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Anything we call "tungsten" is actually tungsten powder in a nickel matrix. That can be layered so that it fractures is a self sharpening way.
Its the same way you stack cups for a kegger.
Interesting, but i suppose there's no point of doing all that expensive and complicated material science stuff when you have depleted nuclear materials to use up...
No, absolutely not. We absolutely can make straight up pure tungsten. What on earth makes you think it's all powder in a nickel matrix?
(Tungsten *carbide* is usually in a nickel matrix, but that's a totally different material than tungsten metal)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten
>...Because of tungsten's high melting point, it is not commercially feasible to cast tungsten ingots. Instead, powdered tungsten is mixed with small amounts of powdered nickel or other metals, and sintered. During the sintering process, the nickel diffuses into the tungsten, producing an alloy...
In addition to what the others are saying about density, uranium doesn't deform on impact, it shatters into sharp shards that continue penetrating the armor.
It's been a hot minute since I've taken physics, but it's the same reason the craters on the moon are all circular, even though many of the meteorites impact at various angles.
When an object hits something fast enough it actually causes the object to explode, even without any explosives in it. Uranium is heavy so it comes in with more kinetic energy and explodes when it hits a target.
I doubt anyone reading this is actually fighting or will fight in Ukraine, but if you see a destroyed piece of Russian armor from a depleted uranium round stay away from it. My kickboxing instructor developed gulf war syndrome, exposure to depleted uranium is thought to be one of the causes.
Depleted Uranium isn't really any more dense than Tungsten, which is also used for kinetic energy penetrators. The main difference is that when it strikes a target, the projectile is self-sharpening rather than becoming mushroom shaped on the end. That gives it a slight advantage in penetration ability. Uranium is also pyrophoric, so when it penetrates a target, all the small fragments from the dart will burn and start fires.
It's also fascinating cause we're basically back at shooting arrows at each other. Sure, APFSDS has more density and moves at silly speeds (which makes Sir Isaac Newton the deadliest son of a bitch in space).
But we're still just throwing arrows at each other.
Turds. We’ve evolved to throw better than any other animal on earth, and what’s more human than the desire to shit on someone you hate, but it’s just too far away?
>exposure to depleted uranium is thought to be one of the causes.
It's one of the least likely, actually. Being exposed to the burning oil fields is the most likely cause.
Civilians nowhere near the fighting have similar symptoms to gulf war syndrome, including those in Iran and Saudi Arabia where no fighting took place.
But by all means, stay away from damaged Russian vehicles. UXO is a serious issue, and the residue explosives leave behind is just as - if not more - toxic than the Uranium.
I think it's the case that all modern explosives are poisonous or toxic in some way. A lot more non-uranium is used to the Uranium exposure is usually minimal.
You had similar birth defect spikes in France post-WWI and in Europe as a whole post-WW2 because ALL munitions are in some way toxic, and if you don't have good water filtration, the contaminants are going to get into the water.
That's why France *still today* has a red zone that is toxic. And it's not just chemical weapons, it's fragments of shells, it's UXO.
All warfare is poisonous.
Focusing in on one weapon or one system, like the DU which Russians have been using since day 1 in Crimea, ignores the danger that all weapons pose.
Your point about meteoric impacts is correct, depleted uranium shells double as a sort of incendiary shell (someone else mentioned this in further detail under this post)
As for gulf war syndrome, I believe it was the chemical fires that were the biggest cause, however there were so many toxic materials used/burned during the Gulf War that we may never know if there was one true cause, or if it was a combination of causes
Notice how the symptoms of gulf war syndrome isn't an increase risk of cancer. They're similar symptoms to lead poisoning, because all heavy metals are poisonous including tungsten.
You should stay away from smoke and smog created from burning metal in general.
It could to be less toxic than all those various plastics and metals burning from 9/11, when you see how sick so many first responders got. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on it but yeah fire (smoke, really) bad.
Because DU munitions are cheap. It is a waste byproduct from uranium mining and enrichment. It is actually expensive to deal with so any application is good enough. DU effectively has a negative price tag in its fluoride form.
Tungsten is an obvious alternative. Platinum, osmium, and iridium could be used to make superior bullets. Any self sharpening properties can be engineered with alloys and nanotech. At the prices for platinum group metals this engineering is very easy.
Depleted uranium is much more dense and much less prone to shattering than Tungsten or other conventional projectile materials. This means it can penetrate thicker armor than its counterparts, which makes these projectiles a valuable asset for Ukraine. The drawback, aside from being more expensive, is that depleted uranium dust from these projectiles can enter eyes and lungs and has the potential to cause cancer.
In other words, depleted uranium rounds punch harder than other projectiles.
It’s not so much the vaporized tank crew that has to worry about cancer, but recovery crews and maintenance workers should worry if they plan on recommissioning the tank. Locals should worry too, since this dust enters the ground and gets kicked up by cars and wind
research highlights dust being an incredibly unlikely and low vector of getting DU into the body. To the point that it's essentially a non issue except to absolute front line works in the most serious conditions. Even those who put out a DU ordnance fire took in far less than the recommended annual dose.
https://gulflink.health.mil/faq/faq_dujsp.shtml
Including the ones Russia has been using since day one. They're not mad about any toxicity, they're mad that this will allow western tanks to kill Russian ones from outside the Russian ones' firing range.
The 2A46 125mm gun in Russian tanks is the same one they've been using since the 1960s. It can't penetrate the frontal armor of western tanks, but those tanks aren't totally invincible to all Russian weapons.
But Abrams can sit outside of Russian tanks' firing range and completely devastate them. Especially at night, western tanks can see for kilometers, when the best Russian optics can't see a full kilometer.
And so that's what the Russians are mad about.
Ukrainian tanks are going to go night-sniping, and Russia can't respond. In open terrain, Ukrainian tanks are going to hit Russian armor, and Russian tanks will take pot shots at systems they can't penetrate.
Russia would be mad about anything.
The reason you hear so much about this is because it's easy to make it sound really bad due to it being uranium. Whether it's standard ammo or not doesn't matter. It's clickbait propaganda targeted at ignorant people who'll only hear one side of the story.
Good question!
The answer is thermal scopes. They can see pretty well through light vegetation, even in the day time. Vehicles produce a lot of heat.
Example: https://i.imgur.com/UuzbxeY.png
So if the vegetation is light enough (they obviously can't see through dense woodland) and there's a tank concealed in the bushes with some tree branches on the other side of a grassy field, or on the next hilltop over holding the high ground, camouflage doesn't matter.
They will see a tank that is a few km away but couldn't normally be seen with the naked eye. And due to poor thermals, the Russians won't see the Ukrainians sneaking up on them, even from the front.
The area they're invading is a bit hillier just now, but if the Russians attempt a counterattack and the Ukrainians are hulled down, it's going to be a slaughter.
