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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.
You can bet, the only thing this will do is put our military in danger. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things. It's just that simple. Quit screwing around with these stupid "green" things when it comes to the military.
I've been sprouting plans my whole life - it never fixed a thing!
Never happened. True story.
they FEED people.
But this and other ideas like it will end on January 20th.
couldn't we just not shoot people?
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To avoid trashing the environment, they need to use plants that are native to each local area.
That's a lot of different types of rounds to keep track of.
This is the most sever misunderstanding of what the horrors of war are that I have ever seen.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
I mean this literally... other than bullet salespeople, who cares? Every decade or two, when it's time to get new bullets, I go to the bullet store, and I buy something that they have in stock, within my budget. I couldn't care if it was biodegradable, non-biodegradable, or made out of FairyDust. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet.
What a great game ... sproutin' good guys and bad in the 90's. :) I think GOG.com has a re-mastered version? If they do, I'll probably lose a couple of weeks to that when I pick it up.
I don't know of any material with a density suitable for behaving properly as a projectile that doesn't contain toxic metals. The high-gravity-compound plastics have metal filler.
the probelm,
The army fires lots of training rounds that are a concentrated health and enviromental hazard
the US military solution expensive biodegradble seed bullets
The practical solution.
Dig down 20 feet and pour 3 feet of renforced concrete, in roughly a hill bunker shape. pour dirt on top. Fire away for a year. once a year dig down to the concrete and put all the dirt into a giant sifter and sorter. collect all the bullets, and metal them down for reuse.
They are training rounds fired on training fields. this is easy.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I thought that by definition the bullet was the metal part at the end of the casing. They are talking about 40mm+ ordinance. The 40mm m781 practice grenade is a plastic casing around a chalk core. I would have thought biodegradable plastic would have been relatively simple, and chalk isn't exactly what I think of as a pollutant.
Did you hear that great big whooshing sound? Yeah, that. That was the sound of "training rounds" going right over your head.
Or more likely right through your head. Which is easy to do because it's apparently empty.
You generally shoot targets rather than people during training.
Unless the plant is native to the area, keep it out. Last thing we need is another kudzu or similar plant spreading like wildfire.
Because if it's not, then it must be the last stunt of a bunch of Obama appointees who know they're about to be handed their walking papers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Bullets are antiseeds, plant one and watch someting die.
Now I've heard everything
I like shooting those because of the extra challenge vs. stationary. I shoot them by the dozen. I wonder if these rounds are still effective. Might be fun to try..
We don't just want you dead, we want you pushing up daisies. Literally.
Totally stupid. Like someone else said, the role of the military is to kill people and break stuff. Nothing else. Not nation building, not inventing environmentally friendly ways to kill. The goal should be to use the military sparingly, then when you do, use the most effective tools to do the ugly but necessary job.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
So THAT's where they keep getting these ideas...
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
is part of a healthy and balanced diet.
The unofficial
I can see the future propaganda posters: Kill the enemy while saving the planet, join today!
... the bullets can't be used just anywhere because the plants would be as invasive as the fucking assholes who use them.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Of course, getting enemy combatants to hang around the impact area of US military training ranges might present something of a challenge . . .
Then plants will sprout from the discharged ammunition that actively remove soil contaminants
The plant cannot degrade heavy metals, it can only concentrate them. Be sure to not eat that plant, or animals that ate it.
He would have had a field day writing these into some sort of dark satirical sci-fi story.
Mostly random stuff.
When I read the title I thought of the scene in The Fountain when Hugh Jackman drinks from the tree of life. It's at 8:30 here.. But then I read TFS.
Yep. They do. Their annual ammunition buy is currently about 1.8 billion rounds a year, and essentially all of this gets used in training.
How many rounds do they use in actual combat operations? At the height of the Iraq War the U.S. expended only seventy two million rounds a year in combat. How many were they expending in training each year at that time? 1.1 billion rounds! The rate of training ammunition expenditure has since gone up, and is now 1.8 billion rounds. Before 9/11 the military had a less intense training regimen, they only expended 350 million rounds a year, but that was still five times more than the rate of expenditure in Iraq.
People are always astounded (incredulous, really) to learn that ammunition used in war these days is just round-off error in training ammo purchases.
So, yes, not having to clean up one or two billion casings a year would be a big benefit.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Don't know why steel-cored bullets can't be collected with something like Mr. White's electromagnet truck.
If you are on a training range and the rounds aren't overwhelmingly landing into a small well defined area, it's a far bigger problem than non biodegradable ammo.
they sprout Onions
Table-ized A.I.
