Are We Using Nukes?

You bet your ass. The weapons of choice may not be your standard B53 A-Bomb that we all familiarized ourselves with - at least we who grew up during the cold war - or the B61-11 “mini-nuke” bunker buster that has yet to be used, but something even sneakier.

Let me introduce you to Depleted Uranium (DU for short). This is used in many of our munitions we’ve used in the past couple of decades - the Gulf War, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq - with precision. And controversy.

The U.S. military uses 30 mm PGU-14/B armour-piercing incendiary rounds, which contains DU penetrators. Also used are 120 mm sabot rounds fired from the M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams (which also use DU armor plating). Those bunker busting bombs and missiles [GBU-28, 15,24,27,31 and 37, AGM-130C] have DU in them. Depleted uranium is favored for the penetrator because it is self-sharpening and will ignite spontaneously.

Most of the time, DU is also combined with another metal to make it more dense, resulting in what are called staballoys. Staballoys are metal alloys of depleted uranium with a very small proportion of other metals, usually titanium or molybdenum.

The problem with these? Uranium is highly radioactive and a toxic metal with a long half-life. Depleted uranium is less toxic than other heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury, but is also weakly radioactive and would remain so because of a long half-life (~ 4.5 billion years). The toxicity of DU is the greater danger. It can cause autoimmune problems, mutations, neurological problems and is carcinogenic. DU is a theoretical cause of the Gulf War Syndrome because of the use of DU munitions in the Gulf War. Doctors at the Serb-run hospital in Kosovska Mitrovica say the number of patients suffering from malignant diseases has increased by 200% since 1998, due to the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2005, uranium metalworkers at a Bethlehem plant near Buffalo, New York, exposed to frequent occupational uranium inhalation, were found to have some of the same patterns of symptoms as Gulf War Syndrome victims.

What does all this mean? Technically, since it is uranium, we are using nukes. Not in the form we all know and love - *BOOM* mushroom cloud. There have been calls for a United Nations moratorium on using weapons containing depleted uranium. None have passed. Unfortunately.

Sources:

Article by Ford

• Swine Flu... What Next - PIG AIDS? I'm going to cut and paste pieces from an article - with editorial comment - that I've read recently about our new "pandemic" called the H1N1 Swine Flu. Supposedly, according to the CDC, there are 141 confirmed cases in the United States - with one death. There are 365 confirmed......
• A McCarthy Wannabe? Does anyone follow United States history? Look back to the 1950s. Once there was a senator named Joseph McCarthy, who decided to prey upon the fear of the American public during the Cold War and announce that he knew of several people who were communists. Had documents and everything to......
• How to Survive a Nuclear Attack So. World War III has happened. India and Pakistan got fed up with fighting conventionally over the Kashmir territory and fired nukes on each other. Russia fired upon India, which in turn gave Iran a lame excuse to fire a nuke it claimed it never made on Israel. This caused......

• Solve the Problems in your life with the help of a Coach New York The jet set pace of modern life often takes a toll on human mind. A lot of US citizens are suffering from stress and anxiety related problems as well as marital relationship discord. A counselor or coach can often help people to get rid of these life style disorders and......
• Renowned Life Coach Martha Beck Appearing on The Mommy-Muse Is In! Do you sometimes lose sight of who you really are? Have you been so focused on taking care of others that you not only overlook your personal stress and unhappiness, but neglect to nourish yourself? Or maybe you've experienced an unexpected pregnancy that completely unraveled life as you knew it.  ......
• Quick Green Reads For The Weekend Volume Fifty Six. I wanted to take a minute to thank all the readers and visitors that stop by The Good Human on a daily or regular basis - you guys make it worthwhile to keep writing for this site! Granted, I would probably do it if I had 2 readers, as......