Israel’s use of white phosphorus in military operations in Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a question and answer document on white phosphorus.
Well if they’re dead set on destroying whatever the target is, it’s either that or run a higher risk of your artillery missing and destroying some other random building, so it’s kinda lose-lose for everyone involved
War sucks and picking between different ways to accidentally kill civilians tends to be the reality
Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe that our 2 billion budget for Israel, combined with modern range detectors cannot produce a result that doesn’t require us to boil/roast civilians alive. But that just might be the optimistic side of me.
I am not saying you are not right, just that if we really wanted to put our heads together to find a solution, I think we could have come up with something that doesn’t border the literal definition of a war crime.
There’s maybe one way you can perfectly calculate a ballistic trajectory that will pinpoint land an artillery shell on a position: if you’re in a vacuum
When you start adding environmental factors like wind and temperature differences you start getting into needing in-flight course correcting shells, which do indeed exist (they guide themselves via GPS), but even America with its $1.8 trillion military budget doesn’t exclusively use them because they’re so expensive (in the realm of $70,000 per shell vs $800 for an unguided one)
I know nothing of spotting round best practices, but surely there are other appropriate smoke screen chemicals that are less incendiary? Do all countries typically use WP for this purpose?
After a cursory glance, it seems like your options for smoke generation are primarily either WP, or various ways of making literal clouds of hydrochloric acid
I’m pretty sure the reckless and callous use of it in a densely populated urban area is exactly what escalates it to war crime
Well if they’re dead set on destroying whatever the target is, it’s either that or run a higher risk of your artillery missing and destroying some other random building, so it’s kinda lose-lose for everyone involved
War sucks and picking between different ways to accidentally kill civilians tends to be the reality
Forgive me, but I find it hard to believe that our 2 billion budget for Israel, combined with modern range detectors cannot produce a result that doesn’t require us to boil/roast civilians alive. But that just might be the optimistic side of me.
I am not saying you are not right, just that if we really wanted to put our heads together to find a solution, I think we could have come up with something that doesn’t border the literal definition of a war crime.
There’s maybe one way you can perfectly calculate a ballistic trajectory that will pinpoint land an artillery shell on a position: if you’re in a vacuum
When you start adding environmental factors like wind and temperature differences you start getting into needing in-flight course correcting shells, which do indeed exist (they guide themselves via GPS), but even America with its $1.8 trillion military budget doesn’t exclusively use them because they’re so expensive (in the realm of $70,000 per shell vs $800 for an unguided one)
I know nothing of spotting round best practices, but surely there are other appropriate smoke screen chemicals that are less incendiary? Do all countries typically use WP for this purpose?
After a cursory glance, it seems like your options for smoke generation are primarily either WP, or various ways of making literal clouds of hydrochloric acid