Tag Archives: Military

Tanks and fighter planes, dioramas of World War II battles, dreadnoughts and battleships — LEGO builders have an obvious fascination with the arms and armor of the military-industrial complex. Find all these LEGO weapons of mass destruction right here on The Brothers Brick.

Life-sized Halo sniper rifle built with LEGO

Nick Jensen finished his most ambitious LEGO Halo project yet of building the Sniper Rifle System 99 Anti-Matériel (commonly known as the Halo sniper rifle) for his arsenal of brick-built Halo weapons. I asked the builder to share the process of making the SR99 from inspiration to the finished model. Here is his response.

How It Started

The graphics of Halo: Reach blew me away when I first played it. Textures, environments, and character designs all impressed me, but as a LEGO gun builder, I was most impressed with the detail of all the guns. Since then, I built the pistol and combat knife from Halo: Reach. I wanted to build more weapons from Halo: Reach and I was debating between the shotgun and the sniper rifle. I had the parts and money to make one of them. I went with the shotgun but got really frustrated when I couldn’t find a way to make the pump slide back and forth in the front. So I gave up and started the sniper rifle.

I captured many close-up screenshots of the sniper rifle in Halo: Reach’s theater mode, looked up information about the gun on halopedian.com, used the Halo: Reach action figures from McFarlane, and looked at Perry B.’s version as references. I wanted to include as many details as I possibly can squeeze in. I wanted the final MOC to be perfect.

The Build Process

One of the first things I worried about when I decided on building the sniper rifle was the length. It seemed that I would never build something that was going to be 5.5ft long. I thought about the project from another perspective: building the sniper rifle is like building the assault rifle but with a really long barrel. Breaking the project down into three simple parts (body, barrel, and scope) really eased some doubts I had. The sniper rifle in Halo: Reach is approximately 5.5ft long, so a tape measure locked at 5.5ft was always around for reference. I built the body of the sniper the same way I built the assault rifle, SMG, and pistol: Start from the front and build my way to the back. The barrel was easy and I had a plan in mind from the start. I would cover a supporting rod with 2×2 quarter cylinder bricks. So the only difficult tasks were the body and scope.

Problems

I did drop the gun once during the WIP stage. I got impatient and wanted to hold it as if it were finished, and it fell to the ground. There was another time later on where the front grip collapsed because of its weight.

Facts

Length: 63 inches (1.6 meters)
Weight: Approximately 10.5 pounds
Non-LEGO used: dowel rod, custom waterslide decals
Features: Removable magazine, sliding bolt, moving safety
Time spent building: about 4 months
Piece count: uhh…?

More pictures

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Get To Da Choppa!

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve built anything with my own Lego, but I’m going to post something anyways. I built this light transport helicopter months ago, and have finally managed to get the photos together. I tried to spice things up with a little scene this time, although it may be too little for the helo.

I’m a big fan of tilt-rotors, though I hear this is properly called a tilt-wing. Either way, the tilting adds a fun little activity, when swooshing this thing around.

A whale of a time with Mladen

It’s been way too long since Mladen Pejic posted a new mecha but he tells me he hopes it’ll be less time until his next one. In the meantime we have his latest Mobile Platform “Orca” to ogle, and, given many readers may not be aware of Mladen’s stuff his mecha back catalogue and all the rest.

Fly by night

Ralph Savelsberg (Mad physicist) recently completed his P-61 night-fighter and decided to show it off with its German counterpart. Although if looks won wars I’d have my money on the Axis.

LEGO Tank from Ghost in the Shell

Those who’ve been around the LEGO community for a while may know I’ve been planning a LEGO version of the Ghost in the Shell tank (from the movie) for quite some time. In fact I posted my first CAD version 5 years ago after starting it nine months before that.

I won’t say it’s finished now (because I doubt I’ll ever consider it finished) but, after nearly six years from starting it, I think it’s ready to share in the brick. It’s close to fully articulated although the middle legs don’t move left/right (to improve strength). The torso is on a ball joint as is the head for maximal poseability.

U.E.F. Expeditionary Strike Group

As most LEGO builders do, I’ve been through several non-building funks over the course of the last 10 years or so. Andrew Lee suggested to me once that a good way to get going again is to try building a little microspace fleet. Fearing I wouldn’t get unblocked before BrickCon in just a few short weeks, I did just that. Turns out Andrew gives very good advice.

My “Expeditionary Strike Group” consists of an Escort Carrier, Destroyer, and Gunboat. I set out to build them with a fairly utilitarian aesthetic, but in retrospect it’s clear I’ve spent quite a bit of time immersed in the BSG / Halo / Star Wars universes. I’ve tried building a space carrier in microscale several times, but this is my first completed vessel.

The carrier was built around the weird engines on the back, while the Destroyer mimics the shape of the Carrier:

More photos on Flickr.

Short Horn APC – Engineering Variant

I love non-combatant variants of military vehicles. Thomas Coleman (Malravion) designed his Short Horn APC a while back, and recently posted this new version.

The shaping of the underlying vehicle is nice, with great angles and lovely light-gray highlights, but the crane, cargo net, and bulldozer blade add even more visual interest.

Thanks for the tip, Evan!

Reinforcements arrive in style

Raoul Baldwin (Raoulosos) built a giant troop transport craft to carry infantry units and vehicles into the heat of combat. The mix of greens and black creates a camouflaged pattern while the tan interior adds a beautiful contrast.

3LUG Presents: King Over the Children of Pride

Another BrickFair has passed (Nannan posted a nice wrapup), and that means another joint science fiction display by 3LUG. For those who aren’t aware, 3LUG is made up of myself and Nick Kappatos. This year, we once again made use of an utter abundance of green bricks (one shouldn’t let such resources go to waste). We also tried to move away from our growing trend of crashed space ships.

This display was only complete for a couple of days during BrickFair, and the components have since retired to our separate homes. Hopefully, the diorama is as fun to look at as it was to build. We tried to add enough details and action to keep kids entertained when viewing the display, because their reactions make it worthwhile.

Medic!

There’s a special place in my heart for Army ambulances built from LEGO. Andrew Somers has been posting variants of his Humvee-like Bulldog for a little while, but my favorite is the Medical Evacuation Variant. This beefy vehicle sports working suspension and opening doors. 10-wide isn’t my preferred scale for a vehicle in a world populated by minifigs, but they are pretty wide little people, so this scale allows Andrew to fit four minifigs in the cab plus two stretchers in the back.

Andrew’s Bulldog MEV follows his brilliant Python tank

TAURUS Main Battle Tank

Tommy ([Strange]) sets his sights on the future of military hardware with the TAURUS MBT. The splashes of blue and yellow printed tiles add the kind of believable labeling that appears on many military vehicles, and also breaks up the dark gray.

Tommy’s photo is also an interesting lesson in presentation that I think is worth sharing. Reader Vedad sent us a link to Tommy’s original photo, but the angle at which the model was photographed (and the contrast) didn’t really do the tank justice. Tommy retook the photo, and now details like the gun are much more visible. Here’s the photo above again, alongside the original:

Old General MacDonald had an army

While others may have been more impressed by Karf Oohlu‘s recent armored vehicle, I’m a sucker for his weaponized LEGO animals. Hilarious, yes, but the “Cowabanger assault bovine and Rashbacon support pig” are actually rather well built, with some interesting techniques and parts usages, especially on the cow’s smaller porcine companion.