Range 18 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland speaks in the low-tech, steel-and-gunpowder grunt of a U.S. Army weapons test range. Tank guns aim out over placid Chesapeake Bay. Ammunition storage bunkers lurk half buried behind barbed-wire fences. Scarred concrete slabs and armor plates line the earth. In the distance, experimental artillery booms like thunder.
A few steps to the right of one of the menacing oversize weapons, however, stands a piece of equipment that appears to have an attitude problem. It's a clunky contraption with a shiny new paint job, and next to the dull tank guns it looks like a Thanksgiving Day float that's strayed into a Veteran's Day parade. Its chief component is a 40-foot-long metal pipe that's stretched along a huge girder propped up by hydraulic jacks. The pipe is made of used tank-gun barrels joined end to end. They've been pierced at intervals by ...