That ALL Metal comes from the Ground. Right? ... Its not "Pollution" LMMFAO! (Liberal Thinking)
"You may like to read: ... Donald Trump Wins US Presidency"
No. Don't remind me.
Table-ized A.I.
Captain Planet had this totally beat. . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I don't know of any material with a density suitable for behaving properly as a projectile that doesn't contain toxic metals.
Actually platinum would work well; it's twice the density of lead and chemically inert. Cost might be an issue though.
they're working on adding daisy seeds to future live rounds, so Americans can finally once again understand what the term 'pushing up daisies' means, in regards to combat and firearms specifically :)
There was an Indiegogo campaign to create the Flower Shell: shotgun shells that would spread seeds when fired.
https://www.cnet.com/news/for-extreme-gardeners-shotgun-shells-full-of-seed/
https://laughingsquid.com/flower-shell-lets-you-plant-seeds-with-a-12-gauge-shotgun/
The website for them (flowershell.com) is defunct, though, and the Indiegogo page has been taken down. All the Youtube demo videos are gone, too.
I don't know of any material with a density suitable for behaving properly as a projectile that doesn't contain toxic metals. The high-gravity-compound plastics have metal filler.
Ecomass is apparently a tungsten/polymer composite that was designed to meet current U.S. Army specs for nontoxic training ammunition. It of course has Tungsten powder in it which is somewhat toxic, however it is bound with a polymer, and is not nearly as environmentally toxic as lead. About the only compounds that you could use that would be less toxic would probably be Bismuth (which is used as a lead replacement). Of course you could also use silver, gold, and platinum, but that would be some mighty expensive bullets (of course even tungsten is very expensive compared to lead ~15x).
Every day a large amount of blood is drained from animals in the human consumption chain, and is already used in numerous applications including farming and gardening. Dehydrate it, pack it down in a modified giant pill press, then coat with a seed mixture and a sabot jacket of some kind and bingo, you got yourself a biodegradable, environment-friendly eco-shell ready to spread flowers and beauty with pin-point accuracy at up to 15 miles range.
Plus, everyone knows blood makes the grass grow.
"A retreating army always leaves ... gifts." That is in my mind ... don't know where.
But I would venture that this is a GREAT BIOTERROR weapon, i.e. invasive plants!
Actually the idea could be that we would explode millions of munitions in LEO (Low Earth Orbit, very low) and the invasive mutant seeds would rain down on the opponent. In 3-years the opponent is up to their arm pits in Kudzu! Can't take a piss or a shit without bumping into the stuff.
IT'S A PERFECT SOLUTION!
ABORIGINES, n. Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.
I don't see the newsworthiness in this; it's been done before, just manually. The only advancement here is automating the process.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Flower_Power_by_Bernie_Boston.jpg
/s
There's nothing wrong with cutting costs and reducing pollution. These rounds aren't being made for killing people.
Actually they may kill people. By planting seeds and growing plants on a live fire training range they are potentially hiding unexploded ordinance. Making it harder to recognize and increasing the likelihood of accidental detonation.
"They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks"... and their bullets into plant seeds!
Since this is for training, yep, it's not shooting people.
That said, the sprouting seed idea would be kind of fun for war. You shoot people, and then they push up daisies.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare IRL
Coming Soon to the training ground.
You can bet, the only thing this will do is put our military in danger. The purpose of the military is to kill people and break things. It's just that simple. Quit screwing around with these stupid "green" things when it comes to the military.
As usual, the flowers & beads decked SJWs modded you down, even though what you wrote is correct. What they overlook is that none of our enemies - ISIS, the Iranians, the Syrians, even the Russians bother about any of that stuff. You won't see bullets decompose and sprout plants.
This program is pretty much on the lines of glutein free MREs, transgender commanders and so on. We should export the SJWs who gave us this to Raqqa, so that they can train ISIS on how to get these things. Maybe work on biodegradable swords for them that they can use in their beheadings, and so on.
Thankfully, in 2 weeks, the Obamanation will be behind us, and such programs can be the first put to.... biodegradable bullets of their own. So that no more cash is wasted on such things when we're scratching our heads on the $20T debt.
Zardoz is going to be pissed when he finds out that someone is building guns that shoot seeds and makes new life to poison the earth...
Someone already thought of this. Check the link for one real-world test and a lot of discussion on the matter.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Citation Needed.
Sorry, had to scratch that itch.
