The Army Is 3D Printing Warheads 140
Jason Koebler writes: In its latest bid to kill more people, more efficiently, and at less cost, the army is planning to print warhead components, according to the latest issue of Army Technology (PDF). "3D printing of warheads will allow us to have better design control and utilize geometries and patterns that previously could not be produced or manufactured," James Zunino, a researcher at the Armament Research, Engineering and Design Center said. "Warheads could be designed to meet specific mission requirements whether it is to improve safety to meet an Insensitive Munitions requirement, or it could have tailorable effects, better control, and be scalable to achieve desired lethality."
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How about ones that don't explode?
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
How about ones that don't explode?
Oddly enough, training shells were used by desperate gunners during the battle of Jutland. The normal shells weren't penetrating the armour of the German ships, but the concrete filled training shells were punching right through, dealing surprisingly heavy damage.
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It's not odd, they're known as "Kinetic Energy Weapons". In Iraq the US dropped concrete bombs on military equipment near civilian populations (AA gun battery located in a neighborhood, for example). Equipment is destroyed, but an explosion doesn't take out the surrounding homes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy_penetrator
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/07/world/us-wields-defter-weapon-against-iraq-concrete-bomb.html
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The normal shells weren't penetrating the armour of the German ships, but the concrete filled training shells were punching right through, dealing surprisingly heavy damage.
That's because in their training the Germans were only exposed to abstract shells.
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Oh poppycock. It wasn't until well after the battle from second hand observations of the Germans boasting about how crappy the British shells were that it was known how bad they truly were. And if you believe during even a lengthy battle as this that it was determined that somehow Xlbs of concrete rather than Xlbs of AP shell would be better I've a bridge to sell you.
I'm not saying that. What I am saying is "gunners were seeing their shells were hitting but not doing anything, so they thought something along the lines of "Fuck it, lets use the concrete ones instead, they couldn't be any more useless than the normal ones!" and found out that they were rather more effective.
In a stand up fight, "smashing through armour with something that shouldn't be able to do that" beats "barely scratching armour with something that is supposed to get through" any day.
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Yes, safer would be more accurate to reach an intended target. Perhaps" farther" would be a consideration as well. Greater damage upon impact would be a nice goal of efficiency, as well.
I wonder if there are some designs for printing bullets to reload in MY guns, based on this concept. That would be awesome.
Perhaps dimpling them like a golf ball, or adding an explosive payload inside....
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Democracy bombs should have been outlawed in Geneva. What a horrible thing to do to another country! It's like giving others venereal warts on purpose.
There needs to be a vaccine for democrazy.
GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:2)
Cannot be used for weapon manufacturing or mass surveillance... or anything defined as 'evil' by a FSF committee.
I don't want to be part of the evil masterplans of those basards.
Currently 'patent protection' is defined as evil. But I think most of us agree there are more fundamental evil for which our software can be used...
Wake up RMS!
Re:GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:5, Insightful)
This comes from someone who just does not understand that without weapons manufacture most of the world would be speaking German or Russian by now.
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This comes from someone who just does not understand that without weapons manufacture most of the world would be speaking German or Russian by now.
As opposed to the utopia of freedom and joy we have now?
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Compared to that it is.
Re:GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most wars are started when one group of greedy bastards wants to take over from another group of greedy bastards. These greedy bastards (generally politicians and their corporate sponsors) are the "elite" of societies. Since they control the wealth, they have the most to gain (or lose) by war. Everyone else is just cannon fodder and will end up worse off after the war regardless of who wins. There are a few interesting probes of this rule. I just finished reading George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" which is an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. Apparently, the faction Orwell was fighting for (apparently by chance), POUM, did try to establish an egalitarian workers society. However, they were sold out by the Russian Communists and other factions.
I think it's really difficult (?impossible) to establish a truly egalitarian society anywhere which would actually improve the condition of the peons. The usual result in just about every political system is that you end up with a few greedy bastards in charge fighting the greedy bastards next door.
I'm not sure it would make much difference to be speaking German or Russian or Japanese or Chinese or have to profess belief in a different god. If you survived the war, you will still have the same shitty job living hand to mouth... just a different master.
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If you survived the war, you will still have the same shitty job living hand to mouth... just a different master.
It depends on the "master"; that can make a huge difference. At the end of WW2, Western Europe got the U.S. as it's "master", who paid upwards of $13 billion (a staggering amount of foreign aid at the time) to rebuild, self-rule, and prosperity. Eastern Europe got shit on by the Soviet Union for about the next 50 years.
