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Army Researchers Patent Self-destructing Bullet Designed To Save Lives (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center recently patented a new type of bullet capable of self-destructing after traveling over a predetermined distance. The idea behind the new and advanced projectile is that it might help limit the extent of collateral damage (read: innocents dying) during battle or in other operational settings and environments. As for how it all works, the U.S. Army explains that when one of these limited-range projectiles is fired, a pyrotechnical material is ignited at the same time and reacts with a special coating on the bullet. "The pyrotechnic material ignites the reactive material, and if the projectile reaches a maximum desired range prior to impact with a target," the Army writes, "the ignited reactive material transforms the projectile into an aerodynamically unstable object." The researchers add that the desired range of its limited-range projectile can be adjusted by switching up the reactive materials used. Put simply, the Army has come up with what effectively amounts to a self-destructing bullet that is rendered ineffective over certain distances.
It's unfortunate that the Israelis have a conscience. I'd rather they just grape-shot the subhuman terrorists.
A jamming M16/M4 is a feature designed to stop soldiers killing civilians as fast as they'd otherwise be able to.
>As an honorably discharged Specialist in the US Army
As an honorably discharged Specialist in the US Army you are somebody who has been in the military making you uniquely DISQUALIFIED for an opinion on this particular matter. For the same reason that we don't leave scrutiny of politicians up to other politicians but, instead, to the media and the judiciary.
The simple fact is that very nearly every great evil that has ever been committed was done by somebody who sincerely believed they were doing good, or at the very least that what they did was "justified" by circumstance. Nothing personal but this means anybody who has been *in* the kind of circumstances where bad shit gets done is the LAST person who CAN judge whether it was, in fact, justified. It has to be judged by somebody who does NOT have the bias of having been there.
Go read the media reports of Abu Ghraib, notably the ones who asked questions about the soldiers in the videos - every person who knows them report they were nice people, good people - but in a bad situation, they did a terrible thing and I am sure they all believed that the situation was so dire that the terrible thing was made justifiable by it. By being there, their judgment was compromised.
You may despise what the person said, you may sincerely believe that you never once caused a single civilian death that could be avoided - but you are not and cannot ever be the person who decides that. Somebody who was NOT there has to decide what "could be avoided" means, because merely being there must inevitably compromise your judgement.
The simple truth is that the US military has gained an extremely well deserved reputation for killing civilians at a hugely unacceptable rate. Everybody in the military believes it was unavoidable or justified - they would have to, there's no way this could have happened if they didn't, but everybody in the military is automatically disqualified from making that judgement - that's what oversight MEANS - and why it exists.
Only people outside the military get to judge that, exactly because they WON'T be biassed by having their buddy killed in the trench next to them yesterday, and those people have pretty much overwhelmingly decided that the vast majority of civilian deaths, particularly in the last two wars, were utterly unjustified. You may not like it, but those people - and their right to decide that, is exactly who and what you swore to defend.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *