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Science

NATO Developing Environment Friendly Weapons 283

Posted by Hemos from the love-the-earth-kill-the-people dept.
EGSonikku writes: "Although it may seem a bit odd, according to this msnbc.com story NATO and its member countries are developing so called 'green weapons' that produce similar effects to standard weaponry, without using chemicals that could be hazardous to the environment and the soldiers using them. Good to know that we can bomb each other without hurting the butterflies now, eh?" Heh -- it's the environmental bit shift of the neutron bomb -- "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."
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NATO Developing Environment Friendly Weapons More

NATO Developing Environment Friendly Weapons

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  • Hmmmmm... (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    So, Star Wars is to be renamed "The Butterfly Effect"?

  • lots of rounds fired (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Proud Geek ( 260376 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:22AM (#2255545) Homepage Journal
    One important reason for this is that the number of rounds fired can be very large, even in a small action with few casualties. Munitions are also used in training, with (we always hope) no casualties at all.

    You might say that it is far better to just reduce the amount of violence in the world than to try to make it more environmentally friendly (and you'd be right), but in point of fact, even with minimal or no violence, lots of munitions are used, and reducing the environmental impact can make it easier on people who live near training areas or who are trying to recover from a recent conflict.
    • Someone needs to mod this up. The biggest reason this is important is because of training exercises. We've (the US) expended much more munitions in training over the last half century than we have in combat. Hopefully this will continue to be the case. Unfortunately this leaves our training grounds in very bad shape because of many of the munitions used leave harmful residue. It's not just the atmosphere as the article suggests.

      Other countries should do it as well, but this isn't a worthless effort regardless, because the largest concern is training.

      • I hope those rounds weren't "depleted" Uranium.

        Sure in war, I'd love to have something that goes through the other guy's armour like stink. (The trade-off between dying in thirty secords verses thirty years.) But I sure wouldn't want to get too close to it in training in peacetime. (Like is there any isotope of Uranium that isn't radioactive or chemically poisonous?)

        In war time, we (Homo Sapiens) have done some silly damaging things--but at least not at bad as we could have.

        I believe Britain kind of "lost" an island off the coast of Scotland to anthrax in WWII. Here in Canada, we were playing with that too. Botulism toxin (Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario), riderpest. We had "over-kill" quantities of Compound Zed by the end of the war.

        Check John Bryden, ISBN 0-7710-1726-X, "Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War"

        I'll believe in "green weapons" when someone fights a war with them -- which I hope I never see.
        • Uranium is a heavy metal. In its most common isotope (U-238, the one used for depleted uranium) it is not significantly radioactive (ie. it poses no health risks for that reason at any exposure levels). Uranium is always toxic, though, since it is a heavy metal in all of its isotopes, radioactive or not.

          Handling depleted uranium isn't inherently dangerous; you treat it just like lead. Shooting huge quantities of it could well be a bad thing, as that leaves it all over the place, and it may give off dust that could cause poisoning in sufficient quantities. I'm not aware of any studies on exposure when shooting it in quantites such as would be done in combat.
  • Made from environmentally friendly jelly fish is now being used to deforest millions of acres of land. Instead of just killing the trees, this new compound simply causes them to drop their leaves.

    In other news, 14 were wounded when an RPG was fired into their transport...

    How's about stamp out racism and war by education instead?
    • Education it NOT the magical solution to the world's ills. Nobody (almost) likes war. Nobody wins in war. How will education help? Some things are just a fact of life whether we like it or not. As far as racism goes, I won't get started. Sufice it to say I blame the media for about 75% of racism today.
  • We already know from Stile's kitty.mpg featuring the cat being eaten that some people can watch people get killed but are distressed as soon as they see a kitten killed and eaten.

    Therefore, for all of those people, I support all pussy-friendly weapons.

  • Actually a good thing (Score:1, Insightful)

    by kingdon ( 220100 )
    Given that the environmental problems of many weapons affect everyone except the enemy - most especially the poor civilians who have to live on the battlefield afterwards - this isn't as strange as it sounds. Look at all the environmental cleanups here in the US - Rocky Flats and a bunch of other military and former military lands which have all kinds of pollution, often much worse than is found in civilian contexts.
    • Good points.

      Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq will be loving the depleted uranium littering their borders.

      On another point: Being one of the patriotic fools who will be on that battlefield defending the rights of all the woosies who are too highminded to defend themselves, the first priority is to quickly annihilate the people pointing guns at me. If we can do that and do it more cleanly (eg less damage to the terrain and inhabitants), I'm all for it.

  • When Greens control the defense department (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Gregoyle ( 122532 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:26AM (#2255565)
    Another War Department that is not controlled by environmentalists will develop more effective but less environmentally friendly weapons.

    I have no problems with the current plan of refining the fuel process in rockets and the propellent in bullets, but I sure hope they don't take it too far. There is a reason we use DU rounds, and there is a reason M1A1's use not-very-clean fuels.

    The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters). Because otherwise someone who doesn't care will come along and ream the guys who are trying to measure what kind of emissions their new machine gun gives off.

    Maybe this isn't really an issue given the current power-distribution in the world, but it's something to keep in mind.
    • UK police have apparantly been using lead-free petrol bombs in training for a while now.
      • Since the US hasn't used leaded gasoline (petrol) for almost a decade now, I doubt we use in FAE weapons. Besides, lead increases the octane of gasoline, which is exactly what you don't want in a FAE type application (where you want as much of it to explode at the same time as possible).

        What the heck are police doing with FAE bombs anyway?

