Showing posts with label Defense Industry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Defense Industry. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
When Only Automatic Weapons Will "Contain" Those Pesky Legally Protesting American (or Iraqi or...) Demonstrators
"The army's existing crowd-control rounds are single shots fired from handheld grenade launchers with a range of about 50 metres - the XM1044 would double this range. It would be supplied in belts for the Mk19 grenade launcher, a truck-mounted weapon that can fire almost six rounds per second."
Army wants rapid-fire rubber bullets for crowd control
By David Hambling
New Scientist
17 February 2011
THE US army is planning to field "rubber bullets" for machine guns. Military officials claim the ammunition will allow them to more effectively quell violent protests without loss of life, but human rights campaigners are alarmed by the new weapon.
The final design for the XM1044 round has not been selected, according to an order placed on the Federal Business Opportunities website last month, but the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has been working on a ring aerofoil projectile for some years. The round is a hollow plastic cylinder 40 millimetres across, looking something like a short toilet-paper roll. In flight its shape generates lift, giving it a longer range.
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Firing rapidly at long range is likely to be dangerously inaccurate, says Angela Wright of Amnesty International. "Such a weapon system would allow for a burst of non-accurate fire at a crowd, with high risk of hitting bystanders, ricochets and of hitting vulnerable areas of the body," she says.
Despite being hollow and plastic, if a round were to strike someone in the head, it could severely injure or kill them, she adds. [More @ NewScientist]
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
"The nation’s defense budget is about to tangle with a really dangerous adversary." - Health Reform Scares The Defense Industry
Let it be duly noted that, in America, health care reform (especially any hope for 'Medicare For All') depends on the whims of the defense industry, and they ARE putting the pressure on:Crooks and Liars:
"I've been seeing a number of op-eds in recent defense journals that have a slightly hysterical, paranoid perspective on the "dangers" of health care reform. the authors of these articles are terrified that mounting costs of health care are going to impinge on the defense budget. democrat attempts to give all americans insurance may increase overall health care costs. as a result, a weakened america will be just wide-open to attack by terrorists and china and who knows what else.
Think i'm exaggerating? here's harvey sapolsky, a defense academic out of mit, talking in the national defense journal:
More @ Crooks and Liars"....The revenue for more health care exists in the form of defense expenditures, which have doubled since 9/11. The billions needed for reforming health will likely come, in one way or another, from cuts in defense spending. Personnel reductions will be hard to make because of the burdens that Iraq and Afghanistan deployments place on U.S. forces. Fewer and fewer aircraft and ships will be bought. There will also be less training and more restrictions on operations with and for allies. America has a powerful military that will take a while to unravel, but unravel it will. The nation’s defense budget is about to tangle with a really dangerous adversary."
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