Here's an early prototype...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
Just use watermelon seeds. They're easy to obtain and anyone can shoot them!
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.
Wait a minute, how is this plant supposed to absorb the soil contaminants, and still be safe to eat? The contaminants still have to go somewhere.
> I would have thought biodegradable plastic would have been relatively simple, and chalk isn't exactly what I think of as a pollutant.
Yep, some of the hippy places serve drinks in biodegradable plastic cups made from corn. In function they are indistinguishable from the popular red Solo cups - not noticeably brittle and prone to breakage or anything when I played with them.
Need we say more?
By planting seeds and growing plants on a live fire training range they are potentially hiding unexploded ordinance.
Troops are very rarely sent into the impact areas of live fire ranges. During training, the only place I ever advanced over ground where explosive ordinance was fired was Twentynine Palms. I believe the Army does the same at Fort Irwin. Grass isn't going to grow in either of those locations.
In addition to concealing ordinance, the other problem with grass is brushfires that can trigger detonations. But if the ground is fertile, weeds are going to grow anyway, so I don't think these seeds are going to make much difference.
A plant that will both sequester toxins and be non-toxic? I'm not sure how well that's going to workout, and yes I know toxic compounds can be broken down into non-toxic compounds, but mankind leans more in the direction of DDT, dioxin, arsenic, mercury, and others that have a way doing environmental damage.
I see a lot of people getting all bent out of shape at the absurdity of the concept of this SBIR topic. I am not a ballistics expert, so I can't comment on that, but please realize that the DoD funds 100s of these grants every year. Most of these, if they are phase I, are very small in scope - $100k - 200k. This is enough to pay a small team working part time to do a feasibility study, create a mock up, or develop a non-working prototype. It's a cheap (for the military) way of bouncing an idea off the wall.
In addition most SBIRs never make it past phase I development. In all likelihood, less will be spent on this program than is spent on a couple of hours of one of the training exercises they are talking about greening up.
US Military were too late to the game.
On the 4th of January I watched the announcement of a seed gun.
You can see the video here.
[Rent This Space]
So instead of lead contamination we'll introduce new exotic and invasive weeds all over the world. Nice going assholes.
Oh how nice. Kill a few bad guys, and save the environment at the same time.
Might be okay for practice grenades perhaps, but can "green" bullets reproduce the weight and flight path of bullets used in war? If it doesn't then you might as well be running around shouting "Bang" for all the good it does you. If your practice bullets don't go the same place your real bullets do, you'll be shooting in the wrong place.
Dry foods such as pasta and sugar have shelf life measured in years. Pasta can get a slight off taste after a two years or so but it's still edible for five more years.
I would guess these cups similar - just keep them dry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNEYzySYFAQ
Maybe we can have a war on climate change with these rounds, at least if we can find a way for contractors to make money.
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Sprouting ammunition developed by the DoD (Department of Death) was an important plot device in Tim Schafer's renowned adventure game Grim Fandango (1998) . It is rather strange how reality takes after fiction, I wonder if there are Grim Fandango fans at the DoD.
packing viable seeds in with biodegradable shell casings seems like a terrible idea from a biodiversity/bioinvasive ecology perspective. The bullets packed with these seeds would undoubtedly be used worldwide without care for native species.
I can see they're trying to greenwash as hard as they can, but seems like someone missed a couple lectures in environmental studies.
Planting a garden would be so much more fun.
Cyanide & Happiness has already invented a seed gun.
This doesn't sound cool at all. And that's why it shouldn't be done. It is literally a concern of the military that things sound and look cool. What kind of military shoots flowers for ammunition? Biodegradable maybe... But no flowers please.
*puts sunglasses on* ... pushing up daisies.
YEEAAAAAAAAH!!!
Brings a whole new meaning to making someone push up daisies...
Seems like the scene from Academy Award-nominated 3D animation movie Cathedral will come to life - corpses springing out trees ;-)
Of course, plants don't grow unless humans specifically put them in the ground, which is fortunate for your point there.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Flower Power by Freddie
... when he shot the stag in the head with the cherry kernels, right between the antlers. A year later he saw the stag again with a beautiful cherry tree growing out of its head.
They should hire him.
It will teach commandos how to hitch a ride on a cannon shell too.
Get these rounds.
Commit murder.
Hide body for several months.
When found - no bullet, just an odd tree growing out of their chest...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
On the other hand, it sounds like it's just a way to try and make hippies happy, which they never will be when it comes to the military. It might even become more trouble than it's worth, because if you really want to satisfy the hippies then each base would have to have it's own seed-ammo so as not to introduce non-native plants.
