Green Wars and new ammunition
Perhaps in the not too distant future, weapons will become like this? Guided bullet by Sandia National Laboratories, introduced back in 2011. The tip is equipped with a tiny optical sensor that detects a laser beam that illuminates a distant target. And also there is practically no lead in it and many such bullets are simply not needed to hit the target!
Green Wars and the Lead Cycle. So, can military weapons be… environmentally friendly? And one more thing: is such a weapon even necessary? The answer will most likely be the following, moreover, today and even now - yes: after all, the damage to nature that humanity inflicts on it is becoming more and more significant, and the possibilities for it to somehow compensate for it are decreasing. Moreover, when the armies of developed countries are armed with such environmentally friendly ammunition, this will become another very important difference between them and various bandit groups. Which will once again facilitate the task for ... promising combat drones. If you have such a weapon in your hands - everything is OK! No - the drone destroys you like a terrorist.
Lead cycle in nature
Well, let's start with the fact that we remember how in the middle of the twentieth century hunters hunted game ... by shooting at it with lead shot. Thus ... millions, yes, millions of tons of lead were thrown into nature. And for centuries before that, people used lead bullets in war! Geese, ducks and other waterfowl swallowed lead shot along with the silt, and thus received a "charge of lead" into their bodies. True, then they vomited it (not all, but partially!) With waste, but at the same time they carried it to where there were no hunters. And through the food chain, the same lead ended up on the table of people, plus everything else they also used leaded, that is, gasoline, in a real way "poisoned" with lead!
It's good that even now hunters are allowed to use only iron shot, but it is destroyed quite quickly in nature and eventually disappears without a trace. Although, of course, iron remains in the soil, but only it is not as harmful as lead.
People have used lead bullets as projectiles for firearms for a very long time. There were even bullets of lead for the relatively advanced rifles of Berdan, Martini-Henry, Winchester, Gras and others like them, which were used by European armies until the 80s of the XIX century. Then rifles appeared chambered for smokeless powder, and there were no longer pure lead bullets in them. They began to use bullets with a copper or cupronickel shell, but inside them, as before, the "filling" was made of lead. The French developed an all-metal tombac bullet for their Lebel rifle. And this was, in perspective, the very first bullet in the world, the creators of which, albeit unwittingly, made it environmentally friendly. After all, lead bullets are often destroyed when they hit solid objects, and lead still gets into the environment.
Environmentally friendly bullets
In 1903, the Danish Jens Torring Schouboe took out a patent for a pistol that shoots bullets from ... wood, enclosed in a thin aluminum shell. Such bullets very quickly accelerated in the barrel of this pistol to high speed, but the accuracy of their hit, due to their low weight, was not too satisfactory, as was the stopping effect. Showboy pistols did not receive distribution. But it is worth, nevertheless, to think, and what in the future can replace lead in ammunition for modern automatic weapons, which, as everyone knows, has such and, by the way, a very big drawback, such as their rapid consumption when firing? Well, let's say it could very well be a steel bullet with a concave cup on the bottom made of copper. When fired by the force of the pressure of the powder gases, this cup is pressed into the rifling of the barrel and so it will lead the bullet, and the body of the steel bullet will simply slide along these rifling and that's it. At a distance of 500-600 meters, bullets of this design can have quite satisfactory accuracy and good armor penetration. But in nature they will decompose and will not pollute it. But you can again make bullets from pressed wood with a metal rod inside. The same Shouboe pistol largely lost due to the incorrectly selected steepness of the rifling. Today, all this can be easily calculated on a computer: both the weight, and the length, and the profile of the bullet, which can be longer than modern lead-filled bullets and have the same weight, but a more favorable aerodynamic profile and more beneficial environmentally friendly material from which they are made. ...
However, it is possible to weight the bullets without the use of lead in a completely different way, and this is precisely what they are working on today. The rod inside the bullet can be made of metal of high density and weight. By the way, VO already had materials that talked about work in this area.
Rocket bodies made of ... kraft paper
As it has long been known, the detonation of an explosive charge, which is in a metal shell, does not always break it into fragments of equal weight and shape, even in those cases when this shell has a notch, like the one on the well-known grenade "Lemon". The explosion of powerful explosives often turns the metal of the shell into dust. And ... is it worth then even using it in ammunition of the same high-explosive action?
