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A Western Sydney Gang Got Hold of Military-Grade Rocket Launchers
- tokai 7y agoI remember a biker war here in the 90s, where one group attacked the other groups house party with a rocket launcher. Not very effective, but it really sends a message.
- thundergolfer 7y agoWhat scum Della-Vedova is. His ‘brain fade’ story is complete bollocks too. Who realises they’ve accidentally failed to destroy the full set of rockets and then because they’re scared of being demoted doesn’t turn them in and instead sells them to someone in a bike gang.
- dwd 7y agoWho forgets they have a boot full of rocket launchers? Heads should have rolled in the army for this lapse, but makes you wonder if weapons go missing all the time.
- adrianN 7y agoI'm pretty sure weapons go missing all the time.
- sandworm101 7y agoWhen your job means handling weapons all day, forgetting about a set is no more difficult than a tech worker forgetting about a pile of blade servers. It happens. Militaries implement systems for dealing with such things. For instance, red amnesty boxes are common at canadian bases. A rocket launcher may seem scary and horribly dangerous, but sleep beside them for a few months and they become very normal.
- skinkestek 7y agoHeadlines in Norway today: a high ranking police officer "forgetting" or forgetting to hand in some weapons he was supposed to turn in for a friend or something. Seems like he might get away without a charge since he delivered them during an amnesty which - as far as I understand - means he legally cannot be punished for possession prior to handing them in.
- melcor 7y agoWeapons do go missing all the time. Or at least weapons with the same serial/registration numbers of destroyed weapons show up all the time, be it at crime scenes, terrorist orgs, or weapons collectors.
- schappim 7y agoIs it me or is there much more Australian content on HN these days?
- dwd 7y agoBasically it's a time zone thing. It's currently 6/7pm on the Australian East coast and America is still asleep.
- chris_wot 7y agoWe also do a lot of interesting things.
- whatusername 7y agoAnd we (aussies) all notice and read the Australian articles specifically. I may not have looked at this one if it was "San Fransisco Gang..." but since it was a Western Sydney gang -- I instantly opened it.
- exikyut 7y agoIn my case it was because (not knowing the rocket launchers were comparatively tiny, and naively imagining missiles of some kind) I read the location in the title and thought "yikes, if they aim wrong they might hit my house, I should definitely read this." I was walking through Parramatta a couple hours ago, for reference.
- dwd 7y agoThe comment above about our Gov doing fucked up things could be more on point. But we do a lot of interesting things, often without the fanfare you see in the SV bubble that's worth talking about.
- twic 7y agoAustralia is, to an extent, like a big, dry Florida.
- onion2k 7y agoIs there such a thing as "non-military rocket launchers"?
- flukus 7y agoTechnically there's things like this: https://makezine.com/projects/water-rocket-launcher/ https://makezine.com/projects/water-rocket-launcher/ and some chemical equivalents, but I think the payload is probably a bigger issue than the launch mechanism.
- arethuza 7y agoI believe the are fairly common in maritime circles for throwing lines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_thrower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_thrower
- TecoAndJix 7y agoThe best thing about those line guns is everyone watches you do it and if you miss you get laughed at.
- arethuza 7y agoI have a vague recollection of such things from high school - we used to get seamanship and navigation taught (NB as two separate subjects!).
- bloak 7y agoIt's the "grade" that makes the headline ridiculous for me. I can imagine military and non-military rocket launchers, but "military-grade rocket launchers" makes it sound like there's a QC stage at the end of the conveyor belt where someone says: "This one's a bit wonky. The army won't take it. We'll sell it to a motorcycle gang instead."
- mschuster91 7y ago> makes it sound like there's a QC stage at the end of the conveyor belt No, the QC stage is at design/purchase level. Different armies, different needs, different rockets. Some like the Palestinians are happy with utter crap, as long as it gets the job done (it's a common guerilla tactic, minimal expense to oneself, but great expense to the other side). Some only need to defend against car bombs meaning a "cheap" version is sufficient, some need to defend against old Russian made tanks and some need to defend against tanks with active armor. Some armies need, for different scenarios, all the variants - and cost-effective, which means it doesn't make economic sense to deploy ultra-modern tankbusters against terrorists in Toyota Hiluxes, just as it doesn't make sense to target US tanks with a WW2 panzerfaust.
