Our Servicemen and their dirty secret

If Im not mistaken and dont hold me to it but I think they stop using D U munitions after the first gulf war..

Originally posted by cmd18B
If Im not mistaken and dont hold me to it but I think they stop using D U munitions after the first gulf war..

Most service armor-piercing ammunition is depleted uranium, especially in large caliber weapons primarily designed to engage vehicles.

DU is dense enough to carry its momentum through a good deal of rolled steel armor and to a lesser extent modern composite armors. It also has the cool property of being "self-sharpening," meaning that when it contacts a target it isn't blunted or deformed (as you can see in regular rifle or pistol bullets) but gets sharper as it passes through the target. Pretty handy.

Back to the original subject, we did roll with DU in OIF 1 in the march to Baghdad. We were expecting tanks and APCs in the defensive belt around the city. They were there, but most of their crews weren't. Since then we have not carried DU. It has a nasty tendency to go straight through its target and carry on through the city until it buries itself in a hill. We have enough problems with overpenetration with .50 cals, let alone a 120mm DU spike going through 25 city blocks. We used primarily HEAT, MPAT, and Canister rounds for a little bit after that before authorization to fire the main guns went up to division command. Now we are weapons tight on anything over .50 cal, generally speaking. We even have a little bolt action adapter that we put in the muzzle of our tank guns that lets us shoot .50 cal. Good for countersniper.

Long story short- we (Tankers) carried DU, didn't use much of it, then stopped carrying it. As for helos, tacair, and arty, I couldn't tell you, but I don't know why they'd need it either.

reply to post by WhiteOneActual


"let alone a 120mm DU spike going through 25 city blocks"

And every time it impacts/penetrates the ordinance deploys more DU dust.

Did the army give you guys those radiation patches that indicate an unsafe level of radiation?

Because the one they gave our boys don't detect Alpha emissions, which is what DU radiates. But at least they know when a nuke goes off, of if there is Plutonium nearby ;-)

[edit on 19-9-2008 by TruthTellist]

We blue water Vietnam veterans have the same problem with what harmed us.
We have a group that claims that only agent orange in the water off the coast of Vietnam was to blame.

But there is a lot of EPA research evidence that chemicals we used on our ships was the prime cause.
Chemicals like trichloroethylene, carbon tet. ETC

Because of the 'agent orange only group' insistence that AO caused it all we can not get funding for the VA to study these other chemicals.

reply to post by ANNED


You have an excellent point. There are a crapload of chemicals you are exposed to in a war zone, and as we can see historically only one gets blaimed. Everything is burning, everything gets pounded to dust, there is all kinds of stuff in the air. This is compounded in the cities. And Iraq is not a clean place- poor trash collection and sewage, and there is no "EPA." If they have some industrial byproduct, they dump it somewhere. If that somewhere gets blown up you have a bunch of aerosolized industrial or biological waste floating around for everyone to breathe.

I'm not saying DU isn't bad, just its not as bad as people make it out to be and we didn't use near enough of it to cause the problems its blaimed for.

I'm have been exposed to DU dust and burning DU fumes on a handful of occaisions, but if I get sick from chemical exposure my money is on the hydraulic fluid that I can't seem to ever get to stay in my tank. It causes paralysis in lab animals and I have spent weeks with my clothes soaked in it, and have most likely ingested it on several occaisions.

Its the things you take for granted that do you in.