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."

Comments

Hmmmmm...

[jd]

So, Star Wars is to be renamed "The Butterfly Effect"?

lots of rounds fired

[Proud Geek]

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.

Re:lots of rounds fired

[trcooper]

Someone needs to mod this up. The biggest reason this is important is because of training exercises. We've (the US) expended much more munitions in training over the last half century than we have in combat. Hopefully this will continue to be the case. Unfortunately this leaves our training grounds in very bad shape because of many of the munitions used leave harmful residue. It's not just the atmosphere as the article suggests.

Other countries should do it as well, but this isn't a worthless effort regardless, because the largest concern is training.

Anything as long as you don't cut any kittens up!

[wackybrit]

We already know from Stile's kitty.mpg featuring the cat being eaten that some people can watch people get killed but are distressed as soon as they see a kitten killed and eaten.

Therefore, for all of those people, I support all pussy-friendly weapons.

When Greens control the defense department

[Gregoyle]

Another War Department that is not controlled by environmentalists will develop more effective but less environmentally friendly weapons.

I have no problems with the current plan of refining the fuel process in rockets and the propellent in bullets, but I sure hope they don't take it too far. There is a reason we use DU rounds, and there is a reason M1A1's use not-very-clean fuels.

The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters). Because otherwise someone who doesn't care will come along and ream the guys who are trying to measure what kind of emissions their new machine gun gives off.

Maybe this isn't really an issue given the current power-distribution in the world, but it's something to keep in mind.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[pallex]

UK police have apparantly been using lead-free petrol bombs in training for a while now.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[jandrese]

Since the US hasn't used leaded gasoline (petrol) for almost a decade now, I doubt we use in FAE weapons. Besides, lead increases the octane of gasoline, which is exactly what you don't want in a FAE type application (where you want as much of it to explode at the same time as possible).

What the heck are police doing with FAE bombs anyway?

Unless you're referring to Molotov Cocktails, but aren't those usually filled with Kerosene (because you want it to burn longer, not flash like gasoline)?

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[pubudu]

Another War Department that is not controlled by environmentalists will develop more effective but less environmentally friendly weapons.

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

the environmental bit shift of the neutron bomb -- "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."

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).

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[rkent]

First of all, in defense of Environmentally friendly weapons: it is a generally understood rule of combat among civilized countries that civilians are not to be harmed if possible. Using dirty weapons and "scorched earth" tactics does more than just kill butterflies, it also puts the general populace at risk for years to come. So it's actually very consistent with our policy against, for example, Iraq, to try and minimize civilian casualties in all ways, including environmental degradation.

The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters).

Yes and no. Nulclear nonproliferation, for example, only works if all major players agree, but we regard certain tactics as "beneath" us as Americans, such as chemical warfare and assassination. If we can raise the bar a bit more and try not to do any more harm than necessary to achieve our political ends, then go us.

Disclaimer: this is not to imply that I agree with all American defense policy, I'm just citing it as I understand it.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Syberghost]

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.


The problem being that this is all predicated on the assumption that you can win a war by killing the people, because the people are what is valuable.

That's Western thinking. What if we were to be in conflict with China?

The Chinese government's attitude toward their soldiers is basically "kill all you want, we'll make more". Obviously, any soldier is an expendable asset to some degree or other, but it's way beyond that to the Chinese.

Now, losing the use of their land? That gets their attention.

Instead of getting more environmentally-friendly weapons, which would be useful in defending Western Europe against the Soviet Union if they existed anymore, we should be taking all our vast quantities of chemicals we don't like (pesticides, etc.) and coating the bombs with 'em, in case we have to defend Taiwan or Russia against China, or South Korea against North Korea (and China).

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Theodrake]

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.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[jandrese]

That was the thinking during Vietnam time, unfortunatly it backfires when the enemy is very determined because if you only wound them they will keep on fighting anyway (most Americans stop to tread the wounded), even to the death. This can be nightmarish if you keep shooting someone with your "wounding" rifle and they keep coming at you with their "killing" rifle (like an AK-47).

The wounding weapons only make sense in "civilized" warfare, which many countries don't practice.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[steveo777]

Remember the Korean war (or was it Vietnam... probably both)? We thought the same thing. We used "Bouncing Bettys" in that one. Basically, you step off it, and it jumps a foot or so into the air and blasts peoples legs off. The problem with this, is that the enemy didn't value the lives of disabled soldiers and would sooner use them as living human-shields then carry them off to a hospital.

I'm not saying they still think like that, but there are still some cultures who retain a similar mentality.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[ethereal]

It's not that assassination is "beneath us", it's that no world leader wants to pin a target on their back by being the first to openly support assassination (well, except for Mr. Sharon recently). Personally, I'd much rather that a war with Iraq be over with quickly due to a head shot through Saddam's beret, than have to send troops there to die all in the interests of "fair play".

Plus, assassination is a democratizing influence - dictatorships can't survive the assassination of the head man, but a democracy will just keep trucking along after they elect another one.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[peccary]

Actually, you win a war by destroying your enemy's ability to wage war. It has long ago ceased to be about killing soldiers -- sometime around the era of the rifle. Now, war is about being able to spend more than the enemy on weapons, and being able to damage his ability to make more weapons -- usually by harming his industrial production.

Land is not the issue.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Syberghost]

Actually, you win a war by destroying your enemy's ability to wage war.

Usually not; most wars end with both sides still quite capable of making war.

Wars begin and end for political reasons, not military ones.

Also, a country's ability to make war in a sense doesn't end as long as there's one able-bodied citizen able to pick up a pointed stick.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[dillon_rinker]

Actually, you win a war by destroying your enemy's will to wage war. The mind is the first, last, and only battlefield.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[gorilla]

This may be true in a conventional war, but there hasn't been a conventional war for over 50 years. Modern wars are guerrilla wars, where you make it politically impossible for the enemy to continue, usually by demoralization, not actual harm.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Malcontent]

The war in the middle east will end when two things stop happening.

1) The palestenians right now think that it's better to die then to live under israeli occupation.

2) The Israelis would rather kill palestenians then to stop occupying them.

One party or the other has to relent. Either the palestnians accept the will of their occupying army or the occupying army moves out.

