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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.
they FEED people.
Some people in this world really do need shooting though
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.
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.
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.
In what way does making biodegradable training bullets "misunderstand" the horrors of war? I'm missing the logical leap here...
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
Now, now, he's just acting out because he's afraid these bullets will help the cops find the bodies.
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.
A bullet is a bullet is a bullet.
No, it's not.
I go to the bullet store
And then you sit down spend time reloading your spent brass with those bullets? Never mind. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I mean this literally
Oh, I get it now. Another person who doesn't understand what the word "literally" means.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why do you post a variation of this on every story?
Now I've heard everything
You are pretty dumb.
And so are you...
Look, realistic training is necessary for our troops, that means firing ammo that is "like" the real thing in weight and performance at least some of the time. Sure, you don't have to fire high explosive rounds or drop real 1,000 lb bombs that are going to go off all the time, but you do need stuff that's close to real from time to time.
I seriously doubt we are going to find a cost effective way to plant trees in mortar shells or wild flowers in target practice rounds. I'm all for not doing harm if we can manage it, but I'm also NOT for these do good green types that advocate the military doing hugely expensive "green" projects that don't really help anything and cost way too much.. (Like that "renewable fuel oil" mess the Navy did a while back that was millions of dollars of waste for a very little bit of fuel).
So the original poster was right... Keep the purpose of the military straight in your head and dump all the nutty parts about environmental awareness and green technology being part of their mission. They are there to break stuff and kill people while avoiding having others break their stuff and kill them and us. To hell with planting trees or saving the environment if we are not here to enjoy it because the bad guys won the next war.
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.
The Army knows from history just how badly the environment can be devastated by combat, or in this case by being used as a training range. Small parts of northern France have been sealed off since the end of WWI as the Zone Rouge both because of the huge quantity of unexploded ordinance and the amount of other toxic materials in the ground, and it may take up to 700 more years before some parts become safe to use. In fact, there are two small pieces of ground where soil samples are up to 17% arsenic, and 99% of all plants that sprout there die. They're trying to find a way to prevent creating more dead zones by using practice ammo that's not made of toxic materials, and I think that's a Good Thing.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
is part of a healthy and balanced diet.
The unofficial
Of course, getting enemy combatants to hang around the impact area of US military training ranges might present something of a challenge . . .
I'm not mentioning any names because I could be sent up the river on trumped up charges, but I am using a dog whistle.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This is about training rounds polluting 100's of square miles of U.S soil used by the Military for combined arms training and war-games. Why pollute our own soil if it can be avoided?
Maybe it was the whores of wars.
Doesn't make much sense, but neither did s/he.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You're not in the military, so ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I have noticed this, as well.
The user, "Anonymous Coward," (and who in hell is that, anyway?) has a way higher post count than all the rest of us combined.
Does the bastard (or bitch, as may apply) ever sleep?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
How lazy can the military get?
The now want bullets that can sprout "plans"!
So what if the bullet doesn't kill or hit? The enemy can just take our plans and run away!
All because the officers could not be bothered to do any planning themselves!
Fuck you. Obama already checked out. This is all on the pussy grabber now.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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
What's wrong with making biodegradable bullet casings? Why is that funny or a "stunt"?
I don't respond to AC's.
Right +++ agree too. We had Chuck Norris in on our software project too. First thing he did was get us coding straight in the production environment. No point fighting the bugs in a fake environment.
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.
You are pretty dumb.
And so are you...
Oh my, it's the dumberer complaining about somebody else. What a revelation.
Look, realistic training is necessary for our troops, that means firing ammo that is "like" the real thing in weight and performance at least some of the time. Sure, you don't have to fire high explosive rounds or drop real 1,000 lb bombs that are going to go off all the time, but you do need stuff that's close to real from time to time.
Which would be a useful rebuttal if ANYBODY EVER SAID that their intention was to NEVER have ANY real materials expended.
But you'll note that the only absolutes are coming from the people saying "OMG OMG OMG, this would never work, NEVER NEVER NEVER, it's all PC-Bullshit" and other such mendacity.
