US Military Seeks Biodegradable Bullets That Sprout Plants (newatlas.com)

The Department of Defense is looking at ways to clean up the hundreds of thousands of training rounds used by the U.S. army. It is putting out the call for the development of biodegradable ammunition loaded with seeds that sprout plans after being discharged. New Atlas reports: At military facilities across the U.S. and indeed around the world, a huge number of rounds are fired for training purposes, ranging from low-velocity 40 mm grenades, to mortars, to 155 mm artillery rounds. All of these feature components that can take hundreds of years to biodegrade, and falling onto the ground in such great numbers means that finding and cleaning them up is no small task. But left behind, they can corrode and pollute the soil and water supplies. So the Department of Defense has put out a call for proposals through the Small Business Innovation Research agency that solve the problem. The DoD describes the solution as a naturally occurring biodegradable material that can replace those used in current training rounds. It imagines that the biodegradable composites will be capable of holding bioengineered seeds inside (a technology it says has been demonstrated previously), that won't germinate until they have been in the ground for several months. Then plants will sprout from the discharged ammunition that actively remove soil contaminants and consume the other biodegradable components. Also imperative is that animals are able to safely consume the plants.

Comments

Re:Here's a crazy idea

[iggymanz]

Some people in this world really do need shooting though

Re:Oh great

[ckatko]

You are pretty dumb.

There's nothing wrong with cutting costs and reducing pollution. These rounds aren't being made for killing people. You might as well be arguing that they shouldn't train recruits with "fake grenades" at first because fake grenades don't kill anyone.

Great. Spread invasive plant species all over

[jfdavis668]

Unless the plant is native to the area, keep it out. Last thing we need is another kudzu or similar plant spreading like wildfire.

Re:Oh great

[PopeRatzo]

98% of all ordnance is expended in practice, and a small number of test ranges absorb most of this firepower. THIS is why green ordnance is a good idea.

You're shouting common sense into a deep, dark chasm of stupidity. You should know by now that any time a story mentions sustainability, there's going to be dozens of shit-drizzlers who only know that they're supposed to be agin' it.

And every time a story has anything to do with the military, the comment section will be full of anonymous no-dick keyboard kommandos who think playing COD4 and hassling women on Twitter is "fighting the war back home" and thus qualifies them as experts in all things war-fighting.