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Whoever wrote the script should really learn what uranium isotopes are. Depleted uranium isotopes are extremly radioactive. Even worse, it is an extremly dense heavy metal. www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Side+effects+of+depleted+uranium+exposure A simple google search proves this video wrong.
If the general population would know how much Uranium is spread out on the fields where their food is grown, they would flip out. Simply google Uranium in phosphate fertilizer.
Nice whitewash video on DU. 👎 The title should be "DU For Normies". With the closing lines: "Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep." I've been following and reading about DU for 20 years. For those of you who want to learn of the death and horror caused by DU, I recommend 2 documentaries to get started: "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and The Dying Children." And "Beyond Treason". Also, contrary to every science book and website: alpha particles are *not* stopped by a sheet of paper. This is proven false by an alpha cloud chamber experiment on RUclips, where the content creator discovers that chicken skin over an alpha emitter, still emits alpha particles into the air. But then again, don't listen to me, I don't have 3.14 million RUclips subscribers. I am just some guy in the comment section. What do I know? I have given up on trying to reason with people with facts and evidence.
The fact that DU is a heavy metal far outweighs the residual radiation it emits. Heavy metal poisoning is the true danger. Unless of course you happen to be in the vehicle it impacts.
DU rounds as they penetrate armor layers is "self sharpening" --- have watched a few videos about this and its counter intuitive but it is true. In ww2 since U wasnt in common use (aka none for most part) they tried to use wolfram aka tungsten as the penetrators.
@@nimbusentry7093Your guess is closer to the true than you think sir. As a former Abrams tanker who served in Iraq in 2004 those damn burn pits were far more toxic than any DU that sat behind me for months
I was exposed to depleted uranium during the First Gulf War. My battalion's tent city was about 200 meters downwind from the ammunition dump for the airbase where we were stationed. I have many of the symptoms associated with DU: weakened soft tissue, weakened bone density, and other symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome. I have been wearing dentures since I was 32, and tooth loss is common among Gulf War veterans. I am part of a long-term study by the Veterans Administration. These symptoms may be complicated by the injuries I had during my service in many areas of the world, especially when I was with XVIII Airborne Corps. I am also part of a study by the VA into long-term effects of concussion, for example. There are other potential causes of Gulf War Syndrome including the PB pills we were required to take, and the "pudding shots" that we received before deployment. In both cases, some received the real deal while others received a placebo. The soldiers of the Gulf War were not only fighting a war, we were test subjects without knowing it. There are still no definitive results from any of the studies into the reason why so many Gulf War veterans are sick, but the studies continue, and the answers may not come until after my death. My father died of a disease caused by Agent Orange, but that was not acknowledged until ten years after his death at the age of 49. I always wonder what my kids will learn ten years after my demise.
Studies, in reference to the video, like these seem to me like a way to get ahead of information. That seems to follow in the future. Subverting information always seems to be followed by a long study pointing in opposition.
"Depleted" in the context of uranium refers to its radioactivity, which is minimal. The real hazard from use of depleted uranium munitions is the resultant toxicity due to heavy metal contamination.
Exactly, the scare tactics about a radiation level less than naturally occurring uranium it part of the reason that we won't be able to both produce energy and deal with climate change anytime in the near future.
Heavy metal contamination is a major problem with literally any metals used for projectiles, DU, tungsten, lead, copper, brass, etc. In fact lead is probably much more of a risk given how much of it can be used in war relative to DU ammunition.
Depletion does not reduce the radioactivity significantly! Only the fissible U-235 is enriched for NPP usage or military abuse. The danger for people when ingested or inhaled or via injuries remains huge. I'm educated in radiation protection, so I know what I say.
I was an infantry soldier in Somalia in 93. We stayed at places that had lots of depleted and expired ammunition. Old Soviet supply dumps, etc. Overtime EOD gathered up over 40 tons of it and blew it up (what a sight). But now, 30 years later at least 10 of us are already gone (before the age of 50) and most of us have respiratory issues. This is a company I’m talking about. It does seem quite high and we were given enormous amounts of inoculations prior to every deployment and we had to take mefloquine tablets which give you the worst headache and I think were eventually banned. So, don’t become a soldier if you wanna live long.
Not to mention it's almost a prerequisite for most deployments than you smoke at least a pack and a half of cigarettes, and drink massive amounts of caffeine, in any form you can obtain. There's no such thing as a "healthy" MRE either. They are calorie dense sustenance meant to keep soldiers going for the next bit of adrenaline rushed action. In conclusion, anyone who signs on the dotted line and raises their hand for the pledge is acknowledging that they have given both their physical and mental selves over to the whims of those in control of those who ultimately order their lessers into harms way. The fact that you thrived, survived and returned to civilian life is a testament to your training, your personal attention to your safety, and your willingness to do what it takes to get back to those who are dependent on you and others like yourself. Good job, soldier! P. S. I also got that whole "overseas package" of injections, and also suffer from COPD, hearing loss, and have been a (upper) denture wearer for over 15 years.
Uranium exhibits higher performance as a kinetic energy penetrator than tungsten alloys because it exhibits greater strain hardening, and so the adiabatic shear bands form closer to penetrator/target interface, causing a uranium penetrator to "self-sharpen" to a greater degree than tungsten, mushrooming less, and preserving a lower frontal cross section during penetration.
@@Evan_Bell Evan -- Could you say then as the round penetrates the armour, it is tempered from the heat and kinetic energy, to make it harder. Does the steel of the tank breach temporarily melt to form a ferro-uranium alloy on penetration? I'm not a metallurgist, so please bear with me!
@@LaHayeSaintwhat more or less is happening as it penetrates the armor is that is sheers close to where the strain of the penetration happens (closer to the point), causing it to become sharp again, instead of say, peeling back and curling outwards. This is what gives it its generating power.
From what I learned in my ballistics class for my gunsmithing program. With bullets, there's something called Sectional Density. It's essentially how dense the bullet is in relation to its diameter. It's the one factor that absolutely dictates how good a bullet is at penetration or perforation. Depleted Uranium is the heaviest natural element. This makes it perfect for rounds that need to punch through armor. Form factor is big part of Ballistics Coefficients: Sectional Density/ form factor = BC. The higher the BC, the better the bullet is at overcoming air resistance. Not only that, but higher BC bullets perform better at long distance, they tend to maintain momentum at longer ranges, too.
its also how U falls apart as the leading edge of the penetrator ablates, it shears away leaving a point as the length of the penetrator dwindles... KE = 1/2 MV^2.... as you lose mass but keep the velocity up the KE stays higher than keeping all the mass...
You are confusing density and molecular weight. Yes uranium is the heaviest but is one factor that affect weight density the other being how tightly the atoms can be packed. In fact the video cited 7 denser element including tungsten. The big advantage that DU would bring over tungsten if the self sharpening effect and its relative cheapeness, since DU is a waste product with only few current industrial and commercial applications, it is dirt cheap, cheaper than uranium ore and much cheaper than tungsten.
Please nite, I'm NOT an expert and am only dtating my understanding because Im genuinely interested in understanding where I'm misinformed. Doesnt hardness and velocity play a significant role in penetration? As an example, lead is dense... but it is also soft. Copper is (proportionally) light and hard. In my reloading experience (NOT expert), solid copper bullets seem to move significantly faster, and penetrate significantly farther than lead. Am I misunderstanding a mechanism of penetration that's causing me to use my experience as flawed confirmation bias? (I promise, Im genuinely asking)
@@marcush4