iraq. This centralized control and coordination was the key to the entire scheme.   

This procurement strategy was a masterclass in exploiting the seams of the international non-proliferation regime. By breaking the weapon down into its constituent “dual-use” parts, the project managers created a system that was remarkably resilient to casual scrutiny. A six-meter forged steel tube is just an industrial component until it is bolted to twenty-five others and fitted with a breech and recoil mechanism. Declassified intelligence analysis confirms that many of the participating companies were likely unaware of the final application of the parts they were producing. They were simply fulfilling a commercial contract for a high-specification piece of industrial hardware for what appeared to be a legitimate petrochemical project.   

This approach deliberately targeted a fundamental weakness in export control laws, which have historically struggled to effectively regulate items that have both legitimate civilian and potential military applications. The Project Babylon network demonstrates a critical and enduring vulnerability in global security: a determined state actor, guided by sufficient technical expertise, can leverage the interconnected global industrial base to acquire the components for advanced and unconventional weapons systems under the cloak of legitimate international commerce. The network only began to unravel when intelligence agencies received a specific tip-off, allowing them to see the complete picture that had been so carefully disaggregated.   

V. Strategic Calculus: White Elephant or Decisive Weapon?

The immense investment in Project Babylon raises a critical question: what was its intended strategic purpose? Was it, as Dr. Bull passionately argued, a visionary and peaceful space-launch system? Or was it, as international intelligence agencies feared, a strategic weapon of terror? An objective analysis reveals that it was likely intended to be both, but its profound operational liabilities made it a far more effective political tool than a practical military asset.

A. The Case for a Space-Launch System

The primary public justification for Project Babylon, and the driving passion of its creator, was its potential as a “space gun”. Drawing on the successes of Project HARP, Bull argued that a large-caliber gun could provide the first stage of a satellite launch far more cheaply than conventional multi-stage rockets. A gun launch is reusable, requires less complex rocketry, and does not need to lift its own fuel for the initial boost out of the dense lower atmosphere.   

For Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an indigenous satellite launch capability would have been a strategic prize of immense value. It would have offered the potential for independent intelligence gathering through reconnaissance satellites, as well as secure communications and geodetic research, all without reliance on foreign powers. One Iraqi defector even claimed a specific anti-satellite mission was envisioned, where the gun would fire a shell that would spray a sticky substance onto enemy spy satellites, effectively blinding them. This civilian and quasi-military space application was the project’s most defensible rationale.   

B. The Case for a Strategic Weapon

Despite the space-launch narrative, the primary concern for Iraq’s regional rivals and Western intelligence was the supergun’s undeniable potential as a long-range weapon system.   

• Capabilities and Reach: With a projected range of up to 1,000 km, Big Babylon would have been capable of striking the capitals and strategic centers of Iraq’s primary adversaries. Tel Aviv and other major Israeli cities, as well as Tehran and central Iran, would all have been within its reach. The core threat was the gun’s potential to deliver unconventional warheads. A projectile with a 600 kg payload capacity could easily accommodate a chemical or biological agent dispenser, or, in the future, a crude nuclear device.   
• Advantages over Ballistic Missiles: In some respects, the supergun offered tactical advantages over the Scud-variant missiles that formed the backbone of Iraq’s strategic arsenal. A gun-fired projectile, traveling at hypersonic velocities on a ballistic trajectory, would have been significantly smaller, faster, and more difficult to detect and intercept than a large, relatively slow-burning ballistic missile. Furthermore, the cost per shot, consisting mainly of the projectile and propellant, would have been substantially lower than that of a complex guided missile. This economic advantage could have enabled Iraq to conduct sustained bombardment campaigns, a tactic that would be prohibitively expensive with missiles.   

C. Overwhelming Operational Liabilities (The “White Elephant” Argument)

While the gun’s potential reach and payload were formidable on paper, its practical application as a military weapon was severely hampered by a number of profound and likely insurmountable operational liabilities.