        Unless you're referring to Molotov Cocktails, but aren't those usually filled with Kerosene (because you want it to burn longer, not flash like gasoline)?
    • Another War Department that is not controlled by environmentalists will develop more effective but less environmentally friendly weapons.

      This is the same with every bit of arms-control: those who violate the agreement benefit to some degree. The question, however, is how much do they benefit? One could conceivably benefit from the introduction of anti-personnel laser-weaponry (to blind enemy soldiers), but no one really pursues that; if you can blind them, why not kill them? The same applies to explosive anti-personnel munitions: once you've shot them, do you really need to blow up the body?

      The impetus behind these sorts of things is usually not what Hemos says, that it is

      the environmental bit shift of the neutron bomb -- "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."

      Rather, most arms-control is based on the principle that weapons should attack the soldier, not the man, i.e., as soon as he has been disabled as a soldier, there is no military need to inflict further punishment on him, and humanitarian concerns can then be considered. Such considerations, by definition, do not substantively degrade military capability. One could imagine enviro-friendly weapons that were substantively worse than what we have now, from a military standpoint, but rest assured that the U.S. military will not abandon good weapons for these. Landmines are a great case in point -- the damage caused to the person, as opposed to the soldier, may be excessive, but as there is no comperable replacement for their battlefield purpose, the United States continues to use them wherever we think we need to (currently Cuba and Korea).

      • Rather, most arms-control is based on the principle that weapons should attack the soldier, not the man, i.e., as soon as he has been disabled as a soldier, there is no military need to inflict further punishment on him, and humanitarian concerns can then be considered. Such considerations, by definition, do not substantively degrade military capability.


        The problem being that this is all predicated on the assumption that you can win a war by killing the people, because the people are what is valuable.

        That's Western thinking. What if we were to be in conflict with China?

        The Chinese government's attitude toward their soldiers is basically "kill all you want, we'll make more". Obviously, any soldier is an expendable asset to some degree or other, but it's way beyond that to the Chinese.

        Now, losing the use of their land? That gets their attention.

        Instead of getting more environmentally-friendly weapons, which would be useful in defending Western Europe against the Soviet Union if they existed anymore, we should be taking all our vast quantities of chemicals we don't like (pesticides, etc.) and coating the bombs with 'em, in case we have to defend Taiwan or Russia against China, or South Korea against North Korea (and China).

      • Well lets see, if you blind a combatant, they become a non-combatant. I bet it is easier to blind a person then to kill them with a laser.

        I have heard that it is more cost effective to wound an enemy then to kill them. Takes more resources to heal someone then to bury or cremate the body. So enemy must expend resources to help wounded. And if they don't help their wounded, could demoralize the remaining healthy troops.

        Also, a bunch of walking wounded reminds the people back home that they got their butt kicked then a the cemetary filling up.

        • That was the thinking during Vietnam time, unfortunatly it backfires when the enemy is very determined because if you only wound them they will keep on fighting anyway (most Americans stop to tread the wounded), even to the death. This can be nightmarish if you keep shooting someone with your "wounding" rifle and they keep coming at you with their "killing" rifle (like an AK-47).

          The wounding weapons only make sense in "civilized" warfare, which many countries don't practice.
          • The wounding weapons only make sense in "civilized" warfare, which many countries don't practice.

            The doctrine does not suggest using weapons that only wound the enemy; indeed, it suggests against weapons that only wound the enemy. Suggesting that weapons ought to go for the soldier rather than the man is simply to suggest that, once a soldier has been rendered incapable of further action, one should not seek to wound him further. This is not to say that we should only wound the enemy -- on the contrary, you hurt him as much as it takes to stop him from fighting further, and if that means death, death it is.

            Perhaps an example might help -- remember that this is the theoretical basis for past treaties, and so may seem a bit paradoxical. Releasing a gas that only sterilizes the enemy is bad, for you're not attacking the soldier, i.e., the ability to wage war, but the man. Releasing a gas that kills him outright was OK (until a few years ago; before that, the treaty was simply not to use it first). Dropping bombs that kill everyone is better than dropping bombs that kill some and merely horribly disfigure the rest, according to the logic of these treaties.

        • Remember the Korean war (or was it Vietnam... probably both)? We thought the same thing. We used "Bouncing Bettys" in that one. Basically, you step off it, and it jumps a foot or so into the air and blasts peoples legs off. The problem with this, is that the enemy didn't value the lives of disabled soldiers and would sooner use them as living human-shields then carry them off to a hospital.

          I'm not saying they still think like that, but there are still some cultures who retain a similar mentality.

        • I have heard that it is more cost effective to wound an enemy then to kill them. Takes more resources to heal someone then to bury or cremate the body. So enemy must expend resources to help wounded. And if they don't help their wounded, could demoralize the remaining healthy troops.

          A couple of friends of mine (historians) interviewed a dozen Waffen SS soldiers (mostly from Frikorps Danmark, Div. LAH, Nordland). Only one of these had escaped being wounded, and that was considered a freak thing, by himself and others. Most of the rest had been wounded 2 or 3 times.
          Looking through thousands of service records, their conlusion was, that it was not unlikely, to recieve several, sometimes very serious wounds, and return to service again.

          The germans, like the US, had good assembly line style, field hospitals. Once a wounded soldier had reached a such, their survival chance would be good. While caring for wounded soldiers may take some ressources, I don't think that it really matters much, eg. a lot of trains and lorries driving back from the frontline are empty, so loading them with wounded is hardly a logistical strain.
          Most important; a veteran soldier is a precious commodity, the logistical strain of sending him back front and patching him up, is probably less than training a new soldier.

