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USAF Readies Laser of Death
An anonymous reader submits: "From the SkyNet Terminator Death Beam Dept...The London Telegraph is carrying this article about U.S. military plans to outfit AC-130 Spectre gunships with a chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) which can be used against personnel and materiel for lethal and nonlethal missions."
In all seriousness, you create a population inversion in a lasing medium by "hitting" it very hard. In a ruby laser, for instance, you can hit the ruby rod with the light from a flash lamp. In a CO2 or a HeNe you hit the medium with an electric discharge. In a laser diode, you pass current along a semi- conductor junction.
A chemical laser "hits" the medium by burning together two materials. The materials are chosen such that most of the combustion products are in an excited state, thus generating the population inversion.
The lasing effect, as you put it, only occurs when you put the population- inverted medium in a resonator chamber, i.e. between two mirrors. In that sense, there's no "radiation stimulus" in any laser. Instead, at some point one of the excited molecules will lose energy spontaneously. If it's lucky, that photon will hit one of the mirrors and be sent back through the medium. If it's real lucky, it'll interact with another excited molecule or atom, and make it release its stored energy. Then you have two photons, in phase. Repeat many times a second, and you have a laser.
FWIW, I heard a report about a gasoline-powered chemical laser made by the Israelis a couple of years back.
That's an excellent point. A warship also has WAY more room in which to store a power plant, and more crew to maintain the system.
Combine this system with some nice super-cavitating underwater guns to deal with the torpedos, and there you have it, your 21st century naval defense platform.
Some large 50-caliber bullets (capable of taking out armored personel carriers!) are not legally allowed to be used against people -- only material and equipment... the same situation as the laser. But this isn't considered a deterent to users of the gun... the loophole? a shooter can always claim they were weren't aiming at the preson, only their the canteen, beltbuckle, dogtag, etc.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
when the m-16 was first introduced, there was some controversy over the design. a bullet, when fired from an m-16, would tend to wobble as it flew, making it more messy when it hit a target.
... early in vietnam, but i don't recall the outcome. they might have redesigned the ballistics, but i don't recall.
Here you go, an article talking about FMJ and the M-16
Snippets from the above:
The landwar convention from The Hague doesn't allow fragmenting bullets for purposes of war, so every army in the world uses FMJ bullets. Usually a hit from a conventional FMJ doesn't kill, but leaves a clean hole. No hunter will use FMJ, since they want to kill, not to wound.
[snip]
This, in theory is better for two reasons -- one, it creates a situation where instead of creating a dead enemy soldier it creates a wounded one, which must be cared for by his buddy, thus taking two men out of action with each hit. The second reason behind the idea is that it is more humane to wound than to kill. This type of ammunition was agreed upon by the Geneva convention, and both sides of the vietnam war agreed to it's use.
[snip]
So I think the difference is between temporary wounding (the above) and permanent scaring (say from blinding lasers, mustard gas, biological agents, dirty nukes). The Geneva Convention is for the former and against the latter.
What is music when you despise all sound?
IIRC, .50cal/12.7mm and above are often classified as anti-vehicle. International rules of warfare prohibit intentional use of anti-vehicle weapons against humans.
Doesn't stop it in practice, and if all you have is such a weapon when others are shooting at you, it's hard to go against you even if someone did bring charges.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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To the best of my knowledge that's not true. And although I can't back it up with fact (and that link reference hardly points to fact) let me point out a few things to support my argument.
The .50 is designed for "soft" targets such as trucks, jeeps, APCs, LAVs, bunkers, bivouacs, buildings etc... but is also designed to be used against the people that occupy them. I can assure you that those trained on the .50cal machine gun (at least as far as NATO countries are concerned) are also told that it is to be used against groups of infantry.
This having been said, as a rule of thumb the person aiming the .50cal won't use it against individuals for the same reason that you don't aim the APFSDS round of a tank against people: waste of valuable resources.
Might I also remind you that the caliber of choice for sniper rifles world-wide is the .50 caliber. A seldomly discussed fact is that snipers don't always go after people, but quite often are used to destroy equipment such as radar, generators or vehicles, the .50 cal does a great job of slicing through an engine block, but it also kills a person in a single shot, hence it's use. Range is another reason why.