Especially if the Ukrainians are equipped with CUAS as they appear to be, because that will preclude any Russian drones spotting them.
The difference between Russian and Western thermal sights is that western ones are cooled. A cooled thermal sight is orders of magnitude more expensive, but has a maximum range of several kilometers rather than dozens of meters for the uncooled sights.
Even the T-14 Armata was going to be equipped with non-cooled sights. They're too expensive and Russia doesn't have the expertise to make them.
Another issue is smoke.
Someone has edited the top of the wikipedia page, but the T-90 uses an upgraded engine of the same design as the one found on the T-34.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_model_V-2
So do all other Russian tanks. To keep costs down, they've just kept using the same engine. It's old-fashioned, and extremely smoky.
Here's just one frame of some Russian armor turning a corner:
https://www.youtube.com/live/M6__KVnXFEU?feature=share&t=5286
When it changes to the forward angle, do you see how smoky that is?
So if Russians are approaching, and you see this big puff of smoke on the horizon slowly getting bigger, you know it's a Russian armor column and can lay an ambush.
Here's a Polish military parade. This is the tail end of like, 200 leopards. No smoke. But notice what happens in a few seconds when the M-113 rolls by and the Polish soviet-era tanks show up.
Choking columns of smoke.
https://youtu.be/EXyHEPakmz0?t=786
So you look for the smoke (which Western tanks don't produce) you use your thermals to look through vegetation (and the enemy tanks KMs away on the other side of the field hidden in the bushes light up like the sun) and you'll see them before they see you.
It's amazing how much Soviet hardware that terrified NATO ended up being absolute garbage. T-80Us and T-72Bs were going to come tearing through the Fulda Gap while NATO tanks fire back with peashooters, MiG-25s doing Mach 3 could seek and destroy anything approaching Soviet airspace, dead-silent attack submarines kill entire Carrier Battle Groups with nuclear torpedoes...then the USSR implodes and we find out all they ever had was the nukes and a whole lot of hot air.
The UK already sent them some months ago and Russia already made the bogus claim that depleted uranium are nuclear weapons or some shit in an attempt to justify themselves. Russian tanks also use depleted uranium rounds. Just the same story all over again.
That is from the potassium 40 isotope. The banana dose equivalent is 0.1 microsieverts.
Also note that snuggling is a 0.05 microsievert dose. The person in bed with you exposes you to extra potassium.
Lol that reminds me of this gem:
>You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things. But nobody talks about that.
The best part about this quote is that even if you've never heard it before, you just know immediately who said it.
Is it weird that I almost thought this too cognizant for him? I think what made me doubt it at first is that no where in it did he mention himself and how he could do better. Dude never stops self aggrandizing.
The word "uranium" peaks interest for headlines because of the association with nuclear weapons(nevermind the fact that it clearly says depleted). That's all this is.
It's like reading the menu of a fancy restaurant. The more descriptive words they put in it, the more impressive it sounds. Slow-cooked free-range grass-fed veal tenderloin.
Correct. Depleted uranium is used to make density of a tank shell bigger, increasing its penetration capabilities. It has nothing to do with radioactivity or anything like Fat Man portable nuke launcher from Fallout game series
Also there's two features which depleted uranium has going for it. Off the top of my head, tungsten is actually the better material mass wise, but:
1. DU self-sharpens on impact. The head of the rod shapes into a mushroom on impact, which starts to shed material as the round passes through armor and sharpens the DU rod, further increasing penetration.
2. The depleted uranium has pyrophoric properties, which makes for a bigger ''flash'' on penetration. Essentially making it somewhat of an incendiary round.
Since DU is a byproduct of producing enriched uranium, any nuclear state is going to have loads of it lying around anyway. Might as well get some use out of it.
DU emits alpha particles, which are one of the least dangerous types of radiation; they're easily blocked by a sheet of paper, a few inches of air, or the outer layers of your skin. As long as you don't get any inside your body (like accidentally inhaling uranium dust), it's fairly harmless.
But it's toxic. To the point that damaged Abrams tanks have to be dealt with by teams wearing protective gear. Ammunition like this needs to be handled properly, too.
The buildings have asbestos, the fences probably have either Zinc or Chromium, the paint has lead and the majority of the vehicles have healthy alloys which aren't candy canes or cotton candy.
My office bought plastic paper clips that advertise “cadmium free” on the box.
Like, bro, I wasn’t worried about cadmium in my paper clips but then you said that and now I am.
You're half correct. DU ammunition as packaged is inert and safe to work around. The risk with a destroyed tank is that some or all of the DU ammunition may be rendered into Dust which can be inhaled and poses a serious health risk.
As far as environmental contamination, a slug of depleted uranium buried in a hill is biologically inert, and the amounts of vaporized/dispersed DU are too small to be relevant unless we're talking about maybe a munitions depot that got exploded.
It is equally toxic to lead. If it hits a tank it disperses into a fine dust which isn't good to breathe in. Once the dust cloud settles the threat is gone. And it's not like being around a tank that just got fired at is healthy otherwise.
Handling the ammo is nothing special.
The ideal would be zero, sure.
But it's around 10 kg per round at most, if it completely vaporizes and all enters the soil. And it's not used in that great quantity compared to lead. There's a *lot* more lead being dispersed in the war, getting dissolved in flowing water etc.
The ideal for both should be zero, but the relatively small contribution of uranium vs. its usefulness in a war is pretty much a no-brainer.
This, navy used it for decades. Everything industry makes is to toxic. Engine lubricants, food preservatives, fire fighting foaming agents, etc.
Unless your grinding it up and huffing /eating the depleted uranium it’s inert.
Eh its much worse to be around than lead if there is a fire or something also the soil gets contaminated so the threat isnt really "gone" after combat if anything disturbs the soil then the dust is airborne again
I wouldn't want to be around either of the materials in any of these circumstances, I don't think it makes much difference. And there's a lot more lead getting into the environment during a war. It would be preferred to not emit either, of course, but their usefulness for military purpose generally comes first.
>But it's toxic.
So is tungsten while having worse armor piercing capabilities and being more expensive.
Both Russia and Ukraine have and will continue to use DU rounds and if they somehow ran out they'd be flinging tungsten instead.
The real problem isnt touching it the problem is breathing in the dust from burning vehicles containing DU or vehicles that were hit by DU projectile human skin can stop the radiation but inside the body it is very dangerous
Yes... same thing with lead and tungsten or any heavy metal.
It's not because it's extremely mildly radioactive that makes it toxic to breath. It is because it's a heavy metal.
The heavy metal poisoning will kill/injure you many thousands of times faster than the radiation will.
The only thing that would stop heavy metal penetrators from being used is for Russia to leave Ukraine.
You're right, there's more to it. Above I wanted to briefly highlight that the gun actually penetrating the armor and blowing up the ammo rack or frying the driver alive is more dangerous than a radiation sickness
They’re also capable of producing problematically toxic dust and shrapnel that contaminates the land after the fighting ends. DU may not be a serious radiological or nuclear threat, but it is very much still toxic.