          All in all, I consider the above statement untrue.

          On the topic;
          Last summer I visited a wood clearing, where german small and medium arms ammo had been disposed off after the war. It had been a rush job; deep holes had been digged, and loads of ammo dumped into it, then, (way to small) charges had been detonated.
          The result was that the area was littered with all kinds of ammo; 9mm parabellums, every size and color of 7.62mm, Sturmgewehr bullets, russian 12.7mm MG, standard 20mm AA shells, and all kinds of freakish sized luftwaffe ammo, in the 20mm range.
          A striking thing was, that the holes, after more than 55 years, where pitch black. Not a single grassleave was groving in or around them. Probably because of all the tracer /phosfor rounds?

          In eastern Europa and the former USSR, you can still find WWII battlefields in desolated areas, where cases of Nebelwerfer, AT, and MG ammo, rusted rifles and machineguns, is littered among the trenches. Scratch the earth, and you will find the bones of unknown dead soldiers, some hastely buried and forgotten, others simply just forgotten where they fell.

          The straits around my country (Denmark), is littered with hundreds of thousends tons of chemical rounds, usually mustard gas, but I believe that every kind of german gas ammo was dumped into the sea, including nervegas like Tabun, and Sarin. A nasty thing. It is fairly common, that fishers catches a corroded, sick-yellow lump of mustard gas rounds in their nets.

          The western coast of Denmark was part of the Atlantic Wall. Besides building thousends of concrete bunkers, the german army layed more than 1.4 million mines, and that on a coast less than 170 miles long. It took decades to clear (and costed a lot of lives), and still, in some remote areas, it is not unusually to find a german Teller AT-mine in the sand dunes after an autemn storm.

          War is a messy affair in more than one way.
          No matter what, after a while, peace will follow war, and people will have to deal with results for a long time. Anything to lessen the burden for the survivors, is IMHO, a good thing.

    • First of all, in defense of Environmentally friendly weapons: it is a generally understood rule of combat among civilized countries that civilians are not to be harmed if possible. Using dirty weapons and "scorched earth" tactics does more than just kill butterflies, it also puts the general populace at risk for years to come. So it's actually very consistent with our policy against, for example, Iraq, to try and minimize civilian casualties in all ways, including environmental degradation.

      The only way stuff like this can work on a large scale is if everyone agrees to do it (or at least everyone that matters).

      Yes and no. Nulclear nonproliferation, for example, only works if all major players agree, but we regard certain tactics as "beneath" us as Americans, such as chemical warfare and assassination. If we can raise the bar a bit more and try not to do any more harm than necessary to achieve our political ends, then go us.

      Disclaimer: this is not to imply that I agree with all American defense policy, I'm just citing it as I understand it.

      • It's not that assassination is "beneath us", it's that no world leader wants to pin a target on their back by being the first to openly support assassination (well, except for Mr. Sharon recently). Personally, I'd much rather that a war with Iraq be over with quickly due to a head shot through Saddam's beret, than have to send troops there to die all in the interests of "fair play".

        Plus, assassination is a democratizing influence - dictatorships can't survive the assassination of the head man, but a democracy will just keep trucking along after they elect another one.

  • Friendly (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I always liked the idea of the neutron bomb. But nobody went for this environment friendly stuff then (the 70's). Nobody's gonna go for it now.
    • Wiping out all animals (including bugs, birds, etc) and most of the plants (the rest of whom probably mutate) isn't exactly environmentally friendly. However, the neutron bomb was a lot better than making the land totally uninhabitable for thousands of years.

      The big thing that killed the neutron bomb was it made people realize that they were the expendable to the enemy. Not a big ego booster.

      • Re:Friendly (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Kotetsu ( 135021 )
        better than making the land totally uninhabitable for thousands of years.

        What are you talking about? In the situations where a neutron bomb is an option a regular atomic bomb doesn't leave the area "totally uninhabitable for thousands of years." The places this would be used is where the bomb would be set off in the air. Have you ever been to Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Other than the areas where they have worked to preserve visible signs of what happened, you can't tell an atom bomb ever went off there. They used to take the grade school kids out with geiger counters once a year to find radioactive rocks left over from the blast. They had to stop because they couldn't find any of them any more.

        That's not to say that nuclear weapons can't be used to make an area uninhabitable. Surface bursts or deliberate "fizzles" will result in extensive contamination of the area. The main reason for a surface or subsurface burst is to destroy a hardened target (like a missile silo or command center).

        The neutron bomb was killed off because somebody thought it was somehow inhumane to just kill off a bunch of people with radiation poisoning instead of burning them to death and destroying eveything around them. Neither one sounds very good to me.

    • Re:Friendly (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Fifth of Five ( 451664 )
      It all goes back to the basic definition of the purpose of military units in the field of combat- kill people and break their stuff. If we can easily modify our weaponry so that the after-effects on the environment and local populations can be ameliorated, I'm all for it. Just so long as when GI Jane launches that shoulder-fired Dragon anti-tank missile it streaks off to it's target and lays serious hurt-em on it.

      One thing that always irked me about the debate on the neutron bomb was that the peaceniks always cast it as a weapon used to kill populations while leaving cities intact. The neutron bomb was developed as a tank-killing weapon back in the days when the Warsaw Pact had virtual tank armies which were designed to crash through NATO lines and wreak havoc in the event of a war (we won't bother discussing who might have started the fighting).

      NATO policy was (and probably still is) to use nuclear weapons in this kind of situation, but in Western Europe there are not very many open spaces where you can chuck even kiloton yield tactical weapons about without wiping out a village or three. The Neutron bomb was a compromise- it would kill the tanks while causing substatially less blast damage. Anyone underground or at any reasonable distance from the blast theoretically had a decent chance of survival.