The argument that Chris Katko made was that there's nothing wrong with cutting costs and reducing pollution. It'd be hard to argue otherwise. Even times where you say "We can't cut that cost" it's because there is still something else wrong with it.
I seriously doubt we are going to find a cost effective way to plant trees in mortar shells or wild flowers in target practice rounds. I'm all for not doing harm if we can manage it, but I'm also NOT for these do good green types that advocate the military doing hugely expensive "green" projects that don't really help anything and cost way too much..
That's nice, but you may want to know something. Actual real ammunition and shells are FUCKING EXPENSIVE. So is the clean-up. Spending some money on research is thus competing against a very high standard anyway.
Really, there is a reason we do have fake grenades, and even dummy rounds. Because it's better to practice without that crap going off on you. Save the live-fire exercises for special times.
(Like that "renewable fuel oil" mess the Navy did a while back that was millions of dollars of waste for a very little bit of fuel).
Because a research project is expensive, huh? Now ask yourself how expensive it would be if they didn't prepare in advance.
So the original poster was right...
You haven't made one substantial argument to demonstrate that they are right to oppose any substitution of munitions at all. . Zero. None. Sorry, I know you hate facing reality, most of your type do, but you didn't actually rebut the premises involved.
Keep the purpose of the military straight in your head and dump all the nutty parts about environmental awareness and green technology being part of their mission. They are there to break stuff and kill people while avoiding having others break their stuff and kill them and us. To hell with planting trees or saving the environment if we are not here to enjoy it because the bad guys won the next war.
Well, don't worry, this will be done by a private company anyway. Just like the fuels. That's how the government works. That's how the military does things.
Don't like it? Too bad. You're dumb anyway.
That's asking too much of mankind. Green Evil is better than Metallic Evil ... I think
Table-ized A.I.
"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.
The local skeet range covers a portion its costs with recovered lead. The majority is from range fees and selling targets, but collecting lead is profitable.
Every two or three years (depending on metal prices) they scrape the top six inches of soil off and centrifuge out the metal. Shuts them down for about two weeks. Apparently their is a company that roams around, providing this service.
Rifle ranges aren't that tough to cleanup. Artillery ranges on the other hand, spread the metal further and thinner.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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).
"Quit screwing around with these stupid "green" things when it comes to the military."
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.
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
This could be an issue if someone was shot, and the bullet wasn't removed. How do you make metal biodegrade? You can't use light materials or the training rounds won't shoot straight.
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Are you trying to Hatch a plot?
Pornhub has made the local skeet range obsolete.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You libs didn't get the memo: TRUMP WON! So suck it up and get used to polluting our own soil again. It's what makes America great.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
There's nothing wrong with cutting costs and reducing pollution.
No, but I have a STRONG suspicion that these bullets will not "cut costs" and will be significantly more expensive than their old versions.
I have no issues going green when there's a financial incentive to do so (ie, LED bulbs over their lifespan are now far more cost effective than incandescent - I'd use them even if energy saver bulbs weren't mandated).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
OK, I guess the dog whistle didn't work, so I'm switching to a trumpet.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Here's an early prototype...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
> 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.
Because it way, way more likely to produce bullets that jam guns or don't fire at all than to help the environment in any significant way.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Because it way, way more likely to produce bullets that jam guns or don't fire at all than to help the environment in any significant way.
No one is suggesting they just start stuffing seeds down the muzzles of rifles. There is no reason future bullets made of something other than heavy metals would necessarily jam or fail to fire. I seriously doubt you have tried what's being proposed, so you are talking out of your ass.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
couldn't we just not shoot people?
SHUT UP, HIPPIE!
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
There's nothing wrong with cutting costs and reducing pollution.
I have no issues going green when there's a financial incentive to do so (ie, LED bulbs over their lifespan are now far more cost effective than incandescent - I'd use them even if energy saver bulbs weren't mandated).
so not polluting water is no financial incentive? what will your children drink?