Actually there is one more way. The Israelis can simply kill all the palestenians. They have already killed over 500 so far and the ratio is one to five (five palestenians killed for every israeli). At this rate (and actually they can very easliy increase their kill ratio) they can wipe out every single arab in palestine in a few years. No more worries after that. They can go back to their beaches and have more fun.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[pubudu]

The wounding weapons only make sense in "civilized" warfare, which many countries don't practice.

The doctrine does not suggest using weapons that only wound the enemy; indeed, it suggests against weapons that only wound the enemy. Suggesting that weapons ought to go for the soldier rather than the man is simply to suggest that, once a soldier has been rendered incapable of further action, one should not seek to wound him further. This is not to say that we should only wound the enemy -- on the contrary, you hurt him as much as it takes to stop him from fighting further, and if that means death, death it is.

Perhaps an example might help -- remember that this is the theoretical basis for past treaties, and so may seem a bit paradoxical. Releasing a gas that only sterilizes the enemy is bad, for you're not attacking the soldier, i.e., the ability to wage war, but the man. Releasing a gas that kills him outright was OK (until a few years ago; before that, the treaty was simply not to use it first). Dropping bombs that kill everyone is better than dropping bombs that kill some and merely horribly disfigure the rest, according to the logic of these treaties.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Peter H.S.]

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.

A couple of friends of mine (historians) interviewed a dozen Waffen SS soldiers (mostly from Frikorps Danmark, Div. LAH, Nordland). Only one of these had escaped being wounded, and that was considered a freak thing, by himself and others. Most of the rest had been wounded 2 or 3 times.
Looking through thousands of service records, their conlusion was, that it was not unlikely, to recieve several, sometimes very serious wounds, and return to service again.

The germans, like the US, had good assembly line style, field hospitals. Once a wounded soldier had reached a such, their survival chance would be good. While caring for wounded soldiers may take some ressources, I don't think that it really matters much, eg. a lot of trains and lorries driving back from the frontline are empty, so loading them with wounded is hardly a logistical strain.
Most important; a veteran soldier is a precious commodity, the logistical strain of sending him back front and patching him up, is probably less than training a new soldier.

All in all, I consider the above statement untrue.

On the topic;
Last summer I visited a wood clearing, where german small and medium arms ammo had been disposed off after the war. It had been a rush job; deep holes had been digged, and loads of ammo dumped into it, then, (way to small) charges had been detonated.
The result was that the area was littered with all kinds of ammo; 9mm parabellums, every size and color of 7.62mm, Sturmgewehr bullets, russian 12.7mm MG, standard 20mm AA shells, and all kinds of freakish sized luftwaffe ammo, in the 20mm range.
A striking thing was, that the holes, after more than 55 years, where pitch black. Not a single grassleave was groving in or around them. Probably because of all the tracer /phosfor rounds?

In eastern Europa and the former USSR, you can still find WWII battlefields in desolated areas, where cases of Nebelwerfer, AT, and MG ammo, rusted rifles and machineguns, is littered among the trenches. Scratch the earth, and you will find the bones of unknown dead soldiers, some hastely buried and forgotten, others simply just forgotten where they fell.

The straits around my country (Denmark), is littered with hundreds of thousends tons of chemical rounds, usually mustard gas, but I believe that every kind of german gas ammo was dumped into the sea, including nervegas like Tabun, and Sarin. A nasty thing. It is fairly common, that fishers catches a corroded, sick-yellow lump of mustard gas rounds in their nets.

The western coast of Denmark was part of the Atlantic Wall. Besides building thousends of concrete bunkers, the german army layed more than 1.4 million mines, and that on a coast less than 170 miles long. It took decades to clear (and costed a lot of lives), and still, in some remote areas, it is not unusually to find a german Teller AT-mine in the sand dunes after an autemn storm.

War is a messy affair in more than one way.
No matter what, after a while, peace will follow war, and people will have to deal with results for a long time. Anything to lessen the burden for the survivors, is IMHO, a good thing.

Re:When Greens control the defense department

[Quila]

...and hope they don't have an Albert Speer.

Production in Germany actually increased drastically during our time of hitting their industry the hardest due to Speer's genius.

Depleted uranium

[imipak]

When NATO decided to try preventing Milosevic exterminating the non-Serb inhabitants of Kosovo by bombing them with depleted uranium, the results were pretty horrendous. Not only did the cream of hi-tech weaponry utterly fail to hit their targets (when the Serb forces pulled out, military intelligence were astonished to see hundreds of tanks and APCs popping up out apparently of nowhere and queueing up at the border), but the cancer rates have shot up. Of course, (a) there's no question of any sort of enquiry or admission of fault, and (b) the people who are dying (horribly, with very little in the way of medical facilities except black market diamorphine to ease the pain) are the very people who "we" were trying to save.

This can only be a good thing.

Re:Depleted uranium

[bravehamster]

Nice sources you got there. Care to elaborate? Oh, and here's the scoop straight from the World Health Organization:

A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report giving field measurements taken around selected impact sites in Kosovo (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) indicates that contamination by DU in the environment was localized to a few tens of metres around impact sites. Contamination by DU dusts to local vegetation and water supplies was found to be extremely low. Thus, the possibility of significant exposure to the local populations was found to be very low.

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.

Re:Depleted uranium

[jandrese]

Do you have any sort of evidence on the cancer rates in Kosovo, or are you just making stuff up?

In contrast you may want to look at This site on the effects of DU in the Balkans.

Re:Depleted uranium

[KjetilK]

DU is a panic. DU has no effect whatsoever. And the reason why this isn't a good thing is that it will be even easier to bomb. Now, you can even make it look as if it isn't an environmental catastrophy to blow things up. And those stupid politicians will buy it.

Green bombs? No way: When you blow things up, you are causing destruction. It can't be environmentally friendly in any way. War is the most destructive thing you can do, also to the environment.

I was very much opposed to the bombing, and it is very clear that the bombing was flawed, but the DU panic is taking the focus away from the main point: That war is unacceptable as a political means. Or as the Russell-Einstein manifesto says "shall mankind renounce war?". I'm also a pacifist and a physicist.