      Of course the catch was who really believed that such an exchange would be limited to a tactical exchange only?
  • "Kill the people, preserve the industry" becomes "Kill the people, preserve the land."

    Actually, this sounds like it will do a bunch to preserve industry. That is the current defense industry. "OK, we have to throw away all the current weapons and factories are working around the clock to give us better ones." It would really be better for the environment if we just didn't keep killing each other.
    • You forgot to mention:

      "Don't forget to increase our budget allocation, since our new environmentally friendly weapons will cost several times the value of our current stockpile. Just remember it's for the environment and the children."

  • Depleted uranium (Score:2, Insightful)

    by imipak ( 254310 )
    When NATO decided to try preventing Milosevic exterminating the non-Serb inhabitants of Kosovo by bombing them with depleted uranium, the results were pretty horrendous. Not only did the cream of hi-tech weaponry utterly fail to hit their targets (when the Serb forces pulled out, military intelligence were astonished to see hundreds of tanks and APCs popping up out apparently of nowhere and queueing up at the border), but the cancer rates have shot up. Of course, (a) there's no question of any sort of enquiry or admission of fault, and (b) the people who are dying (horribly, with very little in the way of medical facilities except black market diamorphine to ease the pain) are the very people who "we" were trying to save.

    This can only be a good thing.

  • More important for hunters, I would think... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:30AM (#2255592)
    While I won't comment on the morality of hunting, one of the biggest dangers to American endangered species is lead and mercury poisoning from pollution and... expended bullets.

    I saw a documentary not long ago on Animal Planet that featured a doctor removing a lot of contaminated material from an eagle's stomach, including lead slugs.

    Now, if you're going to tear up a tract of land by bombing it and destroying all the life therein, I wonder if pollution is going to be the biggest of your worries.

    • When I was younger I use to hike through an area of natural land beyond a shooting range: It was staggering to see the shotgun pellets forming a 1"+ thick layer (sounds like an exaggeration but it is not: After many years of use this stuff really adds up) in the ground and streams, and of course as it oxidizes every bit of that is flowing into the groundwater.

      • When I was younger, my father worked as a 'Security Policeman' (read: heavily armed security guard) at a DOE installation in Texas. He would regularly bring home large coffee cans full of expended slugs from the installation's firing range. He melted down the lead over a camp stove and used wooden casts to make some fairly large sculptures. The process was far from perfect since, but he did manage to make some nice-looking artwork.

        Of course if there was as much lead left at the firing range as what he brought home, you *know* there was some serious soil and groundwater contamination going on...
    • While I won't comment on the morality of hunting, one of the biggest dangers to American endangered species is lead and mercury poisoning from pollution and... expended bullets.

      Mercury poisioning from expended bullets? Interesting, because mercury isn't associated with either the production or discharge of bullets.

      Lead poisioning seems reasonable though, but actually the major initial recipient of lead into the enviorment is the atmosphere. In fact ammunition discharge is not even listed as a contributor to the enviormental lead content, one would assume it is under misc, which contributes .1%. Even if you're still worried about disposal, and entering the enviroment via runoff, us geeks are probably more responsible, as more lead is used in battery production than in ammunition manufacture. Beyond that, the majority of ammunition doesn't go to huters.

      Now, that said, Hg and Pb in the enviroment is a serious thing, but the real culprits need to be held accountable, don't draw conclusions because it looks logical, or you saw an indoctrination--er... documentry.

      Fact is, with out hunters and sportsmen(and women to be PC). We wouldn't have the natural areas left to pollute today.

      Don't believe me? Look at the facts for yourself, check the Envirmental Fate section.

      Lead [speclab.com]
      Mercury [speclab.com]
      • Mercury poisioning from expended bullets? Interesting, because mercury isn't associated with either the production or discharge of bullets.


        BZZZT. Wrong answer. Thanks for playing. Mercury compounds are used in primers -- Mercury Fulminate, for example. There are non-mercury based primers available (typically potassium or sodium based), but these have the disadvantage of producing corrosive salts as a by-product. Corrosive primers are often used in military ammunition, which is why many military rifles have chrome-lined barrels. Mercury-based primers are non-corrosive, but release Hg compounds, making them unsutable for use in inclosed areas (like indoor ranges). Granted, the amount of Hg released is minimal, but it's enough to give you problems with chronic long-term exposure (EG working in an indoor shooting range).

  • Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:30AM (#2255597) Journal
    This makes some sense, given Gulf War syndrome, etc.

    You basically do not want to send in occupation forces into an area where you just poisoned the heck out of it. It would be dangerous to your own troops, and the civilian population who you are trying to win to your side.

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  • Environment (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Wind_Walker ( 83965 )
    Look, I'm as concerned about the environment as anybody else, but does this strike anybody else as a bit hypocritical? On one hand, we have the UN proclaiming that peace should be the primary goal of humans and nations everywhere (after all, it IS why the UN was founded), but then they say "Look, your weapons are harming the environment. Go ahead and kill people, but just don't hurt Mother Earth".

    68% of the world's population has been in a war of some kind (be it civil war, world war, whatever) and so it's quite obvious that the UN is not doing its job. Countries are still stockpiling weapons...

    I think it's time for a stand. My theory is that if one country, the USA, were to completely disarm itself, then other nations would follow suit. By destroying all of its weapons, the USA would be finally making a plea for peace in the world. Other nations would see this as a gesture of goodwill, and would be similarly encouraged to disarm.

