Iran and DU weapons

It toatally just hit me in the face like a DU round.

Mabye the US is antsy over Iran and Nuclear Refinment not because of an A-Bomb, or a WMD (as the west precives it) But instead of the much simpler and easier to produce DU munitions.
After what the US has done to the reagion with it's own Trojan WMD's it's easy for me to belive that Iran sees this as a way to inflict some long standing damage on the west (israel), This works so well in my mind because of the efforts of the US gov. to supress the knowledge of the obvious hazards of DU munitions.
This also proves to me that the US is still useing DU because if they wern't, they'd be blameing Iran of trying to do it!! (exactly the case with atomic weapons!!)

i gots no page on this. like i said it just hit me.

what do you guys think though? does this make sence to anyone else?

i tried my best to find a previous thread on this. I'm terribly sorry if this is old news.


Peace

The US never hid the fact that they are using DU munitions in the anti tank role. But a nuke and a DU dart are a tad different. One can kill thousands and the other a few soldiers in a tank. And please don't say "DU rounds are killing hundreds of Iraqi civilians" or any bull like that. As some of you know factories were destroyed and sewers were exposed leaving a toxic mix. I am sure that mix may have something to do with the civilian deaths and deformaties blamed on DU.

oh yeah, I totally forgot that DU was Depleated *pffft* silly me....

oh hey that gives me a great idea! we should use all that left over DU we have to make shiny pencils for the school children of the world. Or DU silverware!! can you imaine the weight, wow that'd be awesome! I love heavy cutlery.


ok so mabye Iran isn't gonna get to DU weapons next, but they are planning on haveing a bunch of it leftover. I know it's all about way more than this small issue, but the US is setting a terrible example here.

These weapons are ilegal according to the geneva convention.

www.peaceaware.com... a%20Convention.htm

VaporTrail
Why try DU as WMD plot, when you can simply load a Ballistic missile with nuclear fuel rods and air detonate that as an ultimate dirty bomb in order to contaminate vast amounts of terrain?

I mean why go for DU when Fuel class Uranium is much moe effective as a WMD... (Or other radioactive substances)

yeah that's totally a good call.
Iran is probablly more down with that, (if they're down with it at all.)

Drawing the pain and suffering out over generations beneith the public eye is more an American style of warfare.

Originally posted by VaporTrail
oh yeah, I totally forgot that DU was Depleated *pffft* silly me....

oh hey that gives me a great idea! we should use all that left over DU we have to make shiny pencils for the school children of the world. Or DU silverware!! can you imaine the weight, wow that'd be awesome! I love heavy cutlery.


ok so mabye Iran isn't gonna get to DU weapons next, but they are planning on haveing a bunch of it leftover. I know it's all about way more than this small issue, but the US is setting a terrible example here.

These weapons are ilegal according to the geneva convention.

www.peaceaware.com... a%20Convention.htm

DU rounds have to be "depleated" or you would die within hours of touching them.

As for the Geneva Convention, don't make me laugh. Countries only follow it when it is in their best interest. And that's just not the US to be sure.

You do realize that Depleted Uranium is commercially availible, right? Actually, guesing by the first post, probably not...

DU bulk storage is rather expensive, so it's relatively cheap to buy for various purposes. It's used in everything from oil drills to gyroscopes to sailboat keels to trim weights on commercial aircraft; Boeing 747s used up to 1,500kg of DU in their construction.

So it's safe to assume that Iran already has plenty of DU ammunition for its 125mm tank rifles and other applications, likely supplied by Russia. If Iran and the US army got in a fight tomarow, both sides would be firing DU bullets. And US Tanks would also be wearing DU armor, which is no small irony.

So what about the radiation? DU is an alpha emitter, which means its spitting out ionized helium atoms (thats what alpha particles are). These particles don't have much penetrating power, a few cm of air offers sufficient insulation and if you sat on a DU plate the radiation from it wouldn't penetrate the outer dead layers of your skin.

For this reason DU gets used for reactor shielding: It's dense enough to stop nearly all forms of radiation, and the alpha radiation it gives off is very simple to shield against.

Where DU gets dangerous is after it strikes something at high speed, which causes spontaneous combustion: you get lots of uranium oxide dust as the stuff burns in the air. And because this dust *can* be ingested, your at much greater risk. Alpha particles emmited inside your body are impacting living tissue, which isn't too healthy (see Radon for a similar example), and you've got the additional factor of heavy metal poisening.

But as long as you don't breathe powdered DU, or have it fired at you out of a gun, there's not too much to worry about.

P.S. You can read this post to say I don't approve of DU based munitions, I'd be perfectly happy to see those go away (Tungsten is a decent replacement for those few situations where you really need KE rounds). However for most other applications, including DU-based armor plating, there's not too much call for concern.

DU on Wikipedia

[edit on 31-8-2006 by RedMatt]

You also have to consider the fact that tanks don't use DU rounds all that often. Usually when just taking out armour and that usually takes place away from cities. Most of the time HEAT rounds are more effective for things like taking out structures, urban warfare, etc.

The standard war load of an M1A1 is 42 rnds and they are almost all exlusively the M829A3 which is slightly better than the brit CHARM3 . btw the 42 rounds is somewhat smaller than the chally 2 war load but that doesn`t stop teh tankers churning out 12 rounds per min if they need to .