- ladberg 7y agoIn 2001, Shane Della-Vedova, a military captain in the army explosives team, was asked to dispose of ten M72 shoulder-fired rocket launchers from an Australian Defence Force base. On the 8th of June, Shane spent the day blowing up M1 rockets that the Defence Force claimed were unsafe or out of date. Apparently, he overlooked ten rocket launchers that were still in the car boot––driving away that day with them in the back of his car. I don't exactly get it. He was tasked with destroying 10 rocket launchers, and claimed he forgot to destroy all 10 of them? Does he think this is believable at all?
- hvidgaard 7y agoI think he was tasked with disposing of the M72 launchers and a number of rockets. He destroyed some rockets, but not all, and none of the launchers.
- jdougan 7y agoThe M72 is designed to be single shot disposable. It may be possible to reload it, but it is not intended and would be difficult. It would also be potentially dangerous as the construction is quite light.
- chrischen 7y agoNot believable, which is why I am suspicious why the Vice writer tried to spin it as a credible thing.
- throwawayyay22 7y agoPosting under a throwaway account. This is story I actually know something about. I knew Shane personally and attended many BBQ's with him and the various other people that made up the explosives team. I have for obvious reasons not had any contact with him since the incident. I can even provide what I am very confident the reason for why he did it. He fully knew what he was doing, and indeed the reason was for money. However not for selfish reasons. A captain salary is not that fantastic in the army and his wife at the time, whom I suspect he is separated from now liked to live fancy. In fact I am 100% confident it is because of her that he did it. Probably without her being involved, but I cannot be sure of that. I do know she overextended their finances which would have been a good motivator. Any claims he made to forget destroying them are a horrible attempt at deception to reduce his sentence. For what its worth he was ostracised from the explosives community over this. It was a very small group of people, and Shane's appeals to have them speak on his behalf were ignored by them all. The group is very tight and for one of their own to betray was seen as a massive abuse of trust. Honestly I was very sad to hear it. Selling out your country for the low amounts he did is such a sad thing. I don't think he needed to be in the super max prisons he spent his time in as I don't believe him to be a dangerous person. Certainly a very stupid mistake, but not a dangerous person. I suspect most of his being incarcerated in such was as a message. Personally I remember him as a fun person at a party enjoying a few beers and telling amusing stories of which there were many. As for if other weapons are missing. That is possible. Shane was tasked with destroying them. Its much harder to steal from stores due to them being tracked quite well but those to be destroyed are much harder to keep track of. Usually there would be several people involved to help avoid this sort of incident.
- senectus1 7y ago|Honestly I was very sad to hear it. Selling out your country for the low amounts he did is such a sad thing. yeah he def should have sold his country out for a lot more.. 0.o
- rmtech 7y agoThey should pay the military decent money. And he should have found a legal way to make more money, and he also should have been in control of his wife's spending (easier said than done in the modern age though...). Selling the weapons was dumb because there was almost no way they wouldn't be tracked back to him.
- hnick 7y agoThis seems like the sort of job you'd send two people on for security reasons. It's not as though the military typically has a lack of people. Giving one person that kind of responsibility just presents opportunities for corruption. I know if I needed someone to destroy a bunch of hard disks I'd make sure someone was watching so they don't just get sold off with our data.
- mrmrcoleman 7y agoHonest question: is there such a thing as a rocket launcher that isn’t “military-grade”?
- johnchristopher 7y agoWell, we have the `patator` https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeTluIkfHjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeTluIkfHjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmWFPp0eTLU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmWFPp0eTLU (internationally known as the potator). https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=le+patator https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=le+patator
- mrmrcoleman 7y agoI’d never heard of that but we used to make something similar as kids with an aerosol can, a metal drain and whatever you want to fire, arrange upright like a mortar and with a small fire at the bottom.