    I'm not a dreamer; I really think this would happen. But we have to convince our governments of this. It's a long-term goal, really. But isn't peace worth it?

    • You could at least _tell_ us that you're Chinese.

      Name one country that has totally disarmed itself and survived another hundred years. Answer: none.

      If the US totally disarmed itself, I'd give us less than a year before someone torched us back to the Stone Age. It's human nature. Someone else will get greedy and come eat us alive. Not to mention all of the smaller (and much more pacifist) countries we defend: Japan (which would become East China), Germany (the new West Russia), etc.

      Dream on man, but let the leaders follow Ronnie: Trust but Verify.
      • Iceland? Nothing beyond a police force, last time I checked.
      • Name one country that has totally disarmed itself and survived another hundred years. Answer: none.

        Don't get me wrong, I'm not a lilly-livered pacifist, but your fact seems a bit contrived. Iceland has no military force to speak of, and it appears to be doing fine. Your point would have been better made if you had asked if any nation that was wholly berift of military recourse has every long survived. Or even better, do conquering nations allow the conquered to retain their military apparatus?

    • If the U.S. completely disarmed today, the Chinese government would be setting up shop in Washington D.C. tomorrow.

      I'm no fan of war. I was in Desert Storm as a medic and I know up close and personal what war looks like. But the fact of the matter is that there are _bad people_ in the world, and some of those bad people have _big guns_, and the _only_ way to deal with them is by having bigger guns of your own.

    • Re:Environment (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Winged Cat ( 101773 )
      Nice theory. It doesn't pan out in practice. If the USA were to completely disarm itself, and enforcably commit to staying disarmed (that is, it couldn't re-arm), the length of time that the USA could stay out of war would be about the length of time that the USA's various enemies would need to ship whatever militaries they have to North American coasts. (Canada and Mexico might not fare too well either: while the armies are there, why not pick on close allies as well?)

      Even those countries not opposed to the USA's existence would have reason to keep their militaries, if only to ward off their own enemies. (Israel, for example.)

    • Re:Environment (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Sunken Kursk ( 518450 )
      I think it's time for a stand. My theory is that if one country, the USA, were to completely disarm itself, then other nations would follow suit. By destroying all of its weapons, the USA would be finally making a plea for peace in the world. Other nations would see this as a gesture of goodwill, and would be similarly encouraged to disarm.

      The main problem with this is that it's all based on trust. How do you trust that the Russians aren't hiding their nukes for later use? How do the Koreans trust us that we're not mothballing our forces instead of dismantling them? It is not likely to happen in our lifetimes, if ever.

      Look at the whole Missle Defense plan right now. We're asking the Russians and Chinese to trust us that we're not trying to defend against any of their missles. Do you see them trusting us? How do you think they'd respond if we said "We're scrapping our nukes, scuttling our carriers to make artificial reefs, and melting down our tanks to make highway guard rails. Do the same and the world will be better."

      This doesn't even take into consideration the fact that there are just plain insane rulers out there that would love nothing better than to attack their neighbors without fear of reprisal. Do you think Saudi Arabia would be an independent nation right now if we didn't have troops stationed there, and carriers sitting right off Iraq's shores ready to pound the snot out of Saddam if he blinks the wrong way? Absolutely not. Yes, our intervention in the Kuwaiti invasion may have been based on keeping oil cheap and out of Saddam's hands, but that doesn't change the fact that if we hadn't responded, he would have kept going. Kuwait was an exercise to test the world's response. Unfortunately for him, the world responded saying "You already have enough oil!"

      Unfortunately peace is not guaranteed by disarmarment. If push came to shove, a bunch of naked unarmed people could rush another country's borders and wage war by beating each other senseless. Peace is maintained through strength. All throughout history there are examples of superpowers rising in the ranks and attacking each other when one felt intimidated by the other's potential or position. (England & Scotland, France & Britain, Germany & France, Russia & Japan, Japan/Germany/Italy & France/Britain/Russia/US, etc, etc, etc.) Why didn't this happen between the US and Russia? Because each side knew that if the nukes started flying, neither one would survive. And while we hated each other deeply, neither one of us was willing to commit suicide in the process of killing the enemy.

      So where does this leave us? Just where we've always been, standing on our side of the ocean with a big stick. And so long as some nutcase carries a big stick too, we have to be prepared to wield ours.

      Of course, if we can do it without producing acid-rain or causing lead-poisoning, excellent. After all, somebody has to clean up after every war. Let's limit that to burying the dead.
    • In an ideal world, this would be true, however, I don't believe it possible in ours. The US has too many enemies, if we were to disarm, those enemies would attack, and we'd be screwed. What I would like to see happen, in line with the same goal, is for any military force engaged in an offensive action that was not provoked by violence but by the command of the government behind it, to reject the command of said government, and for all other forces(friend and enemy alike) to refuse to offensively attack these forces. If there is no offense, there is no war. Just my $0.02

    • Disarmament (Score:3, Informative)

      by karb ( 66692 )
      Unfortunately, we need a military to protect our economic interests. We need intelligence (aka cia etc) to protect our economic and diplomatic interests.

      It's a long-term goal, really. But isn't peace worth it?

      While every peace activist in the world will cry foul, peace is so worth it that we spend umpteen billion dollars a year on defense because it is a deterrent.

      For example, if there were no nuclear weapons, we would have had WWIII and IV already. Millions of people (including civilians) would have died.

      What we really need is goodwill. :) Nations unwilling to work together would be detrimental even if they were unarmed.

