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NATO Developing Environment Friendly Weapons
EGSonikku writes: "Although it may seem a bit odd, according to this msnbc.com story
NATO and its member countries are developing so called 'green
weapons' that produce similar effects to standard weaponry,
without using chemicals that could be hazardous to the
environment and the soldiers using them. Good to know that we can
bomb each other without hurting the butterflies now, eh?" Heh -- it's the environmental bit shift of the neutron bomb -- "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."
One important reason for this is that the number of rounds fired can be very large, even in a small action with few casualties. Munitions are also used in training, with (we always hope) no casualties at all.
You might say that it is far better to just reduce the amount of violence in the world than to try to make it more environmentally friendly (and you'd be right), but in point of fact, even with minimal or no violence, lots of munitions are used, and reducing the environmental impact can make it easier on people who live near training areas or who are trying to recover from a recent conflict.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
While I won't comment on the morality of hunting, one of the biggest dangers to American endangered species is lead and mercury poisoning from pollution and... expended bullets.
I saw a documentary not long ago on Animal Planet that featured a doctor removing a lot of contaminated material from an eagle's stomach, including lead slugs.
Now, if you're going to tear up a tract of land by bombing it and destroying all the life therein, I wonder if pollution is going to be the biggest of your worries.
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the militaries of the world use MILLIONS of small arms rounds per day for nothing more than practice. If the propellant can be made even a little bit more eco-friendly without seriously altering performance, what's the problem? Rifle ranges already spend gobs of money to clean up lead pollution, and there really isnt an alternative.
Nice theory. It doesn't pan out in practice. If the USA were to completely disarm itself, and enforcably commit to staying disarmed (that is, it couldn't re-arm), the length of time that the USA could stay out of war would be about the length of time that the USA's various enemies would need to ship whatever militaries they have to North American coasts. (Canada and Mexico might not fare too well either: while the armies are there, why not pick on close allies as well?)
Even those countries not opposed to the USA's existence would have reason to keep their militaries, if only to ward off their own enemies. (Israel, for example.)
As soon as the USA disarms itself like that as a gesture to the world, all you simply do is open up the floodgates to the current pychopaths and those hiding in the woodwork. That european president with a secret hitler complex will start attacking countries in europe, Saddam will move right back into kuwait and expand, cutting us off from oil. The isrealies will start their own holy war out in the middle east, and probably would win. The chinese would finally take taiwann and probably move on to japan. I know you mean well, but unfortunatly you are just a dreamer.
This is the same with every bit of arms-control: those who violate the agreement benefit to some degree. The question, however, is how much do they benefit? One could conceivably benefit from the introduction of anti-personnel laser-weaponry (to blind enemy soldiers), but no one really pursues that; if you can blind them, why not kill them? The same applies to explosive anti-personnel munitions: once you've shot them, do you really need to blow up the body?
The impetus behind these sorts of things is usually not what Hemos says, that it is
Rather, most arms-control is based on the principle that weapons should attack the soldier, not the man, i.e., as soon as he has been disabled as a soldier, there is no military need to inflict further punishment on him, and humanitarian concerns can then be considered. Such considerations, by definition, do not substantively degrade military capability. One could imagine enviro-friendly weapons that were substantively worse than what we have now, from a military standpoint, but rest assured that the U.S. military will not abandon good weapons for these. Landmines are a great case in point -- the damage caused to the person, as opposed to the soldier, may be excessive, but as there is no comperable replacement for their battlefield purpose, the United States continues to use them wherever we think we need to (currently Cuba and Korea).
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under-paid karma whore
So if you could provide some links that show that "cancer rates have shot up", I'd appreciate it, because otherwise it looks like you're making things up to push your own particular agenda.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I think it's time for a stand. My theory is that if one country, the USA, were to completely disarm itself, then other nations would follow suit. By destroying all of its weapons, the USA would be finally making a plea for peace in the world. Other nations would see this as a gesture of goodwill, and would be similarly encouraged to disarm.
The main problem with this is that it's all based on trust. How do you trust that the Russians aren't hiding their nukes for later use? How do the Koreans trust us that we're not mothballing our forces instead of dismantling them? It is not likely to happen in our lifetimes, if ever.
Look at the whole Missle Defense plan right now. We're asking the Russians and Chinese to trust us that we're not trying to defend against any of their missles. Do you see them trusting us? How do you think they'd respond if we said "We're scrapping our nukes, scuttling our carriers to make artificial reefs, and melting down our tanks to make highway guard rails. Do the same and the world will be better."