- melcor 7y agoPotato cannons, not really rocket launchers. Rocket implies it being a self propelling object, so more of a missile-launcher/cannon. It may even be considered in closer relation to a mortar than rocket launcher.
- johnchristopher 7y agoOh yes, you are absolutely right. I am not really into weaponry so I tend to bag rocket launchers, mortars, bazooka and the like together.
- Someone 7y agoI wouldn't call DIY ones such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket "military-grade"
- sharpneli 7y agoM72 LAW. I've actually shot a live one during my mandatory time at the military as a practice shot (We destroy our aging stock by making conscripts shoot them as a training exercise). As a weapon it's the typical shaped charge warhead. It would be really dangerous against any normal non tank vehicle in short ranges. Against a tank it's useless nowadays. But the semi militarized armored cars used by some police forces would be disabled rather easily with one. Not blown up to smithereens, but a hit to the engine space would wreck that or a hit to the passenger compartment would kill some if not all inside. Not that good against a building. A hand-grenade would do way more harm inside. So it's more of a trophy thing, or a really nasty surprise against SWAT truck assuming the culprit manages to hit with it. The lax security Australia has towards these is rather hilarious.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoPretty dumb to use against the police...unless you're El Chapo and can buy them by the hundreds. And have thousands of ex-military men on payroll. In short, an army and the money to keep them armed. In a country like Australia, what do they think it will happen once they blow a police car with one? These would be great to kill people, criminal heads, politicians etc. That's all. Do it, collect the money and hope to stay out and alive.
- sharpneli 7y agoGood point. The primary use case would be to assassinate someone driving in an armored limousine. Otherwise quite useless.
- Totoradio 7y agoThey've been used in France for a spectacular evasion (Antonio Ferrara in 2003), and attacks against Brinks armored trucks
- Gustomaximus 7y agoFirst, lets be clear, I dont agree/support violence and this is an intellectual exercise. But thinking about it it could be quite useful as an intimidation tactic. If your rival biker clubhouse got hit by an RPG followed by the message 'we have a few more', it could really make people think about committing acts of attack on a group when another RPG is their likely reply. That said, using against a police station like these guys considered seems stupid. Something like that would never make the police back off, and only throw ever more resource against these people. The other use would be straight terrorism. One of those into a crowd or building would be horrific. And could be amplified if the group did one then said more are coming type thing. Anyway, amazing the army didn't have greater control on these. At least fire them at their end of their shelf life for practice as these things cant be cheap. I imagine controls are significantly increased today.
- Someone 7y agoAll of these were claimed to be "unsafe or out of date" in 2001, and probably weren't stored according to specs since, so would the launchers still work? The rocket's propulsion? The explosives inside the rocket?
- mnw21cam 7y agoGoes to a blank page for me, and outline.com doesn't work with it. Anyone actually got some content?
- exikyut 7y agoJavaScript enabled? What errors do you see in devtools? Do you see any content in the elements tab?
- peteretep 7y ago> I sold the rocket launchers to my mate and he sold it to those fucking dickhead terrorists. Now it's a fucking drama. Straya!
- moonbug 7y ago"military-grade" is such a dumb adjective.
- aedron 7y agoA few years ago in my city, a biker gang used a similar weapon (military RPG) against a rival group. There was a party at the rival group's clubhouse. A guy climbed up on an adjacent roof and fired the RPG at the building. It went through a brick wall (directly through a corner IIRC) and exploded in the main room of the clubhouse. I actually think only one or two people were killed (it was full), but the place was completely cratered inside.
- exikyut 7y agoWhere was this?
- kingofpandora 7y agoDidn't an Italian ultras group (Juventus?) get their hands on an air-to-air missile recently? If I remember it wasn't some old Soviet stock but something made in Europe not all that long ago.