      • While every peace activist in the world will cry foul, peace is so worth it that we spend umpteen billion dollars a year on defense because it is a deterrent.

        So, you're like the romans "if you want peace, prepare for war".

        Well, you know what Joseph Rotblat had to say about why it was wrong of him to develop the bomb? There is no such thing as a deterrent for a sick mind! Do you really think Hitler would have cared if Germany was erased from the face of the earth, if he could make sure England was erased too...?

        No, it's not acceptable anymore. If you want peace, prepare for peace.

        For example, if there were no nuclear weapons, we would have had WWIII and IV already. Millions of people (including civilians) would have died.

        No. Why don't you read what General Lee Butler has to say about that [pbs.org].

        If an insane leader had risen to power any of the nuclear powers, it would have been the final world war. Billions would have died.

        • Well, he never really comes out with any cogent arguments about why deterrence doesn't work. He makes arguments about why nuclear deterrence doesn't work now, but I don't think anybody would argue that.

          He also argues that nuclear weapons were horrible because they become the ultimate power ... which is precisely why I think they were great. The U.S. and Soviet respective nuclear doctrines would never allow them to launch a first strike (as long as jfk remains dead). Being afraid is far nobler than being dead.

          Anyway, I don't really care about nukes anyway ... just saying that an ounce of prevention is stronger than a pound of cure. And the only prevention that works well at the moment is military power. It would be nice if that weren't the case.

    • Those of us who have freedom need military strength to keep the dictators of those who don't from taking ours away!


      You say you are not a dreamer, but clearly you are if you expect a unilateral disarmament of the US to lead to anything other than chaos and war. Do you really believe that the sociopaths of the world - Saddam as an example - will destroy their toys and stop being bad guyes?


      GET SERIOUS Free societies need a military because free societies are productive and produce goods that everybody else wants to steal! Mankind fights wars because too many societies have not developed effective systems or cultures to prevent their leaders from waging agressive war.


      Furthermore, the UN cannot do its job. The UN has a very undemocratic one-country/one-vote system (fortunately with vetoes in the SC) the means that it will always use its power to attempt against the benefit of the free and rich economies.

  • Let's say the Freds and Bobs are at war for resources, we'll say...farmlands. Can't do either of them much good to use their weapons of mass destruction, because said weapons also destroy the land.

    I suppose this is just part of having limited space with which to work. You can't just scorch the earth while you slay your enemies, or else you'll be left with nothing but unusable burnt dirt.


  • Hmmm....maybe I'll start Greenwar.org! Save the Nukes.

  • test firing (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the militaries of the world use MILLIONS of small arms rounds per day for nothing more than practice. If the propellant can be made even a little bit more eco-friendly without seriously altering performance, what's the problem? Rifle ranges already spend gobs of money to clean up lead pollution, and there really isnt an alternative.

  • Not as daft as it sounds (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bill_Mische ( 253534 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:44AM (#2255653)
    It means:
    (1) Not having to spend time clearing up (your own or other peoples land) after battles.
    (2) Not having to spend time clearing up after training exercises.
    (3) Injuring/killing the people your trying to injure/kill rather than your own troops.
    (4) Less lawsuits (see 3)
    (5) Less time answering tedious questions in Parliament / on television about points 1-4.
  • As the article states: "At the moment it is more than 100 times more expensive than conventional explosives, but we are still in testing. When we get to mass production we would be happy if they cost two or three times more"

    Then guess what happens? Some other liberal group will start crying about the high costs associated with the production of these weapons. So, of course they will support the oh-so-PC "green weapon" idea now, because their real goals are to eventually get rid of these things altogether, unilaterally or not. That would be just fine and dandy, but unfortunately, we can't seem to get places, like, oh, I dunno, China, Iraq, and any number of former Soviet states to stop building weapons on their end.

    Now, if they could just build something that would make liberals use a little common sense....

  • New improved formula: not only do our missiles come with our patented peace ingredient, they are now environmentally friendly too.

    The industrial-military complex has been selling to the west based on the premise that our weapons are fun and friendly and filled with "peace" for decades. It's not surprising they should attempt to market them on environmentally friendly grounds too.

    Nerve gas would be even more environmentally friendly, but is harder to sell from a PR perspective. It's also relatively cheap to manafacture, which negates the main purpose of arms sales. Less corporate welfare to spread around.

  • Arn't most military strikes aimed at targets such as suspected opposition military bases and other appropriate targets NOT at citizens.

    Why should the citizens of a country (and the Earth as a whole) suffer environmental damage long after they have avoided the missiles?
    • Remember that NATO was created to defend Europe against a Soviet invasion, an invasion which would need to be fought in people's backyards and farms, since most of Europe is either backyard or farm.

      Only when you're the invader can you hope to deal exclusively with established enemy bases (and even then you're probably wrong).

  • "If we mix them (nitrogen and oxygen) together in a ratio of 4 to 1, they produce nothing but hot air," said Thomas Klaptoke, a chemistry professor from Munich University.

    Hell, that's all that profs produce, and I'd hardly call university a safe environment!
    A
  • we need to develop a bomb with nanotech that will reduce a city to pristine arboreal forest land in a matter of hours or days and spray paint the acronym "ELF" on one randomly selected tree ;-P

  • training weapons (Score:4, Informative)

    by neo-phyter ( 167886 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:49AM (#2255686)
    "...99 percent of all missiles are launched in training over your own ground,"

    That's the key. But do we really care about the enemy's environment? So, perhaps a more appropriate name for these is training missiles.