You know, I'm not a conspiracy buff, but I couldn't help notice that the panic took off just after Amnesty published a very critical report and many other reports were made that there hasn't really been any improvement in the region. Before that, it was only a few conspiracy buffs and a well known swindler who favoured the idea.

If there was a conspiracy here, well, you've seen "Wag the dog", so imagine somebody getting upset about it, and decides to take attention away from the fact that the bombing was all flawed:

Senior-Man-in-Dark-suit: OK, Amnesty and several others are pointing out that we broke human rights, and that the campaign in Serbia was flawed. The President has asked us to take the attention away from that fact. Any ideas?

Junior-man-in-Dark-suit: Well, sir, there is this depleted uranium, that some conspiracy buffs have been talking about...

SMIDS: So, were we using it?

JMIDS: Of course, this stuff is really old.

SMIDS: So, what's the deal?

JMIDS: It's uranium, sir. People go nuts every time they hear about uranium.

SMIDS: Right. So, what are scientists saying about this?

JMIDS: They're all very clear, DU has hardly any effect.

SMIDS: Are you sure about that? You know, if we put out a panic about this, and it turns out to have been dangerous, we're in deep shit. You'll be out of a job, son!

JMIDS: I understand, sir, and yes, the scientific evidence is overwhelming.

SMIDS: Excellent. This is what we will do: First, we deny having used it...

JMIDS: ...but sir, they allready know we used it...

SMIDS: Son, you've got a lot to learn about Public Opinion Engineering! Listen now, this will work. First, we deny having used it, that should fuel the conspiracy buffs and get them some headlines in the mainstream press. We'll wait a month or two, then we admit it. That's that needs doing. Any questions?

Yep, this is the way it happened ;-). And it worked: It took the attention away from the fact that the military action was flawed, that NATO broke human rights principles as well (and should be prosecuted for it), and that the serbs would have thrown Milosevic out themselves if they had a tiny bit of support, they tried many times, and they eventually did.

"Green" Weapons is a lame attempt to make war look acceptable. But it isn't, it can't be. But, I fear, it will work... :-(

Re:Depleted uranium

[imipak]

Oh, you sad, sad bunch of brainwashed merkins.

Some links (I went to the Independent and Guardian newspaper sites first because one of them - the Gruaniad I think - ran a massive front page lead feature on "the cover-up and scandal of the Kosovan war". We in the UK have been "lucky" enough to have found out about a whole string of Govt. coverups in the last few years, from BSE/CJD, foot & mouth, arms to Iraq (which only broke thanks to Ollie North being a moron)... we tend to be a bit sceptical when they assure us that there's nothing to worry about and everything's under control.

• Bosnians fall victim to Nato's deadly legacy. This is a medical horror story.
• Scientists find plutonium in Nato shells fired in Kosovo
• Halt use of Uranium weapons (editorial)
• Nato brings out big guns to kill off cancer scare: "Nato yesterday launched a massive damage limitation exercise it hopes will defuse growing concern that its use of armour-piercing depleted uranium-tipped shells in Kosovo may be the cause of unexplained cases of cancer among its troops."
• British, Australian and New Zealand servicemen may have been exposed to depleted uranium, which has been blamed for higher cancer rates in Gulf War veterans, during British nuclear tests in Australia and the Pacific in the 1950s
• Water in Kosovo could be poisoned with depleted uranium, says UN
• The Ministry of Defence faced fierce criticism yesterday after it renewed test-firing of depleted uranium shells
• Minister admits troops were not told of DU risk
• The story Nato's newspaper does not want to tell
• At last, ministers take depleted uranium seriously

  These are all from UK quality broadsheet newspapers.

  Full disclosure: my girlfriend is Serbian; however she (and I) have no sympathy for, and place less than zero credibility in, anything coming from the Milosevic regime (indeed, she was teargassed by them in '91 & forced into exile.) The people mostly dying of cancer, apart from the NATO PBI (poor bloody infantry), are mostly Kosovan civilians.

  It might come as a shock, folks, but YOUR GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU. Why is this so hard to grasp when it happens in an area unconnected with IP, computers or the Internet? '"Here's American Gladiators. Here's 500 channels of this shit. Go back to sleep America, your government is in control." And oh the light of the TVs glow through millions of American windows... ' (Bill Hicks.)

Re:Depleted uranium

[imipak]

I spent another five minutes searching and found some better links, including the Robert Fisk cover story I referred to in the parent post.

• Google Directory has an entire section on the topic.
• BBC story: "Alarm grows over cancer deaths"
• BBC: Depleted uranium 'threatens Balkan cancer epidemic': A British scientist says the Americans' use of depleted uranium weapons in the war with Serbia is likely to cause 10,000 extra deaths from cancer.
• The Yugoslav President, Vojislav Kostunica, announced yesterday that he would meet the chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal next week to discuss Nato's use of depleted uranium shells as a war crime against civilians. Note to the clue-impaired: Kostunica is the POST-Milosevic leader who was lead the rebellion against his regime.
• Robert Fisk: In another Bosnian town two small boys lie in their hospital beds. Is this collateral damage? (Note: Robert Fisk is an EXTREMELY respected war correspondent with over twenty years' experience.)
• Euro MPs defy Nato and seek ban on DU: The European Parliament called for a suspension of the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions yesterday, rejecting safety assurances from Nato and heightening pressure for a formal moratorium.
• Belgrade Law Centre DU archive
• Eighth Italian soldier dies in DU scare
• Are the governments of Nato guilty of committing a heinous war crime?
• 'Mr Blair, Mr Clinton, Lord Robertson and the rest don't want to know about the dying Serbs of Bosnia'
• Nato calls for DU medical inquiry in all 19 alliance countries
• Ministers of White Noise vie for title of most vacuous public servant
• A Labour MP warned the Government yesterday of his fears over the risks to service personnel who have been exposed to depleted uranium. Note: Labour is the party of government; this MP just blew his entire career by making this statement.
• NATO could face a criminal investigation into the use by its forces of depleted uranium ammunition, the chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal said yesterday.
• Where the streets are littered with DU shells
  The snow clings to the burnt rafters of the old military factory at Hadjici and slithers off the fir trees that survived Nato's 1995 bombing.
• Sick, bleeding and losing nails: the girl who played with Nato uranium: Sladjana Sarenac remembers the pieces of a depleted-uranium bomb that she picked up outside her home in Sarajevo.
• The Surgeon-General's office of the US army warned almost eight years ago that military personnel exposed to dust from depleted uranium ammunition risk developing lung and bone cancer.
• I see 300 graves that could bear the headstone: 'Died of depleted uranium'Robert Fisk in Bratunac, Eastern Bosnia
• Guardian special report

Please note these are REPUTABLE, mainstream sources: I haven't even DARED to look at Indymedia.

