The $5,347 rock; how I almost sold the Pentagon a manually launched, visually guided, igneous antitank weapon.

• Author: Richard, Jerome

The $5,347 Rock

On September 30, 1987, a story appeared in The Seattle Times that told of problems the General Accounting Office identified with the Army's new M72A3 anti-tank weapon, a shoulder-mounted bazooka. "A battlefield GI has only one chance in ten of hitting his target" with this weapon according to the story. Worse, even if he hit his target, "the odds are it won't do any damage to a tank but will only expose the GI's position." In an Army war game, two-thirds of the soldiers who fired this weapon were "killed" by enemy counterfire. Rather than suspecting enemy chicanery, or weapons acquired second hand from the army of Fredonia, the Army was planning a new high-energy warhead for the bazooka, which was designed in Norway and manufactured by the Hesse Eastern Co. of Brockton, Massachusetts. If the new warhead works, it is expected to increase the effectiveness of the weapon to "more than three shots in ten."

It apparently will not help the exposure problem, but that exists with the Army's heavier, more effective anti-tank weapons too. The "Dragon" and the "Tow" are both wire-guided, requiring the person who fires it to stand in view of the tank while the missile streaks towards its target. The Scripps Howard story reported that "Internal Pentagon estimates, based on recent war games, show that up to a third of the GIs using Dragons will be killed by enemy counterfire after firing their missiles, while as many as 85 percent of those firing TOW missiles will die in enemy counterfire." Could Oliver North have known what he was doing in selling TOWs to Iran?

The Rock Island line

With these problems in mind, I wrote to Senator Dan Evans, a moderate Republican who was critical of some of Reagan's defense policies and who has now left the Senate. My letter proposed a Manually Launched, Visually Guided, Igneous Anti-tank Weapon, dubbed MLVG21AW17 for short. I wrote that my proposed ordnance "admittedly won't do much more damage to an enemy tank than the present M72A3s, but they do have several advantages. It is less likely to expose the G.I.'s position, is much lighter, has at least a 50-50 chance of hitting the target when properly launched, and I can let the Army have them for only $5,347 each...." In case no one got the point, I added: "In fact, I have a big pile of them sitting out in the backyard."

No one got the point. Instead of the appreciative response from the senator I hoped for, sharing my amusement at a weapon that appeared...