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I'm not sure it would make much difference to be speaking German or Russian or Japanese or Chinese or have to profess belief in a different god. If you survived the war, you will still have the same shitty job living hand to mouth... just a different master.
I am an American. Granted, the chains of slavery are heavy, but the quality of the slavery is still different. I have more intellectual freedom in America than I would anywhere else in the world. Even that limited subset of freedom is imperfect but it is better than nothing.
The fight for freedom must continue until no ultimate authority is necessary but that is not a reason to ignore the differing qualities of freedom that are possible. While purity of freedom is desired, impure freedom should not be tossed
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I agree that we should all strive for more freedom and that, of course, some societies are more free than others. The more egalitarian a society, the less "authority" is needed.
My comment was more about the futility of getting into a war and being manipulated to support wars. Post WWII, I can't think of a war that was started by the US or joined by the US that benefited its citizens. There have certainly been great costs in lives, morbidity and dollars as well as loss of freedom. The war on terror has exact
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I don't know - have you been whisked away to a detention camp where you'll be starved, tortured, and then murdered for posting this anti-government rhetoric?
No?
Then yeah, as opposed to the utopia of freedom and joy we have now.
Things can be "bad" without being "the worst ever," you roaring fuck-whistle.
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I don't know - have you been whisked away to a detention camp where you'll be starved, tortured, and then murdered for posting this anti-government rhetoric?
No, but I knew people who were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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As opposed to the utopia of freedom and joy we have now?
You're welcome to GTFO to another country and find out what oppression really feels like, my dear pampered child.
BRAAP! AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM ALERT
Guantanamo Bay is one of the most brutal prisons in the world, along with the CIA's black sites. A lot of the prisoners would rather commit suicide, but they're not allowed to do that.
During the Cold War, the Communists used to say, "Well, what about your Negroes in the South?" They were right. Millions of black people were living under oppression as bad as any other country. Try to vote -- get killed. Kill a Negro -- go free. In fact, you can still kill a Negro and go fr
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I guess that's a valid debate.
And it will still be possible to make them without our software... I just don't want to have helped them!
We make software because of that warm fuzzy feeling. Not to know that it contributes to killing people (from whatever country).
Re:GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't want to have helped them!
But you have no problem basking in the freedom provided by those who use them.
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Certain freedoms have to be limited to protect our interests and preserve our own freedoms and even our privacy.
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There has never been a warhead that "provided" any freedom, not in my lifetime, and not in yours.
And Dwight Eisenhower was president when I was born.
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1) You're very wrong. I can't believe you've never heard the term deterrence, but it's certainly a real thing.
2) GP poster didn't say "the warheads provided freedom" - he said the people using the warheads provide the freedom.
2a) He's right.
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There has never been a warhead that "provided" any freedom, not in my lifetime, and not in yours.
Interesting consideration: as you know, the founders feared the outcome of having a standing army, and we aren't supposed to have one. Thanks to our nuclear warheads, we could disband our army and still have an effective deterrent against nuclear attack or invasion. In this (sadly far-fetched) scenario, the existence of warheads that enabled the safe disbanding of the army would implicitly "provide" freedom.
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Have you ever heard of deterrence? Apparently not.
Once we and the Soviets had enough warheads to destroy each other several times over, we didn't need additional deterrence. But we just kept building them.
We reached a point where the risks of an accidental war were greater than the risks of whatever we were deterring.
Building warheads for the military was very profitable. As Dwight Eisenhower said, these things take on a life of their own.
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But you have no problem basking in the freedom provided by those who use them.
There's a lot implicit in that sentence.
Which freedom is "provided" by our military.
Which freedom specifically are we all basking in?
What freedom has been preserved or provided by invading Iraq or Afghanistan?
Post 9/11 laws have done more to take away our freedoms than anything the military has done to recover or preserve them.
Is freedom from terrorist attacks more important than freedom from warrantless wiretaps, loss of due process (hello terrorist watch list), freedom from enhanced interrogation, Nationa
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Not quite. Has the US exterminated 8 million Jews or 5 million Ukrainians? Is Europe Democratic or Communist? Does Kuwait, Israel, South Korea and Taiwan still exist? Is Tunisia still controlled by Qaddafi? You are very self centered if you only look at the US.
Most of the things you state do not effect the average person.
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The 3 million people that we killed in Vietnam, the 500,000 people we killed in the Iraq war, and the others killed in our miscellaneous wars and proxy wars like the ones in Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Haiti, didn't give me any freedom. Quite the opposite.
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One could limit the scope of 'evil' to whatever I decide is evil today.
FTFY.
Free software means free. Exactly how many riders and amendments to FOSS licenses do we want to have? "Cannot be used by anyone in Canada." "Cannot be used to make ugly things." "Cannot be used on the Sabbath."
"We make software because of that warm fuzzy feeling.
"We" make software for any number of reasons, and "we" give up the right to tell people how they have to use it when we make it free. And, if I recall correctly, "we" explicitly tell people that what they make with our software is not covered by the license. I.e., code you compile with gcc doe
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For that reason we ask people to release the changes to the code back to our collection of software which provides more freedom.
While certain companies are concerned about competitors getting to see their code, the disadvantages are much less important than the advantages of being able to stand on the shoulders of the giants in the opensource community.
We limit the freedom of people who want to use our cod
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We make software for a reason.
"We" make software for many reasons.
Not to just give it away for free as in beer. But to provide freedom.
I was using "free" as in "freedom". How is it "freedom" if you start putting restrictions on who can use the software and for what purposes? And who decides what those disallowed purposes are? The programmer or someone else? Suppose I'm a programmer who doesn't like abortions. Can I say "you can use free software unless you are an abortion clinic" because I've got some patches in some free software packages?
Does "free software" truly represent free software if there ar
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Your tax and democratic laws are the foundation of NSA-state, not the tools, software, guns or hammers used.
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One could limit the scope of 'evil' to weapons of mass destruction.
I guess that's a valid debate.
And it will still be possible to make them without our software...
I just don't want to have helped them!
We make software because of that warm fuzzy feeling. Not to know that it contributes to killing people (from whatever country).
I know how you feel. I was studying engineering in the 1960s.
A lot of us came to the conclusion that when we graduated, our jobs would be in the military-industrial complex, designing weapons to kill people, and not for good ends. My roommate and I both changed our major. He founded the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.
We and the Soviets had missiles with hydrogen bombs targeting each other which were enough to blow up the world. Finally the weapons designers and other scientists and engi
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Do you really think Germany or Russia would honour your GPL?
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Just as the current license is very good respected, and for certain embedded applications the GPLv3 is avoided, they would certainly not want to risk any software license violation.
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Well that is in fact what they do, but to enemies. It is ok to murder some rebels in one country, while you must over protect people in another one, such hypocrisy - but either way if you are the "target" they will not give any shit about any silly laws.
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Or China? Or the US?
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Ni!
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And I hope it will stay that way.
At least in my country most of the intelligent Linux developers don't want to work for the weapons manufacturer. So they build less good soft/hardware as they could have otherwise.
Just like good developers don't want to work for Microsoft, because who wants to be associated with that?
The key thing is that I don't want to personally decide what is 'evil' and what is not.
Bu
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This comes from someone who just does not understand that without weapons manufacture most of the world would be speaking German or Russian by now.
And without whiskey manufacture, most of the world would be speaking Gaelic by now.
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You probably lost of lot of Americans with that Joke because they don't understand the Irish speak Gaelic.
Re: GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:4, Informative)
The Irish are taught Gaelic, but they by-and-large speak English.
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And yet strangely the two largest language groups are Mandarin and Spanish, the two least successful millitaries of the 20th century.
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And yet strangely the two largest language groups are Mandarin and Spanish, the two least successful millitaries of the 20th century.
However, in 200BC, the Qin (aka Chin) dynasty had quite the army, and in the 16th and early 17th century, Spain had quite the military/navy.
FWIW, much of the geopolitical world as we know it wasn't formed in the 20th century. Much of the current geo-political alignments of the world were formed as a result of the Holy roman empire in the 800's, the exploits of Genghis Khan in the 12th century, and early Spanish explorers (and conquistadors) in the Americas. Of course the weapons they manufactured back the
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And in the 20th century Spain was mostly a ghetto and the rest of the Spanish speaking countries, banana republics were mainly dealing with internal conflict (or US intervention *cough* Guatemala *cough*; all of South America has been peaceful since the Bolivar republic split over 100 years ago; China hasn't had a military victory of note in the last 120 years, which is why I explicitly said 20th century. Thanks for the irrelevant 400-year history lesson, though.
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Which is why I explicitly said 20th century.
...Because the language people speak in various lands around the world was decided by military actions in the 20th century?
