Almost everywhere they go in Iraq, American soldiers find stacks of explosives and guns. According to one 2004 survey, at least 7 million small arms — including AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers and mortar tubes, and more sophisticated arms like ground-to-air missiles — have fallen into the hands of Iraqi civilians since “Mission Accomplished” in 2003.
U.S. troops would like to get rid of all of those weapons, as they find them. “However, the extremely large number of both weapons and storage sites has rendered global securing and destruction of caches nearly impossible,” notes Darpa, the Pentagon’s way-out research arm.
What the agency wants to see instead: a non-toxic spray that can “penetrate rapidly into the [weapon’s] active firing and/or actuation mechanisms and render them instantly and permanently inoperable.”
The formulation will produce an accelerated corrosion (or other) reaction over a longer period of time (a few months or less), perhaps using the weapon material itself as a metallic catalyst, to destroy the weapon internal structure. The formulation must be effective in small quantities (i.e., a few grams per weapon), safe to use, stable over the range of operational temperature/humidity conditions, have a long shelf-life, be capable of large-area dissemination, and produce a non-toxic residue after the weapon is destroyed…
[The spray] must not be reversed by simple chemical, thermal, or other means. Such a chemical system has the potential to enable the systematic and effective removal of small arms from the battlespace.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
and not interact with Depleted Uranium….except to bind to it and render it inert?
This is one of those things the Dolt in the White House forgot. Iraq is studded with weapons depots set up by Saddam. Another ignored pentagon estimate said it would take 18 years to clean them all up. Bad news is a downer for the boy prince. Its going to take more than CLR’s smarter brother to clean it all up.
Well i’m not too fond of weapons i have to admit, and of terrorists either, but somehow it seems unfait to me to destroy them all on such a scale. It would render the iraqi people defenceless and they would be at the mercy of the US. How would the US feel if somebody dumped several thousand tons of this stuff in their atmosphere and let their AR-15s and TEC-9s and whatever they have,disintegrate?
It sounds to me like the plan is to have this material prepared to disperse in an area where weapon stores are likely to exist, not to just specifically swab some of it on each weapon, which would probably be pretty time consuming.
If that’s the case, how do you make this material smart enough to not destroy ANYTHING made of similar materials? Do we want to place in use some material that’s going to destroy anything made of the same materials as guns? I sure hope someone has thought of this aspect of what otherwise sounds like a pretty harebrained idea.
Maybe it would make more sense to come up with a formula which would render the AMMUNITION inoperative; something that might attack the primer or cartridge case, or preferably the gunpowder, although the latter would be tough, since it’s so well sealed inside the cartridge case.
This might be easier to come up with, since most cartridge cases are brass, and more susceptible to corrosive agents. It’s also a lot softer than the steel alloys and composites now used for firearms, so any corrosive introduced to the copper alloy material would probably work a lot faster.
Gandhi: Bind to DU and render it inert? What are you talking about? DU is inert. It’s just *dense* and *heavy*. That’s why we use it–it doesn’t deform like steel or tungsten would. DU doesn’t react with anything. It’s just a big, tough, hunk of heavy stuff.
Zappa: The Iraqi people are defenseless to the US military. We could kill them all, and they’d have zero defense. The problem is, we don’t *want* to kill them all, which is why getting rid of lots of guns makes everyone safer.
John: This stuff is gonna get sprayed on guns individually. It just means you can spray this stuff on it, and then you don’t have to worry about it afterwards. It saves loads of time when it comes to destroying weapons caches. Keep it in a plastic bottle, and spray it on like Windex. Render the ammo inoperative? There’s a much easier way to get rid of ammo–give a couple of GIs some guns, set them to full auto, and let them shoot it all off.
This is dumb. The weapons they’re capturing work well even without much maintenance, and future contingencies could make having a lot of weapons around very handy. Say, in case you want to distribute them widely inside Iran to help overthrow the regime, before its wackos in chief initiate a nuclear exchange to bring on the 12th Imam (chances are zero that they’re leaving power peacefully). Or quickly equip friendly governments in future – something that has been a problem in Afghanistan.
Ship out the weapons, store them in the USA, have them on hand when needed.
Import them (firearms) into the US for Class 3 FFL holders (since they’re probably automatic weapons), thereby lowering existing prices. Class 3 dealers can buy them from the government and resell them. Everybody wins!
sounds like wishful thinking, we are talking mostly steel, use a thermite grenade, and distroy the temper of the metal.
Don’t see how a chemical that is that corrosive would be non-toxic.
Might have better luck with some kind of Lock-tite glue or epoxy product.
Again- the non-toxic issue sounds pie in the sky- I do RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) forms at my manufacturing company and there are a lot of chemicals we use on th list. Anything with Chloride in it (like PVC- which is everywhere) causes concern because it bonds with water and makes acid.
This could end up as the Iraqi war’s Agent Orange.
There is one substance that I have an abundance of right here at home. It works almost overnight and renders any metal moving parts completely useless and corroded. I don’t know if it is toxic, but it is biodegradable. And what is this stuff? Cat piss. I’m sure that it could be synthesized easily. And a happy side effect is that a person won’t come close to any objects thus sprayed. But, every stray cat will stop and refresh the coating.