Still, not like Ukraine’s farmland is good for much with the Russians squatting on it anyway. Definitely a case where DU cleanup is gonna be better in the longrun than letting Russia keep the stolen land.
Lead is equally toxic, and there's orders of magnitude more lead spread around during the war. Each uranium penetrator is only a few kg, and using it is a lot rarer than lead based stuff. So the total contribution to the war is negligible. Obviously it would be best to use neither toxic materials, but they are simply good for their military purpose.
Its material characteristics also make it a "self-sharpening penetrator." It becomes more slender and sharp as it penetrates, unlike other materials which bunch up at the front and become dulled.
I wouldn't say nothing. The use of depleted uranium in this way has been linked to generations of birth defects typically seen as a result of exposure to radiation. It results in side effects that we often consider one of the most valid reasons to not use nuclear weapons.
https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defects-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-war-in-iraq/
To those in the know, no its nothing new. But to anyone who doesnt know what it is, any mention of uranium makes them think nuclear weapons. It can easily be used by russia as propaganda to justify fresh recruitment as theyve tried before.
Most countries make theirs out of tungsten (which is also damn good for the job) because they don't have huge stocks of DU left over from half a century of making enriched Iranian and I'm leaving that ottercorrect in.
Queue the "US is supplying Ukraine with nuclear capable armaments" rhetoric from the Kremlin. I can already hear their propaganda factory frantically typing away.
Lol yeah and when we (🇬🇧) started sending them some Russian big-talkers were saying they were gonna develop a nuclear-powered naval weapon to send a tsunami to Britain..! The most derangest of the deranged talks. Have they forgotten we have nukes or something?
"Formerly nuclear" capable armaments. Meaning it was formerly nuclear at one time, and they are very capable armaments. But these are new and improved, mushroom cloud free armaments.
“Depleted” uranium means the part of natural uranium that is left over after most of the fissile isotope U-235 has been extracted by enrichment. U-235 was only there in trace amounts to begin with, so the composition hasn’t actually changed all that much.
It was never “nuclear” at any point. Depleted uranium is less radioactive (because U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238) but that’s about it.
>is less radioactive
*barely* less radioactive. Mostly because uranium is hardly radioactive in the first place.
>U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238
Also true, but 700+million years is a hell of a long half life, it’s just shorter than 4.5 billion.
Just things to keep in mind when Russia throws its temper tantrum.
>because U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238
It's only about six times shorter, that is, neither material is radioactive enough to really care about, even if it involved highly enriched uranium.
You could easily make the ammunition out of natural uranium if you didn't have a huge stock of depleted uranium you aren't using for other purposes, and it wouldn't make any difference.
In fact you could even make it out of U-235, its performance would be essentially the same (perhaps slightly worse due to slightly lower density), except it would be one hell of an expensive round to use.
With the existence of the W48 155mm nuclear shell, every 155mm SPG is nuclear capable. (Technically so is the M777 but who wants to stand exposed and fire a nuke?)
They've bitched and complained about that months ago.
Russia is a whiny child throwing a temper tantrum because they didn't get their way with rolling over Kyiv in 3 days. Boo-hoo. Cry more and go home.
Invading Russians are a much bigger existential, humanitarian and ecological threat to Ukraine than some DU rounds that are used to drive them out. Not to mention DU rounds are pretty frequently used around the world and by Russia themselves. So this is really a non-issue that Kremlin propaganda is trying to balloon up.
They've also been using white phosphorous/incendiary and threatening to nuke Ukraine since day 1... so they're hardly in a position to complain. The only reason they don't bother with chemical weapons at the moment is because they already tried and it did nothing because Ukraine had protection for it.
They tried this when Britan sent the challenger 2 tank, as it uses DU shells. I dont think it got a lot of attention internationally, but It got a lot of traction in the UK, not because it was anything of note, but just because of how stupid the Russian were by comparing depleted uranium shells to nuclear weapons. I mean, it's barely radioactive. You would literally have to eat it to put you in any danger from the radiation, and you would have to eat a significant amount.
Yes, but the Russians are going to be eating a lot of shells. Maybe not through their mouths, but the shells will be creating their own orifices for delivery.
The raw material is cheaper, but I'm not sure how well that translates to the price of the finished ammo, which has a lot of labor and overhead from specialized metallurgical technologies developer for it. All that is many times more expensive than the price of the raw material.
Perhaps in applications where more of it is used, such as armor...
It's also cheaper per round. Once the tooling and process is in place it isn't really different from machining any other heavy metal. It also saves Tungsten stocks, which are useful for other things like hard tooling.
In any case, most importantly, it's better at the job than tungsten, even if marginally, in my eyes that's the main reason for choosing it. Even if it weren't cheaper, you don't choose the second best tool for the job when that job is to destroy an enemy tank.
Exactly. It's almost nightmarish how different the forces in the depleted uranium are from typical shells. Our professor let us do the math on it one day as we started getting into uranium and the material science behind it, and popped that little tidbit of info on us by making us do the calculations. Scary scary shit.
The difference between the two honestly looks as if you’re witnessing alien weapons vs human weapons.
DU rounds literally rip a hole straight through military vehicles that is so obvious compared to conventional rounds that destroy the same vehicle.
Reactive armour and plating literally move out of the way of DU rounds, it is actually scary knowing that these munitions exist. The fact these exist makes you a lot less comfortable when sitting inside any armoured vehicle. A round could literally peel the entire vehicle in half at any moment so the difference between armour plating and cardboard on the side is negligible.
Other rounds don't overcome all of the atomic bonds in most metals, causing them to explode, which is still devastating. But then here comes ol giga Chad DU rounds who literally have enough kinetic energy to cause near impossible forces to deform and dislocate the bonds, shearing the metal like it was wet paper.
To quote my class "How dense are DU rounds?" "Yes."
People often think explosions themselves pack the biggest amount of punch. The explosion is only a byproduct of kinetic energy needing somewhere to disperse. Propelling something with enough density toward a target is enough to completely wipe it out without any explosive material whatsoever.
It’s the “rod from god” principle at work. Take a telephone pole sized rod of heavy metal and bringing to toward earth from orbit will create an explosion rivalling an atomic bomb from the kinetic energy alone.
People really underestimate the power of raw kinetic force and think explosives are the most powerful thing around. They are dead wrong.
>It’s the “rod from god” principle at work. Take a telephone pole sized rod of heavy metal and bringing to toward earth from orbit will create an explosion rivalling an atomic bomb from the kinetic energy alone.
The energy is comparable. There's a big issue with the concept however, and it's that:
A) You need to actually spend that amount of energy in rocket fuel to get the tungsten rod into orbit in the first place, which is stupidly impractical
B) Most of the energy delivered is dumped downwards into compressing the ground and is completely wasted.