The thing that makes me really sad is how certain most of the replies to my original post were that I was trolling, or talking shit. Your first instincts were: "It's our army, and we're the GOODIES for heaven's sake! This guy MUST be talking thru' his arse." It seems that's the only way for you to resolve the cognitive dissonance. The NATO armies are mostly composed of the citizens of those countries. Where do you think the expression "cannon fodder" comes from?

I wonder whether an apology is too much to ask for?

I can't remember the last time I got this angry after reading something on Slashdot. I'm trying not to resort to name-calling because I want to believe that some of you are intelligent and open-minded enough to admit that you were, at the very least, gullible to parrot the official line pedalled by the (US) mass media. We all know how committed THEY are to truth and justice, right? Oh, so long as it doesn't conflict with government wishes. Which means corporate interests.

Right, I'm done ranting now. If that hasn't got me a Special Branch file, I want my taxes back ;)

More important for hunters, I would think...

[Bonker]

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.

Re:More important for hunters, I would think...

[ergo98]

When I was younger I use to hike through an area of natural land beyond a shooting range: It was staggering to see the shotgun pellets forming a 1"+ thick layer (sounds like an exaggeration but it is not: After many years of use this stuff really adds up) in the ground and streams, and of course as it oxidizes every bit of that is flowing into the groundwater.

Re:More important for hunters, I would think...

[Bonker]

When I was younger, my father worked as a 'Security Policeman' (read: heavily armed security guard) at a DOE installation in Texas. He would regularly bring home large coffee cans full of expended slugs from the installation's firing range. He melted down the lead over a camp stove and used wooden casts to make some fairly large sculptures. The process was far from perfect since, but he did manage to make some nice-looking artwork.

Of course if there was as much lead left at the firing range as what he brought home, you *know* there was some serious soil and groundwater contamination going on...

Re:More important for hunters, I would think...

[trcooper]

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.

Mercury poisioning from expended bullets? Interesting, because mercury isn't associated with either the production or discharge of bullets.

Lead poisioning seems reasonable though, but actually the major initial recipient of lead into the enviorment is the atmosphere. In fact ammunition discharge is not even listed as a contributor to the enviormental lead content, one would assume it is under misc, which contributes .1%. Even if you're still worried about disposal, and entering the enviroment via runoff, us geeks are probably more responsible, as more lead is used in battery production than in ammunition manufacture. Beyond that, the majority of ammunition doesn't go to huters.

Now, that said, Hg and Pb in the enviroment is a serious thing, but the real culprits need to be held accountable, don't draw conclusions because it looks logical, or you saw an indoctrination--er... documentry.

Fact is, with out hunters and sportsmen(and women to be PC). We wouldn't have the natural areas left to pollute today.

Don't believe me? Look at the facts for yourself, check the Envirmental Fate section.

Lead
Mercury

Re:More important for hunters, I would think...

[Srin Tuar]

In this example, as the elephant becomes more rare, the value of the ivory will rise, due to supply and demand. This will cause the hunters to work even harder at killing the elephants, since they now get a much higher price for the ivory. Of course, this works against them in the long run when the elephants all are extinct.

Your argument only makes sense if herding elephants for ivory is illegal. If ranchers are allowed to breed elephants for ivory- then I'm sure they'd take exception to hunters killing their property.

Also theyd guarantee that there were always elephants- because theyd suffer a personal loss if they let their herd die.

Re:More important for hunters, I would think...

[Tassach]

Mercury poisioning from expended bullets? Interesting, because mercury isn't associated with either the production or discharge of bullets.

BZZZT. Wrong answer. Thanks for playing. Mercury compounds are used in primers -- Mercury Fulminate, for example. There are non-mercury based primers available (typically potassium or sodium based), but these have the disadvantage of producing corrosive salts as a by-product. Corrosive primers are often used in military ammunition, which is why many military rifles have chrome-lined barrels. Mercury-based primers are non-corrosive, but release Hg compounds, making them unsutable for use in inclosed areas (like indoor ranges). Granted, the amount of Hg released is minimal, but it's enough to give you problems with chronic long-term exposure (EG working in an indoor shooting range).

Strategy

[Alien54]

This makes some sense, given Gulf War syndrome, etc.

You basically do not want to send in occupation forces into an area where you just poisoned the heck out of it. It would be dangerous to your own troops, and the civilian population who you are trying to win to your side.

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Environment

[Wind_Walker]

Look, I'm as concerned about the environment as anybody else, but does this strike anybody else as a bit hypocritical? On one hand, we have the UN proclaiming that peace should be the primary goal of humans and nations everywhere (after all, it IS why the UN was founded), but then they say "Look, your weapons are harming the environment. Go ahead and kill people, but just don't hurt Mother Earth".

68% of the world's population has been in a war of some kind (be it civil war, world war, whatever) and so it's quite obvious that the UN is not doing its job. Countries are still stockpiling weapons...

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.

I'm not a dreamer; I really think this would happen. But we have to convince our governments of this. It's a long-term goal, really. But isn't peace worth it?

Re:Environment

[Winged Cat]

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.)

Re:Environment

[SuiteSisterMary]

Iceland? Nothing beyond a police force, last time I checked.

Re:Environment

[pubudu]

Name one country that has totally disarmed itself and survived another hundred years. Answer: none.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a lilly-livered pacifist, but your fact seems a bit contrived. Iceland has no military force to speak of, and it appears to be doing fine. Your point would have been better made if you had asked if any nation that was wholly berift of military recourse has every long survived. Or even better, do conquering nations allow the conquered to retain their military apparatus?

Re:Environment

[Sunken Kursk]

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.