For example, a rocket warhead today can be made from ordinary kraft paper, which is wound layer by layer on a blank and impregnated with glue, which after some time begins to decompose from the action of the sun, air and water. As long as the rocket body is covered with paint, these factors have no effect on it. But after the explosion, when it is literally blown to shreds, under the influence of these factors, they all decompose without a trace.
At first glance, such material may not seem very durable. However, in reality, this is far from the case. Although no one bothers to establish the manufacture of such cases from carbon fiber, and then, when the ammunition is detonated, it will disintegrate into tiny particles of completely inert carbon, which is already enough in nature and which will not bring any harm to it.
Ice bombs
In the North, with frosts of 30-40 degrees, very exotic ammunition with hulls made of ice is quite applicable. There are various special operations that, say, need to be carried out at the pole. And besides, so that there are no debris and parts with markings, by which it would be possible to determine where this ammunition was manufactured, and therefore the country that used it. It happens that such a forceful intervention is condemned by world public opinion. But if there are no debris, then why condemn ?!
The body of such a bomb can freeze from ordinary water. A pair of metal bands to hang in the bomb bay of the aircraft, and a miniature fuse, from which nothing will be guaranteed - that's all metal on it. Well, you can charge such a bomb with the most ordinary sawdust, which is filled with liquid oxygen. It will freeze this bomb even more, but in combination with sawdust will give an explosion of great force. As a result, no traces, no "chemistry" will remain either, since the sawdust in oxygen will simply burn out! By the way, similar ammunition, albeit with a metal case, was used by the Soviet aviation and have shown some potential. And since we are talking in this case about ammunition for special operations, moreover, in the coldest regions of the world, then they need to be assessed a little differently than ordinary ones. But it is possible and necessary to advertise such "bombs for the North", while saying that the ecology there is very vulnerable. Advertising something “like that” is also a weapon, and sometimes very effective.
We know that the ancient Indians used rockets with bamboo hulls, the Arabs, Mongols and the Chinese threw grenades in the form of small ceramic vessels, usually spherical in shape. Archaeologists have found such vessels, and they found traces of mercury fulminate ("explosive mercury"), which is a very powerful explosive, and in addition, it explodes from friction and impact. And this means that such "grenades" could not even have a fuse, but exploded when struck against the shields or helmets of the enemy.
Also during the Second World War, the so-called delta wood, and the lightest balsa, were in use. In the design of the British Mosquito bomber, thick skin was used in the form of three layers: two outer plywood and one inner balsa, with pine wood inserts for strength. From above it was pasted over with an ordinary canvas. And now we note that for modern missiles, those that are on the internal suspension of combat aircraft, the problem with heating in flight is no longer present. And if so, then their hulls can also be made even from balsa (which will help to significantly reduce their radar signature). The main thing is that they are strong enough to withstand just one start.
Tungsten and clay: bulletproof vest won't save you!
By the way, ammunition with ceramic bodies may well be used where there is a hot climate, and where there is sand and clay around. The body, together with the stabilizers, can be molded in a split form, in which it is fired, and after cooling it is filled with explosives, and ... the bomb is ready for use. It is more technologically advanced and more environmentally friendly than making metal bomb cases, but a fuse will not require a lot of metal. When such a ceramic bomb explodes, it will completely turn into dust and will simply not leave any traces of its use. Again, the developed countries can do it. To everyone else, no. This means that this issue can be easily transferred to the political plane with all the ensuing consequences for the owners of metal ammunition: either disarmament, or ... a full package of economic sanctions!
By the way, work is already underway on cermet bullets with an armor-piercing tungsten alloy rod. Such a bullet will hit the body armor, its ceramic shirt will collapse, and the rod will easily pierce the armor.
As a result: "green ammunition" will cause less damage to nature, less consumption of non-ferrous metals will be, and the result ... the result is excellent in all respects, and above all in the fact that only the most developed countries will be able to afford such weapons. Thus, everyone else can be automatically blamed for the destruction of nature and put pressure on by sanctions, in a word, to achieve their goals no longer even by force of arms, but only by the threat of using the most environmentally friendly weapons in the world!
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