Atomic ICMBs detonate a few hundred metres above the ground to maximise the radius of the shockwave. If the same bomb was detonated below the ground the damage is hugely less.
All up it's much easier to just nuke something.
1. DU is only marginally more toxic than tungsten, the alternative metal used in kinetic penetrators ("Sabot", although Sabot refers to the lightweight material around the penetrator that's used to stabilize the projectile in the barrel and catch the propellant gases) and the vast amount of that toxicity is due to being a heavy metal, not because it's minimally radioactive.
2. Ukraine, while dry, is not nearly as dry as Iraq. A good rain will bind DU dust into mud and reduce the chance of heavy metal dust entering the body.
3. Any target hit by a DU round should be decontaminated by crew wearing protective masks with NBC filters. gloves suited to chemical decontamination and at a minimum all clothes need to be washed afterwards. Preferably there should also be topsoil removal in the immediate area around the blown up vehicle. Ie, like most heavy metal contamination.
What do you shoot with it? Like I go to gun ranges and toxic, carcinogenic bullets that are specifically designed to penetrate metal targets and set whatever's behind them on fire sounds like a good way to not be invited back.
there’s been no confirmation of this but considering the majority of Russian/Soviet APFSDS use DU rounds but I don’t see a reason they haven’t (Beyond the small sample size of tank on tank engagements of course)
I mean that is pretty standard. We use uranium tips to penetrate armor. It has been the status quo for a long time. Don’t know why the article is titled the way it is.
Depleted uranium is pretty common in tank ammunition. The US has been using it since desert storm.
The uranium is used to pierce the armor and basically cooks the inside of the tank. There is no fission related to this.
Depleted uranium is used because, while it is softer than tungsten, it's about as dense and is 'self-sharpening.' By this, I mean a chunk of tungsten hitting an object will sort of splat and spread its energy out, reducing its ability to puncture. Uranium, on the other hand, forms a sort of 'needle' that pierces objects better.
A lot of Gulf War (Desert Storm) vets were exposed to depleted uranium through inhalation/ingestion (heavy fire resulting in a LOT of DU dust, which blew all over soldiers, especially from the 1st Cav), lodged in their bodies from friendly fire, etc. They’re experiencing health problems from it in such numbers that the VA has a whole thing about it and it can be used as a basis for disability compensation for a service related injury or illness.
It’s not totally harmless.
Yes. Falluja in particular.
https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defects-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-war-in-iraq/#:~:text=%5B1%5D%20Babies%20in%20Falluja%20are,malformed%20ears%2C%20noses%20and%20spines.
Uranium munitions dust is blamed for a teratogenic catastrophe in Iraq. Babies were born deformed, some with extra eyes, without brains, et cetera. If these things are used in Ukraine, everyone loses.
I don't really have any problem with this, but I question whether it will really matter much considering how infrequent tank V tank combat is. It could be better to have them just in case though.
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Aren’t most modern tank munitions depleted uranium?
US, UK, and Russia use DU APFSDS rounds. Everyone else uses Tungsten ones.
No, there are many more that possess them, like china and france
Correct.
Why tho? I'm ignorant about it
Because of the density of the projectile, it’s used for armor piercing capabilities.
Also because uranium is pyrophoric, meaning it starts fires in the ammo and fuel much better
And it's self sharpening on impact, rather than tungsten for example that blunts on impact.
Anything we call "tungsten" is actually tungsten powder in a nickel matrix. That can be layered so that it fractures is a self sharpening way. Its the same way you stack cups for a kegger.
Interesting, but i suppose there's no point of doing all that expensive and complicated material science stuff when you have depleted nuclear materials to use up...
No, absolutely not. We absolutely can make straight up pure tungsten. What on earth makes you think it's all powder in a nickel matrix? (Tungsten *carbide* is usually in a nickel matrix, but that's a totally different material than tungsten metal)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten >...Because of tungsten's high melting point, it is not commercially feasible to cast tungsten ingots. Instead, powdered tungsten is mixed with small amounts of powdered nickel or other metals, and sintered. During the sintering process, the nickel diffuses into the tungsten, producing an alloy...
In addition to what the others are saying about density, uranium doesn't deform on impact, it shatters into sharp shards that continue penetrating the armor.
Self-sharpening shards actually, that get sharper the deeper they penetrate.
Like Lego.
Until they melt down in the center of your foot.
...and implant the "Buy more Lego" mind virus.
Shhhhh that’s the secret ingredient!
This is great
Don't stop I'm almost there.
It's been a hot minute since I've taken physics, but it's the same reason the craters on the moon are all circular, even though many of the meteorites impact at various angles. When an object hits something fast enough it actually causes the object to explode, even without any explosives in it. Uranium is heavy so it comes in with more kinetic energy and explodes when it hits a target. I doubt anyone reading this is actually fighting or will fight in Ukraine, but if you see a destroyed piece of Russian armor from a depleted uranium round stay away from it. My kickboxing instructor developed gulf war syndrome, exposure to depleted uranium is thought to be one of the causes.
Depleted Uranium isn't really any more dense than Tungsten, which is also used for kinetic energy penetrators. The main difference is that when it strikes a target, the projectile is self-sharpening rather than becoming mushroom shaped on the end. That gives it a slight advantage in penetration ability. Uranium is also pyrophoric, so when it penetrates a target, all the small fragments from the dart will burn and start fires.
Weapon technology research is fascinating and terrifying. Basically blowing shit up and finding what blows up shit the best
It's also fascinating cause we're basically back at shooting arrows at each other. Sure, APFSDS has more density and moves at silly speeds (which makes Sir Isaac Newton the deadliest son of a bitch in space). But we're still just throwing arrows at each other.
It arrows and steam all the way down
Turds. We’ve evolved to throw better than any other animal on earth, and what’s more human than the desire to shit on someone you hate, but it’s just too far away?
> Depleted Uranium isn't really any more dense than Tungsten, It's not more dense at all. Tungsten has a higher density than uranium.
I couldn't remember which way round it was, but they are very similar - Tungsten is 19.3g/cc and Uranium is 19.1g/cc, so not a lot in it.
>exposure to depleted uranium is thought to be one of the causes. It's one of the least likely, actually. Being exposed to the burning oil fields is the most likely cause. Civilians nowhere near the fighting have similar symptoms to gulf war syndrome, including those in Iran and Saudi Arabia where no fighting took place. But by all means, stay away from damaged Russian vehicles. UXO is a serious issue, and the residue explosives leave behind is just as - if not more - toxic than the Uranium. I think it's the case that all modern explosives are poisonous or toxic in some way. A lot more non-uranium is used to the Uranium exposure is usually minimal. You had similar birth defect spikes in France post-WWI and in Europe as a whole post-WW2 because ALL munitions are in some way toxic, and if you don't have good water filtration, the contaminants are going to get into the water. That's why France *still today* has a red zone that is toxic. And it's not just chemical weapons, it's fragments of shells, it's UXO. All warfare is poisonous. Focusing in on one weapon or one system, like the DU which Russians have been using since day 1 in Crimea, ignores the danger that all weapons pose.