Re:Environment

[sheetsda]

In an ideal world, this would be true, however, I don't believe it possible in ours. The US has too many enemies, if we were to disarm, those enemies would attack, and we'd be screwed. What I would like to see happen, in line with the same goal, is for any military force engaged in an offensive action that was not provoked by violence but by the command of the government behind it, to reject the command of said government, and for all other forces(friend and enemy alike) to refuse to offensively attack these forces. If there is no offense, there is no war. Just my $0.02

Re:Environment

[mesocyclone]

Those of us who have freedom need military strength to keep the dictators of those who don't from taking ours away!

You say you are not a dreamer, but clearly you are if you expect a unilateral disarmament of the US to lead to anything other than chaos and war. Do you really believe that the sociopaths of the world - Saddam as an example - will destroy their toys and stop being bad guyes?

GET SERIOUS Free societies need a military because free societies are productive and produce goods that everybody else wants to steal! Mankind fights wars because too many societies have not developed effective systems or cultures to prevent their leaders from waging agressive war.

Furthermore, the UN cannot do its job. The UN has a very undemocratic one-country/one-vote system (fortunately with vetoes in the SC) the means that it will always use its power to attempt against the benefit of the free and rich economies.

Re:Environment

[pubudu]

Iceland also has little to no valuable natural resources worth taking.

Not so! England almost came to blows with the defenseless Iceland some years back in what became known as the Cod War. Of course, Iceland's more powerful allies also happened to be allies with Great Britain, so it didn't really get that far.

In many ways, it only makes sense...

[mystery_bowler]

Let's say the Freds and Bobs are at war for resources, we'll say...farmlands. Can't do either of them much good to use their weapons of mass destruction, because said weapons also destroy the land.

I suppose this is just part of having limited space with which to work. You can't just scorch the earth while you slay your enemies, or else you'll be left with nothing but unusable burnt dirt.

test firing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not as daft as it sounds

[Bill_Mische]

It means:
(1) Not having to spend time clearing up (your own or other peoples land) after battles.
(2) Not having to spend time clearing up after training exercises.
(3) Injuring/killing the people your trying to injure/kill rather than your own troops.
(4) Less lawsuits (see 3)
(5) Less time answering tedious questions in Parliament / on television about points 1-4.

idea stolen from "civilization call to power"

[circletimessquare]

we need to develop a bomb with nanotech that will reduce a city to pristine arboreal forest land in a matter of hours or days and spray paint the acronym "ELF" on one randomly selected tree ;-P

Re:idea stolen from "civilization call to power"

[Luyseyal]

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
the genesis device

-l

training weapons

[neo-phyter]

"...99 percent of all missiles are launched in training over your own ground,"

That's the key. But do we really care about the enemy's environment? So, perhaps a more appropriate name for these is training missiles.

Dangerous precedent

[BDew]

As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised. When that's the case, war (especially within your own borders) becomes much less palatable, and therefore the risk of war is reduced...

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Zeinfeld]

As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised.

That was one reason, cost was another. But the biggest reason was that the easiest way to start the multilateral arms reduction process was to agree to not build new classes of weapon and countermeasures to add to the equation.

That is the reason the Russians are now saying that if the US abrogates the ABM treaty they will regard the SALT-I and SALT-II treaties void as well.

The neutron bomb was designed as a battlefield weapon. This was in the days when NATO believed that it could only defend Europe from a Warsaw pact attack for 3 days before having to resort to nuclear weapons. Those of us who pointed out that a large proportion of the USSR forces were built during WWII and that Russia was having enough trouble keeping its satelite states subdued were ridiculed. The claim was repeated even while the USSR demonstrated it could not hold Afghanistan against irregular troops with light arms and Ghadaffi demonstrated that he could not win a desert war with the latest soviet tank against a much smaller Chad force lead by a handful of ex-NATO mercenaries.

The hawks only changed their tune after the USSR collapsed so spectacularly that anybody who admitted they were scared stiff of them looked stupid. So instead they cooked up the ridiclous canard that they deliberately spent the USSR into bankrupcy. Once the full implications of the sino-Soviet pact signed by Putin are understood they will undoubtedly switch to claiming that Russia and China are still poised to invade the West and that only a massive handout to military contractors can save civilization. The tactics would be comical if the consequences were not so great.

It is very easy to promote the most aggressive pig-headed policy as being 'tough' and 'resolute'. Arrafat and Sharon are both making sure their respective consitutencies consider them so. However their tactics are nowhere near as impressive from the outside.

Q:How do you know GWB is lying? A: His buttocks are moving

Re:Dangerous precedent

[mesocyclone]

The neutron bomb was killed due to a very successful propaganda campaign fostered by the KGB. The bomb was portrayed as a capitalists weapon - destroy the people without destroying the structures. In reality, it was designed to stop massed tank attacks with minimal damage to the structures and the people away from its effective kill range. This is because it was developed as a defensive weapon, and was expected to be used on friendly territory against a conquering massive army.

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Zeinfeld]

Hell, Germans had problems subduing Tito and other partisans yet only lunatic would claim that their military wasn't one of the best in the world.

I seem to remember being taught in history that we beat Germany 2-nil at their national sport.

That the USSR was a powerful military force was never in dispute. That they would overwhelm Europe in 3 days was an utterly ridiculous assertion. Yet that defeatism was parotted by every NATO general I met at the time.

You seem to think it would more prudent to assume that your enemy is inferior and incapable of hurting you

No, I consider it to be more prudent to accurately asses the threat posed by a potential adversary. In the name of 'freedom' we spent the cold war proping up every tin pot dictator that would support us, Saddam, Noriega, Marcos, Pinochet, etc. we didn't care how many tens of thousands they murdered so long as they were on 'our side'.

It is not a coincidence that the majority of the 'rogue states' that are now a problem were former client states, Cuba, Iran, Iraq. Meanwhile the US has remarkably little political capital in South Africa, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, the Congo, etc. etc. having been the principal supporter of the former despots.

The assumption that the world is divided up into 'enemies' and 'friends' is a very naive one. It is a useful propaganda tool but a poor basis for public policy.

I am truly happy that we had "hawks" and not people like you making decisions about this stuff.

So you don't care about the fact that despite spending more on its military than the rest of the world put together, US influence in world affairs is declining. The US was bumped off the UN drugs and human rights comissions by the Western powers.