• Immobility and Extreme Vulnerability: The defining characteristic of both Big Babylon and its prototype was their fixed, immobile nature. The guns were simply too massive to be moved. They had to be permanently installed in large, specially prepared emplacements, likely excavated into mountainsides for support. This made them the definition of a static target. Their immense size would have made them easily identifiable to satellite reconnaissance, and their precise coordinates would have been known to every major intelligence service in the world long before they became operational. As a fixed, high-value strategic asset, the supergun would have been extraordinarily vulnerable to a preemptive air strike, a lesson learned decades earlier when the Royal Air Force located and destroyed the Nazi V-3 supergun sites in France before they could be used against London.   
• Massive and Unmistakable Firing Signature: The weapon’s propulsion system was also its Achilles’ heel. The detonation of nine metric tons of high-energy propellant would have produced a colossal acoustic, thermal, and seismic signature. This event would have been instantly detectable by a global network of sensors, from infrared satellites to seismological stations. The supergun was, in effect, a weapon that could likely only be fired once. The moment it was used, its exact location would be confirmed, and it would become the immediate, top-priority target for overwhelming retaliatory strikes.   
• Slow Rate of Fire and Poor Accuracy: The logistics of loading and firing such a weapon would have been slow and cumbersome, precluding any kind of rapid-fire capability. More importantly, at ranges of up to 1,000 km, an unguided ballistic projectile is inherently inaccurate. While Iraq was working on developing terminal guidance systems for the projectiles, this technology was complex, and there is no evidence it was ever perfected. Without a reliable guidance package hardened to withstand the immense G-forces of launch, the supergun would have been an area weapon at best, incapable of precisely striking military targets and suitable only for terrorizing large civilian population centers.   

From a purely military perspective, Project Babylon appears to be a strategic folly—a “white elephant” that consumed vast resources for a capability that was less flexible, less survivable, and less practical than Iraq’s existing mobile Scud missile force. However, this analysis is incomplete because it fails to account for the political and psychological dimensions of Saddam Hussein’s strategy.   

The true value of the supergun was not as a conventional military asset for winning battles. Its purpose was rooted in the same logic as the Nazi V-weapons: to function as a political weapon of terror and coercion. The power of the supergun lay not in its battlefield utility, but in its very existence. The ability to hold an adversary’s capital city under the threat of bombardment from a gun of mythical proportions is a tool of immense psychological and diplomatic leverage. It was a weapon designed to intimidate, to deter, and to project an image of technological prowess and national power, thereby elevating Saddam’s prestige on the world stage. He was not acquiring a tactical weapon; he was acquiring a symbol of power and a tool of strategic intimidation. The planned follow-on phases of the project, which included smaller, mobile 350-mm guns capable of elevation and traverse, represented the logical evolution of the program: taking the proven technology and “weaponizing” it into a more practical and survivable military system.   

VI. Checkmate: Assassination, Seizure, and Destruction

The ambitious arc of Project Babylon came to a sudden and violent end in the spring of 1990. The program’s rapid collapse was not the result of a single failure but of a deliberate and highly effective counter-proliferation campaign that targeted the project’s two critical points of vulnerability: its reliance on the singular genius of Dr. Gerald Bull and its dependence on a fragile international supply chain.

A. The Assassination of Dr. Gerald Bull

On the evening of March 22, 1990, as Dr. Gerald Bull returned to his apartment in Brussels, he was ambushed and killed by a professional hit squad. He was shot five times with a silenced automatic weapon as he fumbled for his keys.The assassins left behind a briefcase containing $20,000 in cash, ruling out robbery as a motive. The killers were never identified, and no group ever claimed responsibility for the murder.   

Primary Suspect: The Mossad

While several state actors, including Iran and even factions within Iraq, had potential motives, the overwhelming consensus among Western intelligence analysts and historians points to the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. The Israeli government viewed Iraq’s aggressive pursuit of strategic weapons as an existential threat. While Project Babylon was a long-term concern, Bull’s concurrent work for the Iraqi regime was of far more immediate and pressing danger to Israeli security.   

At the same time he was developing the supergun, Bull was also applying his expertise to improve the aerodynamics and re-entry vehicle design for Iraq’s long-range Scud missile program. An improved, more accurate, and longer-range Iraqi ballistic missile capable of delivering chemical warheads was a practical and imminent threat, unlike the supergun, which was still years from completion and had questionable military utility. By eliminating Dr. Bull, the perpetrators not only crippled the supergun project but, more importantly, dealt a severe blow to Iraq’s ballistic missile development program. The assassination was a classic decapitation strike, removing the irreplaceable human “brain” of Iraq’s most advanced weapons projects.   

B. The “Supergun Affair”: Coordinated Customs Seizures

With its technical mastermind eliminated, the project was critically wounded. The final blow came just weeks later, delivered not by assassins, but by customs officers.

• The Tipping Point: In early April 1990, acting on a well-placed intelligence tip, British Customs and Excise officers intercepted a shipment at the Teesport Docks in Middlesbrough. The cargo consisted of eight massive, precision-machined steel tubes. The shipping manifest declared them to be “petrochemical pressure vessels” destined for Iraq’s PC-2 project. The seizure made international headlines, publicly exposing the secret supergun project to the world.   
• Cascading Failure: The public disclosure of the “Supergun Affair” in the UK triggered a domino effect across Europe. Alerted to the true nature of the components, authorities in other countries moved to impound related shipments. More barrel sections were seized in Greece and Turkey while in transit by truck to Iraq. Critical components for the recoil mechanism and slide bearings were confiscated at their manufacturing sites in Spain and Switzerland. This coordinated series of seizures effectively severed the project’s logistical arteries, cutting off the flow of essential parts and making completion of the guns impossible.   