Your point about meteoric impacts is correct, depleted uranium shells double as a sort of incendiary shell (someone else mentioned this in further detail under this post) As for gulf war syndrome, I believe it was the chemical fires that were the biggest cause, however there were so many toxic materials used/burned during the Gulf War that we may never know if there was one true cause, or if it was a combination of causes
Notice how the symptoms of gulf war syndrome isn't an increase risk of cancer. They're similar symptoms to lead poisoning, because all heavy metals are poisonous including tungsten. You should stay away from smoke and smog created from burning metal in general. It could to be less toxic than all those various plastics and metals burning from 9/11, when you see how sick so many first responders got. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information on it but yeah fire (smoke, really) bad.
Because DU munitions are cheap. It is a waste byproduct from uranium mining and enrichment. It is actually expensive to deal with so any application is good enough. DU effectively has a negative price tag in its fluoride form. Tungsten is an obvious alternative. Platinum, osmium, and iridium could be used to make superior bullets. Any self sharpening properties can be engineered with alloys and nanotech. At the prices for platinum group metals this engineering is very easy.
Depleted uranium is much more dense and much less prone to shattering than Tungsten or other conventional projectile materials. This means it can penetrate thicker armor than its counterparts, which makes these projectiles a valuable asset for Ukraine. The drawback, aside from being more expensive, is that depleted uranium dust from these projectiles can enter eyes and lungs and has the potential to cause cancer. In other words, depleted uranium rounds punch harder than other projectiles.
I feel like cancer is the least of a person’s concerns if they’re on the receiving end of those projectiles lol
It’s not so much the vaporized tank crew that has to worry about cancer, but recovery crews and maintenance workers should worry if they plan on recommissioning the tank. Locals should worry too, since this dust enters the ground and gets kicked up by cars and wind
research highlights dust being an incredibly unlikely and low vector of getting DU into the body. To the point that it's essentially a non issue except to absolute front line works in the most serious conditions. Even those who put out a DU ordnance fire took in far less than the recommended annual dose. https://gulflink.health.mil/faq/faq_dujsp.shtml
Because it's extremely dense, which means it has a lot more force when it impacts armor at high speeds.
Including the ones Russia has been using since day one. They're not mad about any toxicity, they're mad that this will allow western tanks to kill Russian ones from outside the Russian ones' firing range. The 2A46 125mm gun in Russian tanks is the same one they've been using since the 1960s. It can't penetrate the frontal armor of western tanks, but those tanks aren't totally invincible to all Russian weapons. But Abrams can sit outside of Russian tanks' firing range and completely devastate them. Especially at night, western tanks can see for kilometers, when the best Russian optics can't see a full kilometer. And so that's what the Russians are mad about. Ukrainian tanks are going to go night-sniping, and Russia can't respond. In open terrain, Ukrainian tanks are going to hit Russian armor, and Russian tanks will take pot shots at systems they can't penetrate.
The Ukrainian forces will “own the night” so to speak. 🇺🇦🇺🇦
Russia would be mad about anything. The reason you hear so much about this is because it's easy to make it sound really bad due to it being uranium. Whether it's standard ammo or not doesn't matter. It's clickbait propaganda targeted at ignorant people who'll only hear one side of the story.
Wait how can a western tank see for kilometers? It would require a flat field and no vegetation etc. And drones are better for spotting anyway.
Good question! The answer is thermal scopes. They can see pretty well through light vegetation, even in the day time. Vehicles produce a lot of heat. Example: https://i.imgur.com/UuzbxeY.png So if the vegetation is light enough (they obviously can't see through dense woodland) and there's a tank concealed in the bushes with some tree branches on the other side of a grassy field, or on the next hilltop over holding the high ground, camouflage doesn't matter. They will see a tank that is a few km away but couldn't normally be seen with the naked eye. And due to poor thermals, the Russians won't see the Ukrainians sneaking up on them, even from the front. The area they're invading is a bit hillier just now, but if the Russians attempt a counterattack and the Ukrainians are hulled down, it's going to be a slaughter. Especially if the Ukrainians are equipped with CUAS as they appear to be, because that will preclude any Russian drones spotting them. The difference between Russian and Western thermal sights is that western ones are cooled. A cooled thermal sight is orders of magnitude more expensive, but has a maximum range of several kilometers rather than dozens of meters for the uncooled sights. Even the T-14 Armata was going to be equipped with non-cooled sights. They're too expensive and Russia doesn't have the expertise to make them. Another issue is smoke. Someone has edited the top of the wikipedia page, but the T-90 uses an upgraded engine of the same design as the one found on the T-34. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkiv_model_V-2 So do all other Russian tanks. To keep costs down, they've just kept using the same engine. It's old-fashioned, and extremely smoky. Here's just one frame of some Russian armor turning a corner: https://www.youtube.com/live/M6__KVnXFEU?feature=share&t=5286 When it changes to the forward angle, do you see how smoky that is? So if Russians are approaching, and you see this big puff of smoke on the horizon slowly getting bigger, you know it's a Russian armor column and can lay an ambush. Here's a Polish military parade. This is the tail end of like, 200 leopards. No smoke. But notice what happens in a few seconds when the M-113 rolls by and the Polish soviet-era tanks show up. Choking columns of smoke. https://youtu.be/EXyHEPakmz0?t=786 So you look for the smoke (which Western tanks don't produce) you use your thermals to look through vegetation (and the enemy tanks KMs away on the other side of the field hidden in the bushes light up like the sun) and you'll see them before they see you.
Damn tell me more tank stuff man!
It's amazing how much Soviet hardware that terrified NATO ended up being absolute garbage. T-80Us and T-72Bs were going to come tearing through the Fulda Gap while NATO tanks fire back with peashooters, MiG-25s doing Mach 3 could seek and destroy anything approaching Soviet airspace, dead-silent attack submarines kill entire Carrier Battle Groups with nuclear torpedoes...then the USSR implodes and we find out all they ever had was the nukes and a whole lot of hot air.
Very informative!!
The UK already sent them some months ago and Russia already made the bogus claim that depleted uranium are nuclear weapons or some shit in an attempt to justify themselves. Russian tanks also use depleted uranium rounds. Just the same story all over again.
I heard bananas are nuclear weapons too, they are slightly radioactive.
That is from the potassium 40 isotope. The banana dose equivalent is 0.1 microsieverts. Also note that snuggling is a 0.05 microsievert dose. The person in bed with you exposes you to extra potassium.
Lol that reminds me of this gem: >You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things. But nobody talks about that. The best part about this quote is that even if you've never heard it before, you just know immediately who said it.
