Boomerang III Anti-Sniper/Sniper Detection/Gunfire Detection System

TheMadModeller
I am dumbfounded to see this system as a model accessory. In high school I was into a table-top RPG called RIFTS, from Palladium Books. It was a Science Fiction meets Fantasy/High Tech vs. Magic kind of game. In 1996, the year before I graduated, my father conceptualized a system like this that was linked to a remotely operated weapon on top of the vehicle that could immediately return fire based on the trajectory of the shot OR feed that data to the remote weapon operator. At the time I ran a site for free source material for the game and included a description of that device.

In 2002 I received a suspicious E-mail from a retired military officer in Indonesia interested in acquiring ten of these devices, obviously not realizing that this was something for a GAME! With the mental scars of 9/11 still fresh, due to those suspicions I contacted the Minnesota FBI branch, with the attached E-mail as well as the web address for the fictitious anti-sniper device. Whether related or not, I'll never know, but soon after a bust of an Al Qaeda terror cell was made in Indonesia and a man by the very name given in the E-mail was among those listed as having been arrested.

I read on Yahoo Technology a few years later that a very similar device was tested in the Iraq War. My father got a good laugh out of the whole ordeal.

While I'm pretty sure DARPA had been developing this device for years before my father cooked up the idea seeing an actual topic AND model accessories here representing such a device is absolutely surreal. I just thought I'd share! 😉 Cheers!