Some people in this world really do need shooting though
In three Southern states, "He needed killin'" is still a valid defense for murder.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Yeah, that's the thankful part. After Jan 20th, all these things can be put in the shredder
Yeah! And we all get to grab bitches by the pussy, make stupid faces and interrupt people when they talk too many words, and insult anyone who disagrees with us, right? Will there be a law that says I can say whatever I want, then just deny I said it? It won't be long before we're wishing that email servers could be our biggest cause for outrage again.
+1 for being the only person in this thread to spell ordnance correctly.
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.
So what if the bullet doesn't kill or hit? The enemy can just take our plans and run away!
Oh I'm sure an IRL comicbook villain will show up with a version that not only kills, but the botanical gardens grow from the victims body.
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.
LED bulbs over their lifespan are now far more cost effective than incandescent
You can now buy 60W replacement bulbs for about 50 cents. At that price, they pay for themselves in just a couple months of typical use, which is 1% of their lifespan.
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]
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.
Yep. Live fire training with live rounds and live targets. If you get hit you are a loser.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
The key words above that you missed are "training rounds". Without those words it does sound insane, but with them - oh just read the summary.
Not a lot of that stuff in a mortar shell, artillery shell or grenade (and this isn't about the cartridges, those are easy to collect).
Artillery tends to go a long way and new gunners apparently tend to have less than pinpoint accuracy. That stuff is going to be spread out over miles by both design and less than perfect aim.
If you need to get an artillery round removed after you have been shot with it then you are a superhero and will probably just get new biodegradable powers or something :)
I agree, that's also why we shouldn't research anything else ever again because it's also all likely to not work with 100% perfection right away so there's no point bothering at all.
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
Cyanide & Happiness has already invented a seed gun.
You don't just throw taxpayer money at any type of needless research just because it's trendy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's difficult enough to build consistently reliable and durable ammo and weapons out of high quality metals.
Scrapyards are full of failed attempts to build better weapons by companies who wasted taxpayer money producing weapons with all the wrong design goals. And military graveyards are full of soldiers who got stuck with some of those shitty weapons before the top brass realized what an awful design they were.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think that AC is just laughing at Trump's style of speech.
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.
I have no issues going green when there's a financial incentive to do so
lol. Was going to comment on that but I think it stands on its own.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Errr....this effort is for TRAINING. So if you are killing people during your training, you are doing it wrong.
Yes, but the military must also include the costs of cleanup in those normal rounds used for training. The price comparison must be fair. Given the current financial climate, no matter what President Tweety says, the military is under pressure to cut costs. Were it not for the long lead times on new weapon systems, the F35 would have been cut long ago.
^This.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
... 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 *
I for one am glad that not poisoning the water supply is "trendy".
..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
Know what happens to a military firing range when a base is shutdown and transferred or sold back to the local economy?
Millions of dollars in cleanup of a hazardous waste site due to the hundreds of thousands of lead bullets in the ground.
A training round with reduced or even zero lead content would go a long way to eliminate those costs in the future.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The "kill people and break things" is a catchy thing that Rush Limbaugh always says. I'm no fan of Rush, but think he often has a point on this topic. However in this case, you have to look at the baseline. The military now spends money cleaning up current and former bases that could be spent on killing people and breaking things if they had a less-polluting method. Even better if it also cleans up existing pollution. In short, if this works it might make them better at killing people and breaking things.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
this isn't about being eco warriors.
this is about bean counting.
99% of all military ammunition is used in training on firing ranges.
that's a lot of lead to leave laying about in the environment, a lot of hazardous waste sites that will require future and expensive cleanup.
yes the seed idea is pretty far fetched.
but the idea of reducing the amount of lead the military needs to clean up is a good one.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Artillery ranges on the other hand, spread the metal further and thinner.
Yes, but that metal is mostly soft steel, that isn't that problematic from an environmental standpoint. OTOH it isn't that lucrative to collect either.
Fun fact, the difference between a live and training artillery shell is only the heat treatment of the shell itself. The hardened shell of a live shell burst into approx 50000 sharp fragments (155mm shell), while the soft training version bursts into dozens/hundreds of large dull fragments. (This according Bofors). Notably, the type and amount of explosive is the same in both versions.