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Zeinfeld]

We had to do that to keep up with Soviets who were busy propping up anyone who would listen to their "rhetoric"

Ahh you believe we were forced to arrange a coup to replace a democratically elected government in Chile with a bunch of murdering thugs because we had no answer to communist rhetoric?

Maybe, just maybe these organizations are NOT places where real decisions are being made.

The current crisis in US foreign policy is precisely because the only role the US has managed to find for itself has been as global policeman being called to the scene of every disaster.

Wether the 'real decisions' are taken in the UN or elsewhere the US suspects that it is not influential in the decisions and it is right.

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Zeinfeld]

We had plenty of answers to leftist rhetoric but we are not talking about rhetoric here but direct or indirect intervention by the Soviets.

You rightist hawks were pissing in your pants with fear of the Soviets. The idea that the entire edifice was so corrupt and incompetent that it would simply collapse never entered your minds.

The reason that you were so afraid of them is that you know that they are just like you. No matter the means, power at any cost.

US rightly recognizes that places where regimes of Zambia and Sudan are recognized as a valid and equally important partners are not where want to be "influential."

Oh please, the Sudan 'regime' has control of 30% of the country at best and even that is pretty ineffectual. Its influence in the UN would be negligible if the US didn't spend so much time and effort denouncing it. Given that Africa has two seats on the commission and the state of the African regimes that vote for them the choice is hardly surprising. The US did not loose its seat to either of them however its seat was from the European/Vestern block and the US can hardly claim that France has a notably worse record on human rights of late (give or take the odd terrorist outrage in Auckland harbour). After all France did invent them.

Re:Dangerous precedent

[Zeinfeld]

No, during that time I was on the other side, living in one of the countries controlled by the Soviets.

Living in a totalitarian state with little contact with the outside world would be the only reasonable excuse for the narrowness and insularity of your views.

Environmentally Friendly War

[CFBMoo1]

Um... this sounds crazy. I have a better idea then spending billions on weapons that kill people and save the environment. I have a better idea.

How about thousands on terminals and network cables so there can be one big LAN fest for the war? Imagine the US vs. China in an all out death match in Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, or Counter Strike? Thats environmentally friendly, saves millions and billions of dollars, and anyone can be a soldier of tomorrow! Hell I'd sign up if wars were fought that way, then I'd buy a beer for the guys I was frag'n for my country! :)

Oh well, I'll have to settle for reality, which in my view is more stupid then what I mentioned above.

Re:Environmentally Friendly War

[fishbowl]

>How about thousands on terminals and network
>cables so there can be one big LAN fest for the
>war?

Well, until somebody cheats, and/or the "wrong"
side wins, that's great. Afterwards, out come the guns and nuclear weapons...

Comedy Relief

[fm6]

So it turns out that Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were boyfriends. Disgusted, the CIA decides to rub them both out. A hit squad bursts in on them when they were in bed together. Gorby looks at them and,

Shoot if must
This Old Gay Red
But spare Your Country's Fag
He said.

Hey, I think we're back on topic!

This is for YOUR OWN soil.

[CrystalFalcon]

Looks like many people here missed the point. One key reason to care about what goes up and comes down is that 99.9% of all ammunition is depleted during training, on your own soil.

One perfectly valid scenario would be to have, say, 75% efficient nontoxic training grenades which are replaced by 100% efficient war grenades when the time comes to go to war. This is already done with live vs. blank rounds, nothing saying the practice can't be extended.

And if I could say so, I would rather have that 99.9% market share of environmentally friendly training weapons, than the .1% higher-tech more-lethal toxic-in-the-making weaponry.

Land mines

[coyote-san]

Subject pretty much says it all. You either understand that conflicts come and go, but munitions last forever (mustard gas from WW-I is still occasionally found in Europe), and you accept the need to minimize that damage to the extent possible, or you don't.

It's also important to realize that, prior to the 20th Century, wars simply didn't leave much (non-biodegradable) hazardous material behind on the battlefield. Some lead from the bullets, but that's about it. Land mines, nerve gas and blistering agents, all are fairly recent inventions and we're just now learning how much long-lasting damage they cause.

(I know, some battles involved salting fields to kill off crops, etc., but you didn't have land mines in those fields that will blow off the legs of children gleaning the little food that does grow there.)

Re:Agent Glo Orange?

[silicon_synapse]

Education it NOT the magical solution to the world's ills. Nobody (almost) likes war. Nobody wins in war. How will education help? Some things are just a fact of life whether we like it or not. As far as racism goes, I won't get started. Sufice it to say I blame the media for about 75% of racism today.

Re:Friendly

[Kotetsu]

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.

green bomb

[the_other_one]

A leaflet flutters to the ground.

You read the leaflet.

You have been blown up by an environmentally friendly weapon

Under International law you have 1 hour to kill yourself.

Please have your body disposed of in a tidy manner.

Disarmament

[karb]

Unfortunately, we need a military to protect our economic interests. We need intelligence (aka cia etc) to protect our economic and diplomatic interests.

It's a long-term goal, really. But isn't peace worth it?

While every peace activist in the world will cry foul, peace is so worth it that we spend umpteen billion dollars a year on defense because it is a deterrent.

For example, if there were no nuclear weapons, we would have had WWIII and IV already. Millions of people (including civilians) would have died.

What we really need is goodwill. :) Nations unwilling to work together would be detrimental even if they were unarmed.

Re:Disarmament

[KjetilK]

While every peace activist in the world will cry foul, peace is so worth it that we spend umpteen billion dollars a year on defense because it is a deterrent.

So, you're like the romans "if you want peace, prepare for war".

Well, you know what Joseph Rotblat had to say about why it was wrong of him to develop the bomb? There is no such thing as a deterrent for a sick mind! Do you really think Hitler would have cared if Germany was erased from the face of the earth, if he could make sure England was erased too...?

No, it's not acceptable anymore. If you want peace, prepare for peace.

For example, if there were no nuclear weapons, we would have had WWIII and IV already. Millions of people (including civilians) would have died.

No. Why don't you read what General Lee Butler has to say about that.

If an insane leader had risen to power any of the nuclear powers, it would have been the final world war. Billions would have died.