This doesn't even take into consideration the fact that there are just plain insane rulers out there that would love nothing better than to attack their neighbors without fear of reprisal. Do you think Saudi Arabia would be an independent nation right now if we didn't have troops stationed there, and carriers sitting right off Iraq's shores ready to pound the snot out of Saddam if he blinks the wrong way? Absolutely not. Yes, our intervention in the Kuwaiti invasion may have been based on keeping oil cheap and out of Saddam's hands, but that doesn't change the fact that if we hadn't responded, he would have kept going. Kuwait was an exercise to test the world's response. Unfortunately for him, the world responded saying "You already have enough oil!"
Unfortunately peace is not guaranteed by disarmarment. If push came to shove, a bunch of naked unarmed people could rush another country's borders and wage war by beating each other senseless. Peace is maintained through strength. All throughout history there are examples of superpowers rising in the ranks and attacking each other when one felt intimidated by the other's potential or position. (England & Scotland, France & Britain, Germany & France, Russia & Japan, Japan/Germany/Italy & France/Britain/Russia/US, etc, etc, etc.) Why didn't this happen between the US and Russia? Because each side knew that if the nukes started flying, neither one would survive. And while we hated each other deeply, neither one of us was willing to commit suicide in the process of killing the enemy.
So where does this leave us? Just where we've always been, standing on our side of the ocean with a big stick. And so long as some nutcase carries a big stick too, we have to be prepared to wield ours.
Of course, if we can do it without producing acid-rain or causing lead-poisoning, excellent. After all, somebody has to clean up after every war. Let's limit that to burying the dead.
When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
better than making the land totally uninhabitable for thousands of years.
What are you talking about? In the situations where a neutron bomb is an option a regular atomic bomb doesn't leave the area "totally uninhabitable for thousands of years." The places this would be used is where the bomb would be set off in the air. Have you ever been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Other than the areas where they have worked to preserve visible signs of what happened, you can't tell an atom bomb ever went off there. They used to take the grade school kids out with geiger counters once a year to find radioactive rocks left over from the blast. They had to stop because they couldn't find any of them any more.
That's not to say that nuclear weapons can't be used to make an area uninhabitable. Surface bursts or deliberate "fizzles" will result in extensive contamination of the area. The main reason for a surface or subsurface burst is to destroy a hardened target (like a missile silo or command center).
The neutron bomb was killed off because somebody thought it was somehow inhumane to just kill off a bunch of people with radiation poisoning instead of burning them to death and destroying eveything around them. Neither one sounds very good to me.
"Bite me, it's fun!" - Crowe T. Robot
It all goes back to the basic definition of the purpose of military units in the field of combat- kill people and break their stuff. If we can easily modify our weaponry so that the after-effects on the environment and local populations can be ameliorated, I'm all for it. Just so long as when GI Jane launches that shoulder-fired Dragon anti-tank missile it streaks off to it's target and lays serious hurt-em on it.
One thing that always irked me about the debate on the neutron bomb was that the peaceniks always cast it as a weapon used to kill populations while leaving cities intact. The neutron bomb was developed as a tank-killing weapon back in the days when the Warsaw Pact had virtual tank armies which were designed to crash through NATO lines and wreak havoc in the event of a war (we won't bother discussing who might have started the fighting).
NATO policy was (and probably still is) to use nuclear weapons in this kind of situation, but in Western Europe there are not very many open spaces where you can chuck even kiloton yield tactical weapons about without wiping out a village or three. The Neutron bomb was a compromise- it would kill the tanks while causing substatially less blast damage. Anyone underground or at any reasonable distance from the blast theoretically had a decent chance of survival.
Of course the catch was who really believed that such an exchange would be limited to a tactical exchange only?
"Melt the ice; eat the moose; drill the oil; get it over with." -Max Boot
Well lets see, if you blind a combatant, they become a non-combatant. I bet it is easier to blind a person then to kill them with a laser.
I have heard that it is more cost effective to wound an enemy then to kill them. Takes more resources to heal someone then to bury or cremate the body. So enemy must expend resources to help wounded. And if they don't help their wounded, could demoralize the remaining healthy troops.
Also, a bunch of walking wounded reminds the people back home that they got their butt kicked then a the cemetary filling up.