  • Dangerous precedent (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BDew ( 202321 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:50AM (#2255688)
    As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised. When that's the case, war (especially within your own borders) becomes much less palatable, and therefore the risk of war is reduced...
    • As I recall, President Carter killed the neutron bomb project because it made war too tempting. The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised.

      That was one reason, cost was another. But the biggest reason was that the easiest way to start the multilateral arms reduction process was to agree to not build new classes of weapon and countermeasures to add to the equation.

      That is the reason the Russians are now saying that if the US abrogates the ABM treaty they will regard the SALT-I and SALT-II treaties void as well.

      The neutron bomb was designed as a battlefield weapon. This was in the days when NATO believed that it could only defend Europe from a Warsaw pact attack for 3 days before having to resort to nuclear weapons. Those of us who pointed out that a large proportion of the USSR forces were built during WWII and that Russia was having enough trouble keeping its satelite states subdued were ridiculed. The claim was repeated even while the USSR demonstrated it could not hold Afghanistan against irregular troops with light arms and Ghadaffi demonstrated that he could not win a desert war with the latest soviet tank against a much smaller Chad force lead by a handful of ex-NATO mercenaries.

      The hawks only changed their tune after the USSR collapsed so spectacularly that anybody who admitted they were scared stiff of them looked stupid. So instead they cooked up the ridiclous canard that they deliberately spent the USSR into bankrupcy. Once the full implications of the sino-Soviet pact signed by Putin are understood they will undoubtedly switch to claiming that Russia and China are still poised to invade the West and that only a massive handout to military contractors can save civilization. The tactics would be comical if the consequences were not so great.

      It is very easy to promote the most aggressive pig-headed policy as being 'tough' and 'resolute'. Arrafat and Sharon are both making sure their respective consitutencies consider them so. However their tactics are nowhere near as impressive from the outside.


      Q:How do you know GWB is lying? A: His buttocks are moving

    • The neutron bomb was killed due to a very successful propaganda campaign fostered by the KGB. The bomb was portrayed as a capitalists weapon - destroy the people without destroying the structures. In reality, it was designed to stop massed tank attacks with minimal damage to the structures and the people away from its effective kill range. This is because it was developed as a defensive weapon, and was expected to be used on friendly territory against a conquering massive army.

  • Environmentally Friendly War (Score:3, Funny)

    by CFBMoo1 ( 157453 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:50AM (#2255691) Homepage
    Um... this sounds crazy. I have a better idea then spending billions on weapons that kill people and save the environment. I have a better idea.

    How about thousands on terminals and network cables so there can be one big LAN fest for the war? Imagine the US vs. China in an all out death match in Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, or Counter Strike? Thats environmentally friendly, saves millions and billions of dollars, and anyone can be a soldier of tomorrow! Hell I'd sign up if wars were fought that way, then I'd buy a beer for the guys I was frag'n for my country! :)

    Oh well, I'll have to settle for reality, which in my view is more stupid then what I mentioned above.


    • >How about thousands on terminals and network
      >cables so there can be one big LAN fest for the
      >war?

      Well, until somebody cheats, and/or the "wrong"
      side wins, that's great. Afterwards, out come the guns and nuclear weapons...

  • This is for YOUR OWN soil. (Score:3, Informative)

    by CrystalFalcon ( 233559 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:57AM (#2255725) Homepage
    Looks like many people here missed the point. One key reason to care about what goes up and comes down is that 99.9% of all ammunition is depleted during training, on your own soil.

    One perfectly valid scenario would be to have, say, 75% efficient nontoxic training grenades which are replaced by 100% efficient war grenades when the time comes to go to war. This is already done with live vs. blank rounds, nothing saying the practice can't be extended.

    And if I could say so, I would rather have that 99.9% market share of environmentally friendly training weapons, than the .1% higher-tech more-lethal toxic-in-the-making weaponry.

  • Land mines (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coyote-san ( 38515 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @10:58AM (#2255727)
    Subject pretty much says it all. You either understand that conflicts come and go, but munitions last forever (mustard gas from WW-I is still occasionally found in Europe), and you accept the need to minimize that damage to the extent possible, or you don't.

    It's also important to realize that, prior to the 20th Century, wars simply didn't leave much (non-biodegradable) hazardous material behind on the battlefield. Some lead from the bullets, but that's about it. Land mines, nerve gas and blistering agents, all are fairly recent inventions and we're just now learning how much long-lasting damage they cause.

    (I know, some battles involved salting fields to kill off crops, etc., but you didn't have land mines in those fields that will blow off the legs of children gleaning the little food that does grow there.)
    • but munitions last forever (mustard gas from WW-I is still occasionally found in Europe), and you accept the need to minimize that damage to the extent possible, or you don't.

      And there's the risk of the munitions ending in a Yahoo Auction and a foreign judge causing lots of trouble. If svastikas and iron crosses were biodegradable, we'd be better.

  • green bomb (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_other_one ( 178565 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @11:03AM (#2255758) Homepage

    A leaflet flutters to the ground.


    You read the leaflet.


    You have been blown up by an environmentally friendly weapon

    Under International law you have 1 hour to kill yourself.

    Please have your body disposed of in a tidy manner.

  • Neutron bomb - wasn't about "saving the industry" (Score:3, Informative)

    by Infonaut ( 96956 ) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @11:09AM (#2255773) Homepage Journal
    The neutron bomb was presented by the media back in the 1980s as a method of bombing an opponent so as to kill its inhabitants, then march in and take over the industrial infrastructure.

    This is, of course, absurd, because the neutron bomb's primary purpose was for tactical and operational, rather than strategic, use. The idea is that if you can affect your enemy over the same area with a 1 kiloton neutron weapon as with a 13 kiloton fission weapon, you can essentially "manage" the nuclear battlefield better.

