Military buildup

There is a military buildup going on in the quiet little town of Portola Valley, and few people know about it. A gentleman named Jacques Littlefieled decided to start restoring armored military vehicles a while back, and has compiled quite a collection. Actually, this is the largest personal collection of vehicles in the world. It is not a museum, and they can be viewed only on special tours, which a friend arranged.

Actually, I first heard about this during the first Gulf War. There was a newspaper article about a person who was having trouble getting a SCUD missile through customs. The article then went on to talk about how this person lives in Portola Valley and collects military equipment.

We viewed the collection in 4 of his warehouses, which turns out to be maybe half of his collection. Amazing! It is a good thing he is rich, as he has a staff of 6 who restores them to new condition (many of them come in as little more than scrap metal, often requiring that they piece together a few different ones, plus manufacture a lot of replacement parts, in order to get 1 complete unit).

Oh, the picture below does show a SCUD missile in a launcher, so he did get it through customs. He actually has 2 of them.



Last picture was taken by a friend - though, how much of a friend could he be if I am willing to aim 4 machine guns at him! 8-)