Now, speaking from my years of experience in the Canadian Armoured Corps, I can assure you that soldiers are trained to use .50 cal against infantry when required to do so, but usualy that's the job of medium machine guns (at least in NATO the .50inch is Heavy machine gun caliber, 7.62mm is medium machine caliber and 5.56mm is light machine gun/rifle caliber (yeah, the M16 in vietnam was 7.62mm, but all the barrels have been replaced with 5.56mm for years now)).
I hope this clears things up a bit. Oh, and about those comments concerning the "wobbling" of the M16 round, that's not accurate either. The M16 (and all the variants that I'm aware of) have a rifled barrel, meaning that a high degree of spin (clockwise, if you're curious) is applied to the round as progresses through the barrel. This rifling effect causes the trajectory of the round to be less succeptible to wind and small branches, it also eliminates any wobble. On the other hand, as soon as the round hits something reasonably solid, such as a human bone, it will start to "tumble", causing further damange. The whole wobble argument was about fragmentation of rounds, which the metal jacket eliminates.
One last piece of information, at lot of tanks out there have a special round designed for them that looks like a really big shotgun round, which is used against infantry at close range (it is also often used to remove infantry that are mounting a neighbouring tank). It's range is under a couple hundred meters, but I've seen it cut up 50 wooden targets in a single shot. Now that's scary! Feel free to bring up any questions you have to that above info.
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Because 8000 years ago, Og the caveman picked up a big stick and beat the living crap out of Ug the other caveman who didn't know what a 'tool' was. Since then, it's been the universal rule - he with the most guns rules.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
That is incorrect. I'm going to assume that the International Committee of the Red Cross knows a little bit more about the matter than you do, and they give a quite different set of reasons than you do. But don't take my word for it; do some reading of your own at their web site and draw your own conclusions.
Baretta makes a .50 cal sniper rifle that is used by many different world armies and police forces.
RPGs (rocket propelled grenades, shaped charges/antitank weapons) were used by the Somalians and North Vietnamese Army against U.S. ground troops (i.e. humans).
The Soviets in Afghanistan routinely used ZSU 23s (23mm cannon) against human targets. Also, most modern aircraft are armed with 20mm, 23mm or 25mm cannons. In addition, the next generation personal weapon the U.S. is testing will be a double barreled hybrid with a 20mm cannon and a 5.56mm rifle barrel mounted in over/under fashion.
I haven't even touched on Blooper (aka Thumper). The M-79 grenade launcher which fires a variety of 40mm ammo. A variation of Blooper mounts underneath the M-16 (CAR-15/M-4).
I think you must be quoting somebody who was quoting somebody who was quoting somebody else from Amnesty International or PETA.
In the six years I spent in the service, I don't ever recall hearing this argument. I know the military cannot use tumblers, dum dum rounds, flat heads or hollow points against human targets. I also know we were not supposed to file, score or scratch the standard steel jacketed round so that it fragments better.
The US rifle in 7.62 nato was the M-14 which appeared to be an evolution from the M1 Garand. The M16 which replaced it was always 5.56. Regarding "wobble" the rifling rate (inches per turn) of early the early M16 was barely able to stablise lead core ball ammo. This may have been done to increase lethality but a side result was poor accuracy. This plus a nato requirement for an armor piercing round which is less dense, hence longer at the same weight, hence less inherently stable made the original barrels obsolete since the armor piercing round would not have been stablised at all. M16s were then rebarreled with fewer inches per turn rifling for better accuracy and the ability to stablise any reasonably forseeable ammo.
Independent organizations are trying to put a number to the civilian death toll and the current numbers are between 300 and 1300 although some remote areas have not been surveyed yet.
The much higher numbers you are suggesting are based on the Taliban's word. Afgani reporters have said that numbers they reported back to their (Afgan) news groups were doubled, tripled or worse at the insistence of the Taliban.
I'm not trying to justify anyone's point of view but let's at least base our arguments on reliable sources.