Friday, May 11, 2012

SAM the Flying Bear

When I was in college, I dreamed of building a surface-air-missile launcher in my dorm room. There was no reason behind it, I just thought it would be kinda cool. Well now, the damn British are stealing my idea. This summer, the Olympic games are coming to London. Ah the Olympics, full of sports that nobody cares about. Some of which barely qualify as sports.
London is doing their best to prepare for the Olympics by building stadiums and towers and stuff. Oh yeah, and placing SAMs on apartment buildings. The army is still deciding exactly which building to put the SAMs on, but I'm guessing there's a tea shop nearby.
Hiding missiles in an urban area is nothing new for the British. It was leaked in 1982 that Big Ben hides a ICBM holding multiple nuclear warheads. The Queen denied this claim of course, but further leaked documents and photos only prove the existence of the Big Ben Missile Silo further. It has long been rumored that the London Eye is actually a giant death laser.
So while the army decides the best location for the SAM sites, they need to test the weaponry before deploying it. Given the size of the London metropolitan area, the British army has been testing smaller ordinance on dangerous wildlife. Most recently, these smaller missiles were tested on a flying bear.
The British Flying Bear, or Ursa Feiji Londinium, is rarely found in urban areas but has been known to accidentally fly over cities during electrical storms. A couple weeks ago, one flew into a tree just north of Cardiff and got tangled in the branches. Police and Animal Control were called in but they deferred to the army when they showed up with a mobile SAM launcher on a Mini Cooper. They took one shot. That was all that was needed.
Here we see the British Flying Bear trying to escape
The bear was subdued using a concussion missile instead of a standard high explosive one, for humanitarian reasons. The bear has since gotten a job with Virgin Atlantic, making him only the third bear to be hired as a pilot by a major airline.

1 comment:

  1. Apparently the US Army has been testing a similar device near Schenectady, NY.

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