Thanks for the irrelevant 400-year history lesson, though.
No, no, thank you for confirming what I was thinking...
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Bespides freedom versus big government problems, the guns are giving people chance to defend from common criminals.
Your girlfriends vs rapist - very little chance in unarmer combat.
Your girlfriends vs robber with illegal gun (strangely criminals tend to ignore law) - no chance.
Your girlfriend with gun vs rapist - is the better situation, I say she ha
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Wow did you misunderstand me. I was trying to say that the OP does not want to help weapons but is fine having them used by others to protect him. I would call that a hypocrite. I am not a gunophobe the OP is.
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Re:GPLv4 - the good public license? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I had to laugh when reading that article:
But the military isn’t just interested in saving lives—more often than not, it takes them.
Really? No shit. The military kills people?
In its latest bid to kill more people, more efficiently, and at less cost
Isn't this what we want all government agencies to strive for? When the military's actual job is to figure out how to kill people and destroy things with maximum effectiveness and efficiency, then we really shouldn't complain when they seem to be doing a good job of it. I'm not exactly sure what this writer thought the military's purpose is, but he seems horrified at the thought of using technology to kill people more efficiently.
So, there we have it. While comparatively small-scale dangers like homebrew plastic guns make headlines, one of the most powerful and deadly organizations in the world is using the same technology to build better weapons of mass destruction on the cheap.
Should the US not develop technologies like this and simply hope no one else does either? People today are so damned sure that we'll never get into another large-scale shooting war. I hope to hell we don't, but if we do, I'd like our side to have the best weapons, and all the better if they're efficient to produce. Even if, in the future, the military is scaled down to paramilitary forces level (small, lean and efficient), wouldn't it be better to outfit them inexpensively rather than spending billions on weapons production? Who the hell would advocate spending more of our budget on rockets and bombs when less expensive devices could be made much cheaper (other than weapons manufacturers, I suppose)? Wouldn't that leave more money to spend on better things?
The author got one thing right. For all it gets wrong (and I'm sure actual military folks could provide plenty of stories), the US military arguably is the most lethal and destructive force the world has ever known. They also don't go off killing random people and blowing things up. Elected civilians are the ones who ultimately decide whether or not to pull the trigger. It's easy enough to demonize the military while conveniently forgetting that they guy you voted for is the one sending them out to kill people, but it's dishonest as hell.
Kill fewer. Carpet bombing would be much easier (Score:2)
>> In its latest bid to kill more people, more efficiently, and at less cost
> Isn't this what we want all government agencies to strive for? When the military's actual job is to figure out how to kill people and destroy things with maximum effectiveness
In WWII the US military wanted to kill more people, more efficiently. They were pretty good at it.
Since then, it seems the challenge has been to find ways to kill the FEWEST possible number of people, while achieving a strategic goal. We tried to wi
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"Germans - we just blew them up." Ignoring, of course, everything leading up to our entry.
beside the point. Had reasons, yes (Score:3)
Sure there are reasons that our methods have changed, of course. That's just not really related to the point I was making. TFS claims that the military is trying to find ways to kill more people, and that's simply the opposite of the truth. They've been working on ways to only blow up a specific room rather than blowing up a building or a city block. Secondly, IF they wanted to kill lots of people, they wouldn't need need to work on methods to do so. They've had the B-52 for 60 years or so. A single
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You are mistaken. The US actually tried to minimize civilian casualties at the cost of greater US casualties. For example the US bombers generally conducted daytime raids so they could better identify targets and do precision bombing.
Don't misunderstand the US intentions during WWII. The theory going into the war was that air power alone could destroy a country's infrastructure and win the war alone. Obviously, that turned out in hindsight to be wildly optimistic, but they did put a lot of additional pressure on industrial production. The idea was to more effectively damage war industries. I don't recall seeing evidence that avoiding civilian casualties was a significant goal. Cities were avoided early in the war simply for fear o
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Isn't this what we want all government agencies to strive for? When the military's actual job is to figure out how to kill people and destroy things with maximum effectiveness and efficiency, then we really shouldn't complain when they seem to be doing a good job of it. I'm not exactly sure what this writer thought the military's purpose is, but he seems horrified at the thought of using technology to kill people more efficiently.
Wrong. According to Clausowitz, the purpose of the military is to implement policy. That was the mistake GWB made in Iraq. He sent the military into Iraq to kill the "bad guys." Outfits like Blackwater went around killing people indiscriminately. Then when the next Americans showed up, they didn't get a good reception.