Re:Disarmament

[karb]

Well, he never really comes out with any cogent arguments about why deterrence doesn't work. He makes arguments about why nuclear deterrence doesn't work now, but I don't think anybody would argue that.

He also argues that nuclear weapons were horrible because they become the ultimate power ... which is precisely why I think they were great. The U.S. and Soviet respective nuclear doctrines would never allow them to launch a first strike (as long as jfk remains dead). Being afraid is far nobler than being dead.

Anyway, I don't really care about nukes anyway ... just saying that an ounce of prevention is stronger than a pound of cure. And the only prevention that works well at the moment is military power. It would be nice if that weren't the case.

Neutron bomb - wasn't about "saving the industry"

[Infonaut]

The neutron bomb was presented by the media back in the 1980s as a method of bombing an opponent so as to kill its inhabitants, then march in and take over the industrial infrastructure.

This is, of course, absurd, because the neutron bomb's primary purpose was for tactical and operational, rather than strategic, use. The idea is that if you can affect your enemy over the same area with a 1 kiloton neutron weapon as with a 13 kiloton fission weapon, you can essentially "manage" the nuclear battlefield better.

The neutron bomb concept came out of a rethinking of US defense policy, a reorientation towards a strategy oriented around actually fighting the Soviet Union at the point of attack, rather than relying on the Massive Retaliation policy of the 1970s.

Although eventually the DoD found other methods of answering Soviet numerical superiority (deep strikes from the air, force multipliers like the M1 tank, precision guided artillery, cruise missiles, and so on), the neutron bomb was never seriously considered as a means of "saving the industry". Even generals know about radiation. ;-)

See here for a bit more about the neutron bomb in the context of overall defense planning.

Refresher course...

[G-funk]

On the neutron bomb, for those who don't actually know or remember (me) the details: [http://web2.iadfw.net/myself/secular/writing/n_bo mb.htm]

Re:What are we aiming for?

[david duncan scott]

Remember that NATO was created to defend Europe against a Soviet invasion, an invasion which would need to be fought in people's backyards and farms, since most of Europe is either backyard or farm.

Only when you're the invader can you hope to deal exclusively with established enemy bases (and even then you're probably wrong).

Re:Preserving the Industry

[dragons_flight]

You forgot to mention:

"Don't forget to increase our budget allocation, since our new environmentally friendly weapons will cost several times the value of our current stockpile. Just remember it's for the environment and the children."

Re:Iceland Defense Force

[SuiteSisterMary]

I call that "American units, and other NATO units, stationed on Iceland, because in the event of a conventional World War III, the Soviet Union would have tried to close the Sea Lines of Communication between North America and Europe, making Iceland an important part of the SOSUS installations. Furthermore, Iceland makes a good staging ground for aircraft."

Calling Col. Kurtz?

[mister7]

This reminds me of a time when the U.S. hesitated to attack Iraqi targets for fear of offending Muslims during Rammadan...I'm sure the gesture was lost on any of the victims. Making the following quote relavent to the story is left as an exercise to the reader...

We train men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene!
Col. Walter E. Kurtz

Re:Friendly

[Fifth of Five]

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?

Re:Horrible thing

[frog51]

It isn't horrible - it's about as poisonous as lead, and used for the same reason as lead is used: it's very heavy.

To find more info google search for "depleted uranium" or New Scientist has lots of info.

Yahoo Auctions

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

but munitions last forever (mustard gas from WW-I is still occasionally found in Europe), and you accept the need to minimize that damage to the extent possible, or you don't.

And there's the risk of the munitions ending in a Yahoo Auction and a foreign judge causing lots of trouble. If svastikas and iron crosses were biodegradable, we'd be better.

the USA has had These for years.

[Lumpy]

It's called a nutron bomb. Kills all sentient life while not damaging the land. Oh and Biological weapons.... we're just setting some little bugs free...

Nothing new here.

Neutron Bomb

[Wyatt Earp]

From the comment at the top, it's obvious that Hemos doesn't understand what the Neutron bomb was designed for.

The common misunderstanding is that it was developed to leave industry alone so we could wage an atomic war and then move right in. That's simply not true.

The Neutron bomb, or Enhanced Radiation bomb (ER), was designed with Soviet Armor in mind. During the above ground weapons testing in Nevada, it became clear that a standard nuclear device wasn't effective at knocking out armor. Kind of like how cockroaches, turtles and armadillos survive nukes.

Since the Soviets had 6-1 armor strength in the 60s and 3-1 in the late 70s and early 80s, something else had to be developed. That was the ER nuclear device. Most ER warheads were developed for the 203, 175 and 155mm artillery pieces, the 175 'Long Tom' was retired so that left the 203 and 155, then the Lance tactical missile was fitted with the 175's warheads and the Pershing 1 was also given the ability to fire an ER weapon.

The Neutron bomb penetrated armor and killed the crew much more effectivly than a much larger conventional atomic device.

All the ER weapons were in the 10-15 KT range, not a city buster or stratigic weapon by any stretch, but a tactical weapon that would have been deployed in bottle-necks like the Fulda Gap or against Soviet Armor on the Northern German plains were the Soviet out tanked the British EF by 6-1 or 10-1 depending on the Soviet's deployment.

The whole Neutron bomb for nuking cities or industry and leaving it in-tact was propganda from the Soviet funded anti-nuclear activists. See the Mitrokhin Archives for info on that.

Re:Neutron Bomb

[Quila]

I was in Lance for a while. The system's long gone, so this has nothing but historical value.

The stockpile was in Muenster, and you could fit either conventional or nuke warheads onto the end of a rocket, just takes a few minutes with a small crane. The conventional was simple bomblets, but the nuke was pretty bad -- what we called "dial-a-nuke." Essentially, "how many people do you want to kill" and "how dirty do you want this explosion to be." I'm guessing the latter ties into the neutron bomb idea of how unlivable you want an area to be afterwards.

Nasty, glad we never had to fire a real one. But practicing emergency destruction with C4, TNT and shaped charges was real fun.

What is the purpose of war?

[Antaeus Feldspar]

When properly conducted (and yes, I am aware that that could not not sound like an oxymoron) the purpose of war is to lead the way, as quickly and effectively as possible, to the optimum conditions for a long-lasting peace.

