In war, the advantages of Depleted Uranium munitions are many. However many people oppose its use.

The United States and its NATO allies maintain that Depleted Uranium dust (a by-product) doesn't cause cancer and birth defects, however, 136 countries are citing other research saying that it does.

Which side do you think is right?

The side that DOESNT need anything to do with uranium! I don't need that hazardeous material near me!!

I think that the US and NATO are lying as to have a valid reason to use a nuke in a non-nuclear war...

This is probably one of the more intelligent posts I've seen from anyone using the alias "Anonymous". Kudos, good sir.

I personally don't care either way. On one hand, it does nothing. On the other, we have a new form of population control. So, there's a light version of my thoughts on the subject.

Population control indeed, Umbra. I agree with your sentiments. Honestly, I dont think that the US and NATO are being completely truthful.

You guys should do some research on things before coming to such quick conclusions.

(Mostly from wikipedia)

Depleted uranium is used to make armor plating for fighting vehicles and anti-armor ammunition, the reason for these being that uranium is an extremely dense metal. The munitions being bullets for cannons mounted on aircraft and tanks. The tips (aka penetrators) of bunker-buster bombs are also suspected to be made of DU. The main purpose of DU munitions is to destroy enemies and materiel with kinetic energy, not to poison them with radiation. The reason DU is used is because DU is self-sharpening and will ignite into flames once it has made contact with armor. It is true that DU is lightly radioactive, and can contaminate areas around which DU munitions are used, and tests have proven DU dust to be be carcinogenic and what have you.

Recent research has looked into trying to replace DU munitions with other alloys, but the alloys that outperform DU (such as tungsten-cobalt and tungsten-nickel-cobalt) produce similar dust effects that are much more carcinogenic than DU itself.

The U.S. isn't arbitrarily spreading some radioactive dust over mass bits of population in an attempt to deform and kill with cancer and what have you. In the end, it's a sad side-effect of what happens in the aftermath of modern warfare. And these effects aren't just happening to countries that have had DU munitions used against them- around 250,000 NATO Gulf War vets are suffering from side-effects possibly stem from DU munitions use.

Also, it's not just the U.S. and certain NATO countries using DU. Russia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan, Thailand, Iraq and Taiwan all use (or are suspected to use) DU munitions as well. However nobody's pointing any fingers at them.

tl;dr: It's a very sad but true side-effect of war in the modern world. The U.S. isn't trying to do any population control (unless they're controlling population both ways, but w/e). It's not just the U.S and NATO, almost every other great and regional power uses DU too.

._.

>>6 So, by that logic, keeping the uranium is the better, as it decreases population in more than one way.

You could just replace the uranium with that higher toxicity tungsten/cobalt mix, then you might just have a valid point on the population control thing.

The point being, countries using DU munitions (not just U.S./NATO) are more concerned with the immediate penetrating ability of their munitions, rather than the long-term environmental side-effects afterwards. The environment and civilians tend to end up as after-thoughts when a war's waging.

It'd be better off not to war in the first place, or to use radioactive crap for weapons. There is no arguing that point. Just don't think that the U.S. is committing some big conspiracy thing by itself, because almost every major world military power uses DU.

I prefer my own munition idea. They don't have any kind of radio active materiel.

For Penetration: Steel Shelled Lead (SSL Rounds)

For Shock: Explosive Lead Flat Tip (ELFT Rounds)

Steel shelled lead? Are you referring to a full metal jacket bullet? Just wondering. ._.