    The neutron bomb concept came out of a rethinking of US defense policy, a reorientation towards a strategy oriented around actually fighting the Soviet Union at the point of attack, rather than relying on the Massive Retaliation policy of the 1970s.

    Although eventually the DoD found other methods of answering Soviet numerical superiority (deep strikes from the air, force multipliers like the M1 tank, precision guided artillery, cruise missiles, and so on), the neutron bomb was never seriously considered as a means of "saving the industry". Even generals know about radiation. ;-)

    See here [cato.org] for a bit more about the neutron bomb in the context of overall defense planning.

  • Refresher course... (Score:5, Informative)

    by G-funk ( 22712 ) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @11:12AM (#2255783) Homepage Journal
    On the neutron bomb, for those who don't actually know or remember (me) the details: [http://web2.iadfw.net/myself/secular/writing/n_bo mb.htm [iadfw.net]]

  • Calling Col. Kurtz? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mister7 ( 56875 )
    This reminds me of a time when the U.S. hesitated to attack Iraqi targets for fear of offending Muslims during Rammadan...I'm sure the gesture was lost on any of the victims. Making the following quote relavent to the story is left as an exercise to the reader...

    We train men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it's obscene!
    Col. Walter E. Kurtz
  • It's called a nutron bomb. Kills all sentient life while not damaging the land. Oh and Biological weapons.... we're just setting some little bugs free...

    Nothing new here.

  • Neutron Bomb (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @11:43AM (#2255910)
    From the comment at the top, it's obvious that Hemos doesn't understand what the Neutron bomb was designed for.

    The common misunderstanding is that it was developed to leave industry alone so we could wage an atomic war and then move right in. That's simply not true.

    The Neutron bomb, or Enhanced Radiation bomb (ER), was designed with Soviet Armor in mind. During the above ground weapons testing in Nevada, it became clear that a standard nuclear device wasn't effective at knocking out armor. Kind of like how cockroaches, turtles and armadillos survive nukes.

    Since the Soviets had 6-1 armor strength in the 60s and 3-1 in the late 70s and early 80s, something else had to be developed. That was the ER nuclear device. Most ER warheads were developed for the 203, 175 and 155mm artillery pieces, the 175 'Long Tom' was retired so that left the 203 and 155, then the Lance tactical missile was fitted with the 175's warheads and the Pershing 1 was also given the ability to fire an ER weapon.

    The Neutron bomb penetrated armor and killed the crew much more effectivly than a much larger conventional atomic device.

    All the ER weapons were in the 10-15 KT range, not a city buster or stratigic weapon by any stretch, but a tactical weapon that would have been deployed in bottle-necks like the Fulda Gap or against Soviet Armor on the Northern German plains were the Soviet out tanked the British EF by 6-1 or 10-1 depending on the Soviet's deployment.

    The whole Neutron bomb for nuking cities or industry and leaving it in-tact was propganda from the Soviet funded anti-nuclear activists. See the Mitrokhin Archives for info on that.
    • I was in Lance for a while. The system's long gone, so this has nothing but historical value.

      The stockpile was in Muenster, and you could fit either conventional or nuke warheads onto the end of a rocket, just takes a few minutes with a small crane. The conventional was simple bomblets, but the nuke was pretty bad -- what we called "dial-a-nuke." Essentially, "how many people do you want to kill" and "how dirty do you want this explosion to be." I'm guessing the latter ties into the neutron bomb idea of how unlivable you want an area to be afterwards.

      Nasty, glad we never had to fire a real one. But practicing emergency destruction with C4, TNT and shaped charges was real fun.


  • When properly conducted (and yes, I am aware that that could not not sound like an oxymoron) the purpose of war is to lead the way, as quickly and effectively as possible, to the optimum conditions for a long-lasting peace.



    Using weapons that hose the environment does not exactly set the stage for the long-lasting periods of peace and prosperity that we hope the wars are fought to achieve.

  • Depleted Uranium. The US has used DU in its tank rounds for a number of years because of its density and armor penetration. Although the article doesn't mention it explicitly, I suspect that the whole DU discussion has driven the move toward green munitions in general.

    NATO and most of the European countries have been extremely concerned about the environmental and health implications of its use. Training munitions don't contain DU but it was used in the Gulf War.

    Science seems to come down on both sides of the issue at the moment. Very difficult to pinpoint specific health problems related to it but it continues to be a suspect in Gulf War illness.

  • I'm getting sick and tired of all these damn misconceptions that Neutron/Enhanced Radiation bombs just kill people and leave buildings standing, ready for utilization by an occupying force.

    GET THE $^@%$W%%^. FACTS STRAIGHT!

    Neutron Bombs were researched and created as enhanced kill and area denial weapons, to use tactically against the advance of Warsaw / CommBLock Armoured columns in the anticipated invasion of Western Europe. The only to date fielded Neutron weapon is the W-70 Warhead for use in air-dropped tactical nuclear bomb (B-61)

    With the specific design to roast russians through the armour of their tanks, and make a large section of real-estate too radioactively hot to cross.

    These weapons do not just go *pop* like a toy, IT STILL YIELDS 20+ KILOTONS, UP TO 170kt, which is 10x greater than the Hiroshima Bomb.

    ALRIGHT?! OKAY? Drop A neutron bomb and you still flatten the surroundings, and you make it unliveable for a good amount of time!!! GRRR.

    (Makes you wonder about US doctrine in using these things in friendly German territory. If the Cold war had ever become hot)

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