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

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

- - -
Radio Free Nation
an alternate news site using Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -

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

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...

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.

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.)

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.

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]

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.