Guess what? When you kill people, they kill you back.
Now, GWB has basically handed Iraq over to al Qaeda and similar militants. Heckuva job, Bushie.
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And we'd be using chalk on slate as our primary communications mechanism. Not that any of that is a bad thing of course... It's just that the desire to kill people inspires more investments than the desire to make friends.
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"And if we can't have peace, then we'll destroy the people who screwed up the peace..." --Christopher Titus
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Are you quoting this Christopher Titus [wikipedia.org].
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Is there another Christopher Titus out there you think I might be referring to? Fairly unique name, no?
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instead, most of the world's population now speak Mandarin or Hindi :)
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Actually you are incorrect as the top two languages are Mandarin and Spanish. The Mandarin speakers would be speaking Japanese and many of the Spanish would be speaking German. My point was that WW2 would have turned out very differently if the US had not manufactured arms and non-native languages would be imposed by conquerors..
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And if they would use it, at least we could sue them...
My bet is they would not. And that they would have to rely upon outdated crappy software. Or pay a lot more for their software development.
Or just use software with older versions of the GPL only.
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You left out some possibilities:
- Go BSD, which is just as good, or better.
- Legally take the software, rewriting the law if necessary. (Just think of it as a tax.)
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Certainly the BSD license can still be used for such applications, even GPLv3 and GPLv2 licensed programs - in the far fetched assumption that the GPLv4 would become the 'good public license'.
And changing the law to remove clauses out of a software license,... well I think it's highly improbable and very difficult to implement in a law. Yet nothing is impossible. And it would probably lead again to a new softw
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You misunderstand a legal taking, think eminent domain. You don't get to keep property that is condemned by just changing the deed to say "you can't take this."
If the government decided it was essential to take a particular bit of software and it actually cared about doing it legally they could pass a law that says they can do it regardless of what the license says. It wouldn't be that hard of a law to pass if it was really that important.
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But the weapon manufacturers would have to look elsewhere for their software.
And the implications for such a law would go much further than OpenSource software.
It would be valid for any commercially developed software too.
I would be very surprised if the US government would pass a law to contradict the software industry to such an extend!
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The weapons manufacturers could use whatever the government gave them just like construction companies can build a road on taken land.
Why would you be surprised? If the government can take land to build roads, why would software be any different? (Especially when what you are talking about is a licensing term?)
I think you just have some mistaken ideas about power of licenses and government, especially if there is an emergency declared.
I wouldn't worry too much about this though. Linux isn't that special
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I can't help be reminded of this:
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/source-changes/0105/msg01243.html
Log message:
Remove ipf. Darren Reed has interpreted his (old, new, whichever)
licence in a way that makes ipf not free according to the rules we
established over 5 years ago, at www.openbsd.org/goals.html (and those
same basic rules govern the other *BSD projects too). Specifically,
Darren says that modified versions are not permitted. But software
which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (b
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congress will pass a law or the president will issue an executive order allowing military use of OSS whether the license prohibits it or not
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How are they going to define a 'OSS' license?
Don't you think we will find a way around that to create another license not fitting that description and rendering that executive order useless.
No president would issue an executive order if it also hurts the software industry in the same way.
But I guess it's a valid point and something to be taken into consideration when drafting such a GPLv4.
Also don't forget that the GPLv4 goes a lot further than only the US...
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Why you focus on a tool, while
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ummm, yeah, back up and think about it for a minute.
1: Hypothetical situation where the biggest military in the world by orders of magnitude is breaking a "stupid software license" ( their terms ).
2: your answer is "sue", either in US court / foreign court. Which then gets told "state secret blah blah blah" and to talk to the shiny new warhead if there are any problems.
3: You apparently think the biggest military is just gonna roll over because the software says they can't use it....
Premises 2 and 3 are ju
Demented. (Score:3)
Cannot be used for weapon manufacturing or mass surveillance... or anything defined as 'evil' by a FSF committee.
Unpredictable and self-righteous. It would utterly destroy GPLv4 as a viable open source license and the ripple effect would be devastating,
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And how much of an impact do you think that would actually have on the military's ability to do any of this stuff? Hint: it's about the same as the amount of damage a bulldozzer would suffer if it rolled right over you.
or anything defined as 'evil' by a FSF committee.
Trying to define an objective standard of something as subjective as "evil" is bad enough, but asking a committee to do it?!
