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The secret lay not just in the same Stealth aircraft technology but also in the development of a Stealth ceramic that could withstand tremendous explosive barrel pressures and still maintain an integrity through the arc of its trajectory. The search for just such a molecularly aligned composite ceramic was inspired by the composite material of the Roswell spacecraft. In analysis after analysis, the army tried to determine how the extraterrestrials fabricated the material that formed the hull of the spacecraft but was unable to do so. The search for the kind of molecularly aligned composite began in the1950s even before General Trudeau took command of R&D, continued during my tenure at Foreign Technology when the early "Stealth" experimentation began at Lockheed that resulted in the F117 fighter and Stealth bomber, and continues right through to today. The general was also more than interested in the kinds of warheads we would propose for just such a shell, a warhead that did come into use in 1961 and was successfully deployed during the Gulf War. And we had a suggestion for a round that we thought could change the nature of the kinds of battles we projected we'd be fighting against the Warsaw Pact forces, a warhead fabricated out of depleted uranium. This was a way to utilize the stockpile of uranium we foresaw we'd have as a result of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors, reactors powering U.S. Navy vessels, and the nuclear reactors the army was developing for its own bases and for delivery to bases overseas. Depleted uranium was a dense, heavy metal, so dense in fact that conventional armament was no match for a high speed round tipped with it. Its ability to penetrate even the toughest of tank armor and detonate once it was inside the enemy vehicle meant that a single round fired from one of our own tanks equipped with a laser range finder would disable, if not completely destroy, an enemy tank. Depleted uranium would give us a decided advantage on a European battlefield on which we knew we'd be outnumbered two or three to one by the Warsaw Pact or in China where sheer numbers alone would mean that either we'd be overwhelmed or we'd have to resort to nuclear weapons. The depleted uranium shell kept us from having to go nuclear. Privately, | suggested to General Trudeau that depleted uranium also fulfilled our hidden agenda. It was another weapon in a potential arsenal we were building against hostile extraterrestrials. If depleted uranium could penetrate armor, might the heaviness of the element enable it to penetrate the composite skin of the spacecraft, especially if the spacecraft were on the ground? | suggested that it certainly merited development at the nearby Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and if it proved worthwhile, it was a weapon we should deploy. Even though the composite ceramic Stealth round is still an elusive dream in weapons development, the depleted uranium tipped war head saw action in the Gulf War, where it didn't just disable the tanks of the Iraqi Republican Guard, it exploded them into pieces. Fired from the laser range finder equipped Abrams tanks, TOW missile launchers, or even from Hedgehog infantry support aircraft, the depleted uranium tipped warheads wreaked havoc in the Gulf. They were one of the great weapons development successes of Army R&D that came out of what we learned from the Roswell crash. HARP was another project whose need for research and development was suggested to us by the challenge posed by flying saucers. They could out fly our own aircraft, we had no guided missiles that could bring them down, and we didn't have any guns that could shoot them down. We were also exploring weapons systems that had a double or triple use, and HARP, or "the big gun, " was one such system. Essentially, Project HARP was the brainchild of Canadian gunnery expert and scientist Dr. Gerald Bull. Bull had studied the threat posed by the German "Big Bertha" in World War | and the Nazi V3 supergun toward the end of World War Il. He realized that long range, high powered artillery was not only a practical solution to launching heavy payload shells, it was very affordable once the initial research and development phase was completed. Mass produced big guns and their ordinance, assembled in stages right on the site, could provide enormous firepower well back from the front lines to any army. They would become a strategic weapon to rain nuclear destruction down on enemy population centers or military staging areas. Dr. Bull had also suggested that the gun could be retasked as a launch vehicle, blasting huge rounds into orbit, which could then be jettisoned, like the booster stage of a rocket, so the payload warhead could thrust itself into position. This would require a minimum amount of rocket fuel and could effectively push a string of satellites into orbit very quickly, almost like an artillery barrage. If the army needed to put special satellites into orbit in a hurry or, better still, explosive satellites that would pose a threat to orbiting extraterrestrial vehicles, the big gun was one method of accomplishing this mission. There was still a third potential to the supergun. General Trudeau foresaw the ability of this weapon to launch rounds that could ultimately be placed into a lunar orbit. Especially if hostilities broke out between the United States and USSR or, as we expected, between Earth military forces and the extraterrestrials, we could resupply a 94 HARP - The High-Altitude Research Project