It's an interesting idea, sure, but I think it's going to end up being more trouble than it's worth. Besides, the idea of soldiers shooting flowers into things is... I want to say 'gay', but that's not fair to homosexuals so I'm at a loss.
..wow. We're finding ways to not harm the planet's biodiversity and survival IN THE PROCESS of killing each other. If this isn't proof that wars are not designed for resource "borrowing", I don't know what is. Go Manifest Destiny v2! /humor
A lot of that is written as to sound shocking, but a 1:14 war:training ratio is damned good. It's pretty routine for some people to take 90-150 rounds just to qualify (and never fire a shot in combat.) I would have expected the number of rounds fired in combat to be significantly lower with only 1.1 billion used in training.
You would have many volunteers that would come out to clean up the range.
to put flowers in the rifle barrels anymore.
So, yes, not having to clean up one or two billion casings a year would be a big benefit.
.
They've got plenty of manpower. There are caseless prototypes. If they really cared, they'd have caseless rifles by now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
can they make them grow red poppies? that would make the most sense.
Bloody hell, why can't the damn Yanks just stop shooting and dropping bombs on everybody? Now they want to spread invasive plant species too.
I guess that means that if our Soldiers go to war the enemy will be quite literally pushing up daises
The casings are the easy part to clean up. A bag attached to the rifle can do that. The bullets on the other hand... Brass is nowhere near as harmful to the environment as lead is.
It seems the industrial military complex has discovered the 60s. Next they'll be using the VW microbus as our future tanks. Complete with stoned soldiers smelling of patchouli.
I think this is talking about the actual bullet, not the casings, those are significantly easier to clean up (they land next to the gun).
Yep. They do. Their annual ammunition buy is currently about 1.8 billion rounds a year, and essentially all of this gets used in training.
How many rounds do they use in actual combat operations? At the height of the Iraq War the U.S. expended only seventy two million rounds a year in combat. How many were they expending in training each year at that time? 1.1 billion rounds! The rate of training ammunition expenditure has since gone up, and is now 1.8 billion rounds. Before 9/11 the military had a less intense training regimen, they only expended 350 million rounds a year, but that was still five times more than the rate of expenditure in Iraq.
People are always astounded (incredulous, really) to learn that ammunition used in war these days is just round-off error in training ammo purchases.
So, yes, not having to clean up one or two billion casings a year would be a big benefit.
Brass or steel isn't toxic.
More importantly, I want to have a ready supply of actual real combat ready bullets ready to fight a war. Otherwise we would have to spend months and months building up a supply chain and industrial capacity to produce and distribute real ammunition.
We should assume that two million enemy soldiers could just show up one day to fight and won't give anyone any time to write a memo about how we need to start making enough real bullets to fight a war. If we can fight with the same bullets that soldiers target practice with then that gives us the same supply chain we would need to defend ourselves in a war.
But that would make too much sense. Gotta pollute the world with Frankencrops. So ethical. Much Wow. So Facepalm.
Of course, plants don't grow unless humans specifically put them in the ground, which is fortunate for your point there.
Silly straw man, the point is that more is not always better. Such rounds would constitute a lot of additional seeding.
I'm hoping this develops into BB pellets at some point. Could make gardening or spreading grass seed a lot more interesting!
into the Third Life!
Cool!
So, what will we call these new items?...best suggestions win the internwebs.
Tofu Tomahawk missiles?
Soylent shells
Green grenades
Bio-bullets
Just another day in Paradise
Couldn't you just recover and recycle ferrous bullets using magnets?
Why don't they just fill the artillery with pennies and have homeless people pick them up? Problem solved.
I thought plans were hatched, not sprouted?
Try Googling about this, and you find lots and lots of people actually expressing shock, astonishment, and incredulity. Recently Alt Right sites were pushing the notion that DHS training ammo purchases, again larger than Iraq combat expenditure (not as large as the military purchases), was proof of an Obama plan to impose martial law in the U.S. because it couldn't possibly be needed for training.
So yeah, a lot of people find this shocking.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The military already has its own production facilities sufficient to supply any actual war. But they have not expanded them to keep up with the escalating consumption for training, and so have been making large ammo buys from outside sources. This "green" training ammo would be additional production capability for training, having no impact on war readiness.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
did they start out in need of shooting? Were they born that way? If not, what made them that way? If they were just born that way is it OK to abort them once science is sufficiently advanced to identify them (anime nerds, see Psycho Pass).
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