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There is an upper bound to how much stuff people will tolerate in a license. If you add even one restriction too many, people will stop using the software at all. If possible, people may fork an older version of the software; if not possible, people will switch to something else, or perhaps start their own project with a different license.
For an example from history, look at what happened to XFree86 when they changed the terms of their license [wikipedia.org]. Pretty much overnight, almost everyone stopped using XFree86
Desired lethality? (Score:1)
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Let's say on Monday you are ordered to bomb a large military base. You want a warhead with the largest lethality radius possible- to kill as many enemy soldiers and destroy as much equipment as possible.
On Tuesday you're ordered to bomb a house occupied by an enemy commander, and you notice that it's a block away from a school. You now want a different warhead that contains its destructive force to a much smaller radius and just destroys the target without killing nearby civilians.
If used properly, the co
Re:Desired lethality? (Score:4, Interesting)
You consider someone who bombs people on monday and then again on tuesday not a mass murderer?
"I was only following orders" is not a defence. Most soldiers are probably murderers, unless obviously, they haven't killed someone.
Your point is that people following orders aren't murderers, well that's where we disagree. You kill someone, you are a murderer. A moral judgement on the circumstances is the only thing that makes it palatable and justifiable in some peoples minds.
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You consider someone who bombs people on monday and then again on tuesday not a mass murderer?
If they are bombing members of a military force that they are currently in open hostilities with then no, that is not a mass murder because it isn't murder. If you kill a combatant during the course of conflict you are not committing murder. Now, if that person is no longer a combatant (prisoner, wounded, etc) and you kill them it is murder. But otherwise it is a perfectly accepted act.
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Have you seen the movie The Big Red One? If you haven't then you should. There is a conversation in that movie about the distinction between killing and murder. Sometimes the people in the different color uniform are acting like animals, these animals are killed, not murdered. Is killing a rabid dog murder? No, because only innocent people can be murdered. All people can be killed. Enemy combatants are not murdered, they are killed before they can murder.
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Sometimes the people in the different color uniform are acting like animals, these animals are killed, not murdered.
Enemy combatants are not murdered,
The intentional death of a human being is always murder.
Societies then create moral and legal exemptions to allow murders that the people consider necessary.
Sometimes the people (in uniform) dehumanize the enemy to make it easier to murder them.
It's an extremely ugly road to go down: http://i.imgur.com/riixJyL.jpg [imgur.com]
And I'm not exaggerating: http://i.imgur.com/ODMmE5i.jpg [imgur.com]
I'm glad we're civilized enough to have stopped making dehumanizing propaganda the official government policy.
I hope you can catch up with th
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Hmm, so if your target was someone who has been killing innocent people, and the three choices for you were:
1. Ignore it and hope the target just decides to stop
2. Go in with ground force, with all the casualties on both sides that would result
3. Drop a bomb to wipe out the threat with as little casualties as possible
You're telling me #3 isn't the better choice here? Because it is... and because it is, that's what happens. When it happens, are you trying to say you'd rather we drop fuel-air bombs in crowded
Good for them (Score:3)
I'm all for efficient killing... wouldn't want to break a nail.
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Especially if you want to make things more appealing for the GLBT & W communities.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly! And since they can make the plans available for download, they can take a step further and print the warheads and detonators directly at the target site. This will save costs on building a delivery system and associated consumables, such as fuel.
It's green *and* efficient. What could be better?
It's as easy as pressing "print" (Score:2)
I know of other groups who would be very interested in being able to print warheads... and might not be able to build anything but primitive warheads with their current technology. I hope they're better at keeping secrets than other branches of government.
Quality over quantity (Score:3, Insightful)
For a long time it hasn't been about how to "kill more people" but rather how to kill "the right people" more efficiently.
We put a huge amount of effort and money into weapon systems that will minimize collateral damage.
As much as it is popular to vilify the US- none of our opponents seem to care as much who they blow up.
Re: (Score:2)
The US (at least the politicians) don't seem to mind this carnage.
John Kerry is rather upset about it. He seems to think that if only Israel gives Palestinians the right to return, then the Palestinians will want to live in peace.
What's the problem? (Score:3)
You *do* know what the purpose of an army is, right?
What other choices would you prefer? The army shouldn't kill people? The army should kill people inefficiently?
Bias much? (Score:2)
In its latest bid to kill more people
Let me know when you have an objective article I can read. Also, thanks for showing your bias instantly in the summary so I knew not to bother clicking on anything.
Safe warheads? (Score:1)