The close timing of the assassination in March and the customs seizures in April strongly suggests a sophisticated, two-pronged strategy, likely involving intelligence sharing between allied nations. The first prong was a covert, kinetic action that eliminated the project’s leadership. The second was an overt action, conducted through legal and law enforcement channels, that dismantled its supply chain. Together, they ensured the complete and irreversible termination of Project Babylon.

C. Post-Gulf War: The Final Confirmation and Destruction

The final, irrefutable proof of Project Babylon’s existence and scale came after the 1991 Gulf War. As part of the ceasefire agreements mandated by United Nations Security Council resolutions, Iraq was required to declare and eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and advanced conventional weapons programs.

• UNSCOM Inspections: After initial denials, the Iraqi regime eventually admitted to the existence of a “long-range gun program”. They led inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to the various sites. At Jabal Hamrayn, inspectors found the fully assembled “Baby Babylon” prototype, still in place on its 45-degree mountainside emplacement. At a separate industrial site at Iskandariyah, they found a vast collection of unassembled components for the full-scale “Big Babylon,” including 44 of the 52 barrel tubes that had already been delivered prior to the 1990 seizures.   
• Destruction and Legacy: Under the watchful eyes of UNSCOM, all located supergun hardware was systematically destroyed. The Baby Babylon cannon was cut apart with demolition charges, as were the dozens of massive barrel sections and other components for Big Babylon. Over a metric ton of the specialized supergun propellant was also found and destroyed. This process provided the final, tangible confirmation of the project’s reality.   

Today, the story does not exist only in declassified documents and historical accounts. Several of the barrel sections seized by UK Customs in 1990 were preserved. They remain on public display at the Royal Armouries museum at Fort Nelson in Portsmouth, UK, serving as silent, rusting testaments to one of the most audacious and ambitious secret weapons projects of the 20th century.   

VII. Conclusion: The Echo of Babylon

Project Babylon was not a myth or a flight of fancy. It was a real, technologically sophisticated, and well-funded program that successfully produced a functional prototype of a super-artillery system. Its ultimate failure was as dramatic as its ambition, brought about by a targeted counter-proliferation campaign that surgically removed its key personnel and dismantled its global supply chain. For the modern military professional, the story of the Iraqi supergun is more than a historical curiosity; it is a critical case study with enduring relevance.

The analysis of Project Babylon yields several key conclusions:

1. The Decisive Role of the Individual: The project underscores the profound impact a single individual with unique expertise can have on a state’s strategic capabilities. Project Babylon was entirely dependent on the vision and technical genius of Dr. Gerald Bull. His removal effectively ended the program, demonstrating that targeting key human nodes can be a highly effective counter-proliferation tactic.
2. The Political Nature of “Prestige” Weapons: From a purely military cost-benefit perspective, the fixed-emplacement Big Babylon was a deeply flawed concept. Its value was not in its tactical utility but in its political and psychological impact. Authoritarian regimes, driven by goals of regional hegemony and international prestige, may pursue such “white elephant” projects that appear irrational by conventional military doctrine. Understanding this political calculus is essential for accurately assessing a potential adversary’s strategic intentions.
3. The Enduring Vulnerability of Global Supply Chains: The project’s clandestine procurement network was a masterclass in exploiting the seams of international export controls. By compartmentalizing manufacturing and disguising military components as dual-use industrial goods, Iraq and SRC were able to acquire the building blocks of a strategic weapon system from some of Europe’s leading engineering firms. This highlights a persistent vulnerability that has only been amplified in the current era of globalization and complex, disaggregated supply chains.
4. The Efficacy of Multi-Domain Counter-Proliferation: The neutralization of Project Babylon was a textbook example of a successful, multi-faceted strategy. It combined covert kinetic action (the assassination) with overt law enforcement and diplomatic pressure (the customs seizures), followed by post-conflict disarmament and verification (UNSCOM inspections). This demonstrates that effectively countering proliferation threats often requires a coordinated, multi-domain approach that leverages intelligence, diplomatic, legal, and, when necessary, clandestine instruments of power.

The story of Saddam Hussein’s supergun serves as a stark cautionary tale. It reveals what can happen when immense technical skill is untethered from ethical restraint and placed in the service of unchecked political ambition. The rusting tubes of Big Babylon on display in a British museum are not merely relics of a failed weapons project; they are an echo of a grand and dangerous dream, and a reminder of the constant vigilance required to prevent such dreams from becoming reality.