Depleted Uranium Ammunition

In war, the advantages of Depleted Uranium munitions help the United States stomp other countries into the ground.

The United States and its NATO allies maintain that Depleted Uranium dust (a by-product) doesn't cause cancer and birth defects, however, 136 countries are citing other research saying that it does.

Which side do you think is right?


Here is the wikipedia entry:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

Depleted uranium emits weak alpha radiation (essentially helium atoms without electrons) and do not penetrate beyond the skin, so simply being around the munitions won't cause any radiation harm. If ingested, the amount of uranium in the body is decreased by half every 15 days.

The only major health effect is if the ammo were to form an aerosol after impact and you would need to model this using computer simulations with wind flow to asses the risk properly. Something that is better left to the scientists than speculation.

Well if you're breathing and playing around in a radioactive material for a prolonged amount of time. You're bound to have long term health issues.
Even if depleted uranium is only 60% as radioactive as natural uranium.

Unfortunately in war you can't really prevent a country from not using those munitions if it gimps them. I doubt the Russians, Chinese or US will stop using them.

Edit: Alpha radiation if on the outside of your body will do nothing but if you consume or let it enter your body it will start causing trouble but saying that you'd need to have taken in a fair amount of it.

First of all, war is fair, strife and suffering are just coincidental, cancer and birth defects if even caused are just a minor issue compared to the magnitude that combat prowess has (besides, information points out that because uranium is dangerous, it could cause these in those injured by uranium rounds.As most uranium rounds are used in macro munitions and simply as a shell or part of some larger caliber rounds I believe the chance of survival is slim to say the least and that by then cancer and birth defects would hardly be an issue compared to half your body going to shock as most of it just got blown to kingdom come).I do have one issue however.I agree that it's infinitely superior to match-grade rounds and the such but is it truly effective?For one, mass production of depleted uranium would probably increase the worth of a single soldier thricefold, unless you having something to equally protect our expenditures this is just another Ferrari dream amidst a Volkswagen budget.Second, unless your a total BOTGZ, there is no point to making ground resources a force multiplier,ground warfare is outdated as it is;whilst important, more funding should go into large scale uranium munitions for support roles that already use modified depleted uranium rounds such as 20mms to explosive rockets and projectiles who can effectively do most or all of a ground soldier's job for them,

These are all very interesting takes on the subject matter.
Here's some more insight on the whole orgin of Depleted Uranium.
I figured it would be very educational.

Hmm, yes but the wiki article states that the chemical toxicity of uranium is a million times greater than the radiation effects inside the body. So radiation isn't priority #1 on the health effects.

I just want to clarify that the chemical toxicity is the real danger here before people start citing radiation as the major concern.

I know that we are all subject to the United States' giant military fetish, but I don't think this is an issue of combat prowess.

Yes, it does help. When fighting a more organized force. When fighting smaller guerrilla occupations, DU is necessary.

The issue isn't even a military one. It's humanitarian. When we arrive in a country, proclaim ourselves to be its saviour, and immediately leave life-altering pollution...there may be an issue floating around.

When the US came into Irag back in the early 90s and used depleted uranium shells,the waste naturally built up.During that time most DU shells were dumped in the rivers of Iraq creating a permanent problem for the people living there.

US,China and Russia won't back down though.

Air power can't take and hold land. Therefore land warfare is still very much relevant. Even if you're talking about about the use of air power, DU rounds still have a use - the same one as it has in ground warfare - hunting armored vehicles.

Even the most rudimentary air to ground rockets costs 10-20 times more than using good 'ol 30 mm DU rounds (all hail the GAU-8, the devil's autogun). JDAMs can't be effectively used against moving targets, and LGBs are once again a lot more expensive.

Armed forces could use Tungsten penetrators, but these are a lot more expensive than DU. Depleted Uranium is available in great quantities, since it's a byproduct of uranium enrichment that's necessary for creating nuclear fuel. Another probelm with Tungsten rounds, is that the alloys would be even *more* carcinogenic than DU!

That said, the DU issue is not a closed one:


If these weapons are continued to be used, then measure must be taken to ensure cleanup afterwards as the DU dust residue poses a significant chemical risk that's highly carcinogen and can lead to birth defects.

Depleted uranium is dangerous for two reasons:

1: It's chemically toxic.

2: You're FUCKING SHOOTING PEOPLE WITH IT.

I worry more about normal lead bullets, especially since those are used for stuff like hunting. I don't like the idea of convenient little packages of heavy metals being strewn around my drinking water or nearby forest.