Stefan Axelsson
They're targeting ammunition of 40-120mm. That is not small arms.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
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.
all ideas (even dumb ones) need to be handled...
Prepare in advance? Between shale and cracking coal as a worst case scenario, the US has enough oil for nearly the next millennium.
Elemental lead has a negligible effect on the environment.
this is nuts
It's what happens when "environmental marketing studies" (or some such) is confused for actual environmental engineering. In any case, someone ought to explain to these dipshits that bullets are designed the way they are for a reason and if they want biodegradable bullets (the seed part is both retarded and irrelevant), they're going to need entirely different guns. .. who [hopefully] would've explained
Dunno how that last sentence fragment survived my editing; sure it wasn't there when I hit submit. Bad week to quit coffee again, perhaps...
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.
Training a sniper with shells 75% of the weight the would normally have is pointless.
I could see the appeal for biodegradable bullets and if they worked just as effectively even using them in combat but I find the idea that they be required to host live plants rather strange and limiting. It would make much more sense to pursue biodegradable bullets optimized for biodegradability and effectiveness than adding a third optimization of needing to host a plant. The more things you optimize for the less you're going to be able to optimize each criteria.
No danger in practicing with something different than in production?
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.
The same way they used to do it in olden times...pillage!
Just another day in Paradise
I'm hoping this develops into BB pellets at some point. Could make gardening or spreading grass seed a lot more interesting!
Which three Southern states?
How many years away do you think that is? Do you really believe we'll still be running everything on dino fuel by then???
Just another day in Paradise
Not a thing in the article about cutting costs, so can we toss that distraction aside please?
Where would these bullets with seeds be used? The article talks about plants, but doesn't indicate anything about the type/size of them. I'm imagining an apple orchard sprouting up in the middle of the rifle range.
Just another day in Paradise
Replying to my own comment...
Duh...please disregard the first sentence. I was thinking about the cost of the ammo itself, and not about the environmental cleanup that was mentioned.
Just another day in Paradise
98% of all ordnance is expended in practice
Come to think of it, probably 98% of the remaining 2% of ordnance is cover fire, or whatever terms the military uses for "doesn't kill the target" (IANA military strategist), and might as well plant trees too.
If we're still flying aircraft by then, we're going to be flying them using something with very similar chemical composition to what we use currently. Even if it is just temporary energy storage, it is very convenient energy storage for that task.
Like that "renewable fuel oil" mess the Navy did a while back that was millions of dollars of waste for a very little bit of fuel
That was for logistical reasons, rather than environmental. Local sourcing of supplies is always preferred over having to ship it halfway across the world.
into the Third Life!
Yeah, I realized as I posted that I was not using the right words. I ment 'basic ammo' .
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
so they slipped in a stealth nerf?
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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How lazy can the military get?
The now want bullets that can sprout "plans"!
So what if the bullet doesn't kill or hit? The enemy can just take our plans and run away!
All because the officers could not be bothered to do any planning themselves!
So is that the real story to how they got the death star plans?
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Firing ranges on military bases aren't anything like those WW I battlefields in France. But still the number of bullets, fragments, and yes, unexploded ordnance, can be quite astounding.
Years ago contractors actually paid good money to get to go out to the berms (piled up dirt walls) behind rifle and pistol ranges, to dig out and screen the tons of pistol and rifle bullets. Copper and lead: both good scrap sellers.
The artillery ranges are different: they can be quite dangerous because of the duds on the surface and shallowly buried. Nobody wants to dig up duds :-)
Good point, someone above: are the seeds going to sprout plants that become a pest or menace in themselves?
I wasn't trying to suggest that the damage was, or was likely to get as bad as those battlefields. I just wanted to remind people that the damage adds up over time and gave the most extreme example I knew of. I've been at Ground Zero in Nagasaki, and it's safer there than in the Zone Rouge because the radiation level has dropped so much over the years.
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Are you saying you had trouble with your...Type...ing?
*puts on glasses
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The water that comes out of a water treatment plant where they already deal with lead contamination.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?