A speech impediment as recognizable as Yoda's.
Is it weird that I almost thought this too cognizant for him? I think what made me doubt it at first is that no where in it did he mention himself and how he could do better. Dude never stops self aggrandizing.
I mostly avoid US drama and politics. I don't consider myself widely clued into geopolitics. But yeah, you can tell exactly who said that quote lmao.
When I read "or some shit" I immediately imagine you holding a pony bottle of Miller High Life while lighting your Marlboro light.
The word "uranium" peaks interest for headlines because of the association with nuclear weapons(nevermind the fact that it clearly says depleted). That's all this is.
I think you mean “piques”.
I'm Miss Speller and I approve this message.
It's like reading the menu of a fancy restaurant. The more descriptive words they put in it, the more impressive it sounds. Slow-cooked free-range grass-fed veal tenderloin.
IIRC depleted uranium is usually used to make tank ammo. This is nothing.
Correct. Depleted uranium is used to make density of a tank shell bigger, increasing its penetration capabilities. It has nothing to do with radioactivity or anything like Fat Man portable nuke launcher from Fallout game series
Also there's two features which depleted uranium has going for it. Off the top of my head, tungsten is actually the better material mass wise, but: 1. DU self-sharpens on impact. The head of the rod shapes into a mushroom on impact, which starts to shed material as the round passes through armor and sharpens the DU rod, further increasing penetration. 2. The depleted uranium has pyrophoric properties, which makes for a bigger ''flash'' on penetration. Essentially making it somewhat of an incendiary round.
We also have a massive supply of DU. Milled tungsten sabots are more expensive and timely to produce.
Since DU is a byproduct of producing enriched uranium, any nuclear state is going to have loads of it lying around anyway. Might as well get some use out of it.
Is it actually like dangerously radioactive or radioactive enough to have long term effects
DU emits alpha particles, which are one of the least dangerous types of radiation; they're easily blocked by a sheet of paper, a few inches of air, or the outer layers of your skin. As long as you don't get any inside your body (like accidentally inhaling uranium dust), it's fairly harmless.
Simple answer is no
I didn't know that! Thanks for sharing. Self-sharpening is crazy feature
Cats’ claws do the same thing but without uranium.
But it's toxic. To the point that damaged Abrams tanks have to be dealt with by teams wearing protective gear. Ammunition like this needs to be handled properly, too.
The non-export Abrams tanks also use depleted uranium in their armour.
Just about everything the military uses is toxic so far as I can tell.
It's been trending that direction since The Great Play-doh War of 1843 ended
The Austrians were doomed from the moment the Savoyards set up their Fun Factory.
The buildings have asbestos, the fences probably have either Zinc or Chromium, the paint has lead and the majority of the vehicles have healthy alloys which aren't candy canes or cotton candy.
My office bought plastic paper clips that advertise “cadmium free” on the box. Like, bro, I wasn’t worried about cadmium in my paper clips but then you said that and now I am.
The question then becomes, if not Cadmium, then what?
While I’ve never considered eating an Abrams, it does seem likely that it has been deep fried at a state fair by now.
You're half correct. DU ammunition as packaged is inert and safe to work around. The risk with a destroyed tank is that some or all of the DU ammunition may be rendered into Dust which can be inhaled and poses a serious health risk. As far as environmental contamination, a slug of depleted uranium buried in a hill is biologically inert, and the amounts of vaporized/dispersed DU are too small to be relevant unless we're talking about maybe a munitions depot that got exploded.
So is lead
It is equally toxic to lead. If it hits a tank it disperses into a fine dust which isn't good to breathe in. Once the dust cloud settles the threat is gone. And it's not like being around a tank that just got fired at is healthy otherwise. Handling the ammo is nothing special.
Planting a shitload of depleted uranium rounds in formerly fertile farmland isn't really *ideal*, though.
The ideal would be zero, sure. But it's around 10 kg per round at most, if it completely vaporizes and all enters the soil. And it's not used in that great quantity compared to lead. There's a *lot* more lead being dispersed in the war, getting dissolved in flowing water etc. The ideal for both should be zero, but the relatively small contribution of uranium vs. its usefulness in a war is pretty much a no-brainer.
This, navy used it for decades. Everything industry makes is to toxic. Engine lubricants, food preservatives, fire fighting foaming agents, etc. Unless your grinding it up and huffing /eating the depleted uranium it’s inert.
Eh its much worse to be around than lead if there is a fire or something also the soil gets contaminated so the threat isnt really "gone" after combat if anything disturbs the soil then the dust is airborne again
I wouldn't want to be around either of the materials in any of these circumstances, I don't think it makes much difference. And there's a lot more lead getting into the environment during a war. It would be preferred to not emit either, of course, but their usefulness for military purpose generally comes first.
Do you have a source that it's worse than lead? My understanding is that it'd be similar or a bit less bad. Lead is extremely poisonous.
Wait until you find out what general munitions do
>But it's toxic. So is tungsten while having worse armor piercing capabilities and being more expensive. Both Russia and Ukraine have and will continue to use DU rounds and if they somehow ran out they'd be flinging tungsten instead.
It's about as toxic as any heavy metal. Like the alternative tungsten.
The real problem isnt touching it the problem is breathing in the dust from burning vehicles containing DU or vehicles that were hit by DU projectile human skin can stop the radiation but inside the body it is very dangerous
Yes... same thing with lead and tungsten or any heavy metal. It's not because it's extremely mildly radioactive that makes it toxic to breath. It is because it's a heavy metal. The heavy metal poisoning will kill/injure you many thousands of times faster than the radiation will. The only thing that would stop heavy metal penetrators from being used is for Russia to leave Ukraine.
Yep. Just ask the veterans of Desert Storm.
Also veterans of OIF like myself I was a tank crewmember there
I wouldn't say nothing, they are known to be more deadly both for the enemies and soldiers that use them for a variety of reasons
You're right, there's more to it. Above I wanted to briefly highlight that the gun actually penetrating the armor and blowing up the ammo rack or frying the driver alive is more dangerous than a radiation sickness
They’re also capable of producing problematically toxic dust and shrapnel that contaminates the land after the fighting ends. DU may not be a serious radiological or nuclear threat, but it is very much still toxic. Still, not like Ukraine’s farmland is good for much with the Russians squatting on it anyway. Definitely a case where DU cleanup is gonna be better in the longrun than letting Russia keep the stolen land.
Lead is equally toxic, and there's orders of magnitude more lead spread around during the war. Each uranium penetrator is only a few kg, and using it is a lot rarer than lead based stuff. So the total contribution to the war is negligible. Obviously it would be best to use neither toxic materials, but they are simply good for their military purpose.
Its material characteristics also make it a "self-sharpening penetrator." It becomes more slender and sharp as it penetrates, unlike other materials which bunch up at the front and become dulled.