Using weapons that hose the environment does not exactly set the stage for the long-lasting periods of peace and prosperity that we hope the wars are fought to achieve.

Appointed Rounds

[AndroidCat]

I hope those rounds weren't "depleted" Uranium.

Sure in war, I'd love to have something that goes through the other guy's armour like stink. (The trade-off between dying in thirty secords verses thirty years.) But I sure wouldn't want to get too close to it in training in peacetime. (Like is there any isotope of Uranium that isn't radioactive or chemically poisonous?)

In war time, we (Homo Sapiens) have done some silly damaging things--but at least not at bad as we could have.

I believe Britain kind of "lost" an island off the coast of Scotland to anthrax in WWII. Here in Canada, we were playing with that too. Botulism toxin (Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario), riderpest. We had "over-kill" quantities of Compound Zed by the end of the war.

Check John Bryden, ISBN 0-7710-1726-X, "Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War"

I'll believe in "green weapons" when someone fights a war with them -- which I hope I never see.

Re:Appointed Rounds

[Proud Geek]

Uranium is a heavy metal. In its most common isotope (U-238, the one used for depleted uranium) it is not significantly radioactive (ie. it poses no health risks for that reason at any exposure levels). Uranium is always toxic, though, since it is a heavy metal in all of its isotopes, radioactive or not.

Handling depleted uranium isn't inherently dangerous; you treat it just like lead. Shooting huge quantities of it could well be a bad thing, as that leaves it all over the place, and it may give off dust that could cause poisoning in sufficient quantities. I'm not aware of any studies on exposure when shooting it in quantites such as would be done in combat.

Probably driven by DU

[dgb2n]

Depleted Uranium. The US has used DU in its tank rounds for a number of years because of its density and armor penetration. Although the article doesn't mention it explicitly, I suspect that the whole DU discussion has driven the move toward green munitions in general.

NATO and most of the European countries have been extremely concerned about the environmental and health implications of its use. Training munitions don't contain DU but it was used in the Gulf War.

Science seems to come down on both sides of the issue at the moment. Very difficult to pinpoint specific health problems related to it but it continues to be a suspect in Gulf War illness.

Depleted uranium still radioactive

[Hammer]

Uranium is a radioactive metal period. In fact everything beyond Lead in the periodic table is radioactive. Uranium 238 is less active and mostly Alpha decay active as opposed to U 235 that is more active with beta decay and gamma radiation.

Depleted Uranium has little or no U235 and almost 100% consists of U238. Still ratioactive, eventually creates isotopes of lower atoms that will emit beta and gamma radiation witch is more dangerous to us than alpha radiation that only penetrates the body a few millimeters.

media cluelessness on military subjects

[Infonaut]

Geeks already realize that popular media coverage of computer-related issues is of poor quality. What they may not realize is that the press has vastly less comprehension of military issues than it does of computers.

I couldn't agree more. Classic cases of this (and I'm just naming a few off the top of my head here):

1) During development, the M1 tank was lambasted by the press because it used a turbine engine. This "gold plating" gives the M1 tremendous acceleration, allows the M1 to use a variety of fuels, and has helped it to become perhaps the most feared land weapon fielded today.

2) Similarly, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle was savaged by 60 Minutes. Unfortunately, many reporters seem completely uninformed about how weapons development and testing proceeds. Like any system, the initial testing version can't possibly be as robust and capable as the fielded version. During Desert Storm, the Bradley proved invaluable. In fact, several actually took direct hits from T-72 tanks and survived. Is version 1.0 of any software ever as good as version 2.0?

3) During the buildup of Operation Desert Shield, many in the media mistakenly opined that the US was unprepared for a desert war. This ignores the very obvious fact that US units had routinely gone through desert warfare training at the National Training Center for almost a decade. Many units also had desert experience through Bright Star joint exercises with Egypt. This is akin to saying that because it's Open Source, Linux is inherently insecure. Someone is just not catching a clue.

4) I don't know how many times I've seen the term "elite" applied to military units that are mediocre at best. A unit that might be considered "elite" in a Third World country is usally no match for a truly elite unit like the SAS, US Army Rangers, Australian SAS, etc. It's like saying "Serving pages from his Apple IIe, Bob was able to run a world-class, high-volume e-commerce website."

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that my personal experience in the military leads me to believe that by in large, reporters are not as intellectually rigorous as they should be. There are a few good ones out there, like Tom Gjelten of NPR, but they seem few and far between.

Neutron Bomb Clarification Time People!

[bailpossum]

I'm getting sick and tired of all these damn misconceptions that Neutron/Enhanced Radiation bombs just kill people and leave buildings standing, ready for utilization by an occupying force.

GET THE $^@%$W%%^. FACTS STRAIGHT!

Neutron Bombs were researched and created as enhanced kill and area denial weapons, to use tactically against the advance of Warsaw / CommBLock Armoured columns in the anticipated invasion of Western Europe. The only to date fielded Neutron weapon is the W-70 Warhead for use in air-dropped tactical nuclear bomb (B-61)

With the specific design to roast russians through the armour of their tanks, and make a large section of real-estate too radioactively hot to cross.

These weapons do not just go *pop* like a toy, IT STILL YIELDS 20+ KILOTONS, UP TO 170kt, which is 10x greater than the Hiroshima Bomb.

ALRIGHT?! OKAY? Drop A neutron bomb and you still flatten the surroundings, and you make it unliveable for a good amount of time!!! GRRR.

(Makes you wonder about US doctrine in using these things in friendly German territory. If the Cold war had ever become hot)

Re:U-238 Shells Not an Environmental Hazard

[Yazeran]

You are absolutely right!!.

Uranium is a common element and can be found in many sources (including concrete, granite and black shales (like those sometimes used as roof material)).

Remember that this is natural uranium which is MUCH more radiactive due to the decay-products formed during the last 100 milion years since deposition. Depleted uranium is also not realy poisinious as some belive.. You can actually eat it, and the only ill effect would probably be a bad case of digestion (and problems passing metal detectors in airports untill it has passed through.. :-)

Ordinary lead projectiles are much more poisinous, as lead is soluble (and hence mobile) in acidic water, whereas uranium is not (as long as the water is not too reducing).

Yours Yazeran

Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.