Not much uniqueness in this argument. Anyways, I would guess that residual effects left by DU round byproducts would be put in a backburner compared to magnitude of collateral damage.Anthropocentric-envirohumanity problems are outweighed by obligatory damages. Current ground forces already sustain US warfare hegemony;no need for expansion of costly depleted uranium rounds.In a time where we are only slowly escalating in tension with middle east powers such as Iran and relations with the eastern world such as china are hold in check, there is no need for more power.If we are obtaining withstanding, quota meeting statistics with current sufficiency of munitions, there is no need for more ground-based DU.Internal trade off for air force and a mindset of bipartisan action between ground and air forces with the rise of CAS and Aerial Recon/mission involvement would liken to mean that ground forces hold less weight.Yes, we need ground forces, but no, they are fine as is with current Anti-armor capabilities and support, implementation of costly(resource wise, not monetary) sources such as Depleted uranium is worthless waste.Whilst current spendature of ground ammunitions may cost more than DU ammunitions, status and ratio of depletion of resources to make DU is already tightened to spread across facets such as protection and current heavy weaponry.In summary, no need to implement more DU ammunitions, find alternative that evades stress on modern ground warfare and evades air force overtasking.

EDIT:disregard what I said on resource restriction, tl;dr'ed on some posts, anyways,
Use of DU rounds strengthens reliance to nuclear facilitation.
To link this with an issue, nuclear facilitation and concurrently, chance of proliferation, causes more damage than afew more opium smugglers and goat herders dying of DU rounds, magnitude of possible nuclear conflict outweighs.
Current oppositions do not maintain technology to an extent that anti armor and weaponry like more DU ammunition would be needed
Reliance on NATO and UN allies solves any lack of force because of lack of implementation in status quo.

I think the problem of DU ammunition is superseded by the problems of war. Why do we have so much conflict in the first place and how do we avoid it? If that would be solved there would be no need for DU ammunition, nuclear weapons, genocide, etc. I know some of you might be saying in your heads right now that war is an inescapable human condition, then the side effects of war are too.

Why did you change my quote from "DU bullets" to "lead"? o_o

Lead is chemically toxic and your also shooting people with lead bullets, simply no uniqueness in making that argument.

Um, but you CHANGED what I said... it's a "quote" for a reason... But yeah, that's the point I was trying to make, in that for the same reasons, I worry about lead more.

But lead does not burn and disintegrate into a million dust particles. More like shrapnel and it stays lodged in the flesh because that's the target its meant for.

If your referring to pyrophoric occurences in which the whole uranium shell is literally disintegrated and its half-life and radiation level is extremely altered and physically it cannot sustain a harboring dangerous radiactivity level unless your spraying around 500 tank rounds in which it would effectively create a cloud of radioactive waste , you shouldn't really worry about dust particles. and meh depends what sort of round your using. I personally believe, with limited knowledge on the topic, that any projectile other than a slug for a shotgun being meant to fragment is bullshit. Considering the shape and reasoning behind modern day bullets, there is no need to keep it within a target, you simply need to penetrate any body armor and cause the target to enter hydrostatic shock. Also,by making a bullet prone to shatter reduces its combat efficiency and velocity as one, bullets are made to break apart into a convex around the mid section of the projectile and are created in a cone fashion to prevent splintering pass that to maintain force and to lessen distribution of that force for as long as possible.
oh and comparing DU non supermassive rounds and ground force lead rounds, lead rounds will also be more prone to breaking apart or simply being torn apart to the point in which it leaves a dust residue because of the simple fact is a soft metal

Using lead bullets doesn't leave a fine dust of heavy metal after the shooting stops. DU does... and it's also radioactive. It's not a primary concern, since most of its radiation is alpha particles (stopped by a sheet of paper). However after a couple of months you also get some transuranics with beta decay... now imagine what this mixture does when inhaled/ingested.

All in all the harmful effects of DU dust through radiological means can be debated, in the end it's still a goddamn heavy metal and thus *very* harmful in the first-place with or without radiation.

I'm not actually against the *use* of DU. I'm against US interest once again trying to weasel out of paying for any "externalies" that would lower profits.

To me, its not a really matter of which side is 'right' but which side is more beneficial.

The use of an effective material that is advantagious for our military against claimed evidence of birth defects and such due to its by-product.

I support the war economy(and to some extent, I supported the industrial revolution but that isn't relevant here, at least I don't think it is) so I side with the use of depleted uranium because it is a valuable resource for military use.

On another note, this looks more like something that would go in the Serious Discussion section.