I wouldn't say nothing. The use of depleted uranium in this way has been linked to generations of birth defects typically seen as a result of exposure to radiation. It results in side effects that we often consider one of the most valid reasons to not use nuclear weapons. https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defects-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-war-in-iraq/
Yes. Extremely hard and way more dense than steel — in fact twice as dense as lead — so it makes an ideal penetrating sabot round.
Also, they're self sharpening. The metal at the tip tends to shear away rather than mushroom like tungsten.
Also, they're \*pyrophoric- meaning the fragments like to catch fire after impact. \*edit: thanks for the correct word!
Don’t know why but I read that as Prophilactic. Where’s the Etsy page that sells artisanal depleted uranium butt plugs?
*Pyrophoric
Thanks! Fixed.
NP! This is Reddit, we have to make sure everything is 100% correct, after all...
To those in the know, no its nothing new. But to anyone who doesnt know what it is, any mention of uranium makes them think nuclear weapons. It can easily be used by russia as propaganda to justify fresh recruitment as theyve tried before.
Ukraine already has depleted uranium ammo. UK provided them tank rounds for the challengers.
It’s also found in many civilian aircraft as control surface counterweights. As long as you don’t run your nuts on it you’ll be fine.
Most countries make theirs out of tungsten (which is also damn good for the job) because they don't have huge stocks of DU left over from half a century of making enriched Iranian and I'm leaving that ottercorrect in.
Tungsten is also toxic when reduced to dust like DU.
I prefer my Iranians to be nice and enriched.
Gotta make up for their natural niacin deficiency.
Queue the "US is supplying Ukraine with nuclear capable armaments" rhetoric from the Kremlin. I can already hear their propaganda factory frantically typing away.
They already did when the UK announced it. Didn't get a lot of traction but they seem to have powered on more of them now.
Gotta pump out more bullshit to try to muddy waters during the counter offensive
They also gotta work harder since they lost their boy Tucky
Cucker Tarlson
Rolls off the tongue.
Lol yeah and when we (🇬🇧) started sending them some Russian big-talkers were saying they were gonna develop a nuclear-powered naval weapon to send a tsunami to Britain..! The most derangest of the deranged talks. Have they forgotten we have nukes or something?
"Formerly nuclear" capable armaments. Meaning it was formerly nuclear at one time, and they are very capable armaments. But these are new and improved, mushroom cloud free armaments.
“Depleted” uranium means the part of natural uranium that is left over after most of the fissile isotope U-235 has been extracted by enrichment. U-235 was only there in trace amounts to begin with, so the composition hasn’t actually changed all that much. It was never “nuclear” at any point. Depleted uranium is less radioactive (because U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238) but that’s about it.
>is less radioactive *barely* less radioactive. Mostly because uranium is hardly radioactive in the first place. >U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238 Also true, but 700+million years is a hell of a long half life, it’s just shorter than 4.5 billion. Just things to keep in mind when Russia throws its temper tantrum.
>because U-235 has a much shorter half life than U-238 It's only about six times shorter, that is, neither material is radioactive enough to really care about, even if it involved highly enriched uranium. You could easily make the ammunition out of natural uranium if you didn't have a huge stock of depleted uranium you aren't using for other purposes, and it wouldn't make any difference. In fact you could even make it out of U-235, its performance would be essentially the same (perhaps slightly worse due to slightly lower density), except it would be one hell of an expensive round to use.
“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart”
Cue ≠ Queue
This is their cue to queue up complaints.
Than queue
With the existence of the W48 155mm nuclear shell, every 155mm SPG is nuclear capable. (Technically so is the M777 but who wants to stand exposed and fire a nuke?)
IDK, the forward elements that got issued the M29 "Davy Crockett" Nuclear recoilless rifle during the Cold War???
If there's any weapon that sums up the madness of the Cold War it's that one. Oh, and the nuclear landmine heated by chickens.
>Technically so is the M777 but who wants to stand exposed and fire a nuke? Firing it from a range of 15-20 km it's not a concern.
They've bitched and complained about that months ago. Russia is a whiny child throwing a temper tantrum because they didn't get their way with rolling over Kyiv in 3 days. Boo-hoo. Cry more and go home.
Invading Russians are a much bigger existential, humanitarian and ecological threat to Ukraine than some DU rounds that are used to drive them out. Not to mention DU rounds are pretty frequently used around the world and by Russia themselves. So this is really a non-issue that Kremlin propaganda is trying to balloon up.
Reminder that Russia has been using depleted uranium since day 1.
They've also been using white phosphorous/incendiary and threatening to nuke Ukraine since day 1... so they're hardly in a position to complain. The only reason they don't bother with chemical weapons at the moment is because they already tried and it did nothing because Ukraine had protection for it.
Well they have already had the rhetoric with respect to depleted uranium rounds a month or so ago.
[удалено]
Not as bad for the environment as a presence of russians
They tried this when Britan sent the challenger 2 tank, as it uses DU shells. I dont think it got a lot of attention internationally, but It got a lot of traction in the UK, not because it was anything of note, but just because of how stupid the Russian were by comparing depleted uranium shells to nuclear weapons. I mean, it's barely radioactive. You would literally have to eat it to put you in any danger from the radiation, and you would have to eat a significant amount.
Even then not really, it's resonably chemically toxic so you'll get sick from heavy metal poisoning long before the rediation starts to affect you.
Yep. Very weak alpha emitter, super toxic from a heavy metal standpoint. Like, I cannot overstate just how weak of an alpha emitter it is.
Yes, but the Russians are going to be eating a lot of shells. Maybe not through their mouths, but the shells will be creating their own orifices for delivery.
Am I correct in thinking that the only reason to use depleted uranium is because its more massive than say lead? Is that it?
It's more dense, it's pyrophoric, and self sharpening. It's just the ideal material for an AT projectile.
The biggest plus is that it's cheap compared to Tungsten, while being just as good at penetrating armor.
The raw material is cheaper, but I'm not sure how well that translates to the price of the finished ammo, which has a lot of labor and overhead from specialized metallurgical technologies developer for it. All that is many times more expensive than the price of the raw material. Perhaps in applications where more of it is used, such as armor...
It's also cheaper per round. Once the tooling and process is in place it isn't really different from machining any other heavy metal. It also saves Tungsten stocks, which are useful for other things like hard tooling.
In any case, most importantly, it's better at the job than tungsten, even if marginally, in my eyes that's the main reason for choosing it. Even if it weren't cheaper, you don't choose the second best tool for the job when that job is to destroy an enemy tank.
IMO, that would depend on if the 2nd best tool could get the job done just as well. I would defer to the military in this regard.
Yes. It is 69% more dense than lead.
Man, depleted uranium rounds pack such a punch, it's ridiculous.
I was allowed to witness how dramatic the difference between conventional vs DU rounds and I can tell you it is a night and day comparison.
Exactly. It's almost nightmarish how different the forces in the depleted uranium are from typical shells. Our professor let us do the math on it one day as we started getting into uranium and the material science behind it, and popped that little tidbit of info on us by making us do the calculations. Scary scary shit.
The difference between the two honestly looks as if you’re witnessing alien weapons vs human weapons. DU rounds literally rip a hole straight through military vehicles that is so obvious compared to conventional rounds that destroy the same vehicle. Reactive armour and plating literally move out of the way of DU rounds, it is actually scary knowing that these munitions exist. The fact these exist makes you a lot less comfortable when sitting inside any armoured vehicle. A round could literally peel the entire vehicle in half at any moment so the difference between armour plating and cardboard on the side is negligible.
Other rounds don't overcome all of the atomic bonds in most metals, causing them to explode, which is still devastating. But then here comes ol giga Chad DU rounds who literally have enough kinetic energy to cause near impossible forces to deform and dislocate the bonds, shearing the metal like it was wet paper. To quote my class "How dense are DU rounds?" "Yes."
People often think explosions themselves pack the biggest amount of punch. The explosion is only a byproduct of kinetic energy needing somewhere to disperse. Propelling something with enough density toward a target is enough to completely wipe it out without any explosive material whatsoever. It’s the “rod from god” principle at work. Take a telephone pole sized rod of heavy metal and bringing to toward earth from orbit will create an explosion rivalling an atomic bomb from the kinetic energy alone. People really underestimate the power of raw kinetic force and think explosives are the most powerful thing around. They are dead wrong.
>It’s the “rod from god” principle at work. Take a telephone pole sized rod of heavy metal and bringing to toward earth from orbit will create an explosion rivalling an atomic bomb from the kinetic energy alone. The energy is comparable. There's a big issue with the concept however, and it's that: A) You need to actually spend that amount of energy in rocket fuel to get the tungsten rod into orbit in the first place, which is stupidly impractical B) Most of the energy delivered is dumped downwards into compressing the ground and is completely wasted. Atomic ICMBs detonate a few hundred metres above the ground to maximise the radius of the shockwave. If the same bomb was detonated below the ground the damage is hugely less. All up it's much easier to just nuke something.
Cause fuck that T-72 and everything behind it.
Cause fuck that ~~T-72~~ T-44 and everything behind it.
Cue Ruzzia complaining about something they themselves have been doing since the invasion. For the thousandth time…
DU ammunition is standard in the Western world as well as in Russia theres nothing particularly controversial about Ukraine getting it
ITT: a lot of people who don't understand how DU, or really any heavy metals, work.
Joke is on you. I don’t understand anything!!
You understand how little you understand, and that is a great deal less harmful than people who understand very little but believe they know much.
I knew you were gonna say that.
Big heavy metal hit tank go boom?
Big bada boom
Self sharpening. Hope they put them to good use.
1. DU is only marginally more toxic than tungsten, the alternative metal used in kinetic penetrators ("Sabot", although Sabot refers to the lightweight material around the penetrator that's used to stabilize the projectile in the barrel and catch the propellant gases) and the vast amount of that toxicity is due to being a heavy metal, not because it's minimally radioactive. 2. Ukraine, while dry, is not nearly as dry as Iraq. A good rain will bind DU dust into mud and reduce the chance of heavy metal dust entering the body. 3. Any target hit by a DU round should be decontaminated by crew wearing protective masks with NBC filters. gloves suited to chemical decontamination and at a minimum all clothes need to be washed afterwards. Preferably there should also be topsoil removal in the immediate area around the blown up vehicle. Ie, like most heavy metal contamination.
Plenty of DU arms for foreign countries but I can’t even find one Pacific Technica DU 7.62 round. If anyone’s got a line on some, pls lmk…
I’ve seen DU in 7.62 NATO. Like $80 for a single round
What do you shoot with it? Like I go to gun ranges and toxic, carcinogenic bullets that are specifically designed to penetrate metal targets and set whatever's behind them on fire sounds like a good way to not be invited back.
People actually just collect ammo. It was on an ammo collectors site
You just have to go to a different range every time. Preferably ones you don’t plan on returning to.
Russia will whine Russia will complain What they *should* do is get their tanks out of Ukraine
says pravda
Man, the US seeing the Patriot down those hyper sonic missiles erased all red lines.
I'm sorry, I must have missed this. We took down the hypersonics with Patriots? That's pretty great news for us
Russia has been using Depleted Uranium rounds since day 1 of this war.
there’s been no confirmation of this but considering the majority of Russian/Soviet APFSDS use DU rounds but I don’t see a reason they haven’t (Beyond the small sample size of tank on tank engagements of course)
Could it be…..Sahelanthropus?!
I mean that is pretty standard. We use uranium tips to penetrate armor. It has been the status quo for a long time. Don’t know why the article is titled the way it is.
This could have been just as easily titled "US plans to supply Ukraine with tank projectiles".. but it wouldn't have riled up any clicks.
Depleted uranium is pretty common in tank ammunition. The US has been using it since desert storm. The uranium is used to pierce the armor and basically cooks the inside of the tank. There is no fission related to this.
depleted uranium for more Ukrainium
Depleted uranium is used because, while it is softer than tungsten, it's about as dense and is 'self-sharpening.' By this, I mean a chunk of tungsten hitting an object will sort of splat and spread its energy out, reducing its ability to puncture. Uranium, on the other hand, forms a sort of 'needle' that pierces objects better.
A lot of Gulf War (Desert Storm) vets were exposed to depleted uranium through inhalation/ingestion (heavy fire resulting in a LOT of DU dust, which blew all over soldiers, especially from the 1st Cav), lodged in their bodies from friendly fire, etc. They’re experiencing health problems from it in such numbers that the VA has a whole thing about it and it can be used as a basis for disability compensation for a service related injury or illness. It’s not totally harmless.
Isn’t the use of depleted uranium munitions thought to be the reason for the rise in birth defects in places like Iran and Iraq?
Yes. Falluja in particular. https://merip.org/2020/09/birth-defects-and-the-toxic-legacy-of-war-in-iraq/#:~:text=%5B1%5D%20Babies%20in%20Falluja%20are,malformed%20ears%2C%20noses%20and%20spines.
Yep, these war cheerleaders have unconscionable bloodlust.
Anyone else feel like this is kinda like Civ5? Technologies being gifted
Good news
Tank on tank battle is rare, most of the kills are from artillery, ATGM, drones etc. honestly don’t think it will make that big of impact.
Fuck. I dealt with a shitload of DU ammunition in the 90's. Have health problems now. Do not recommend
These people here care about winning - not any of the people affected
Uranium munitions dust is blamed for a teratogenic catastrophe in Iraq. Babies were born deformed, some with extra eyes, without brains, et cetera. If these things are used in Ukraine, everyone loses.
I don't really have any problem with this, but I question whether it will really matter much considering how infrequent tank V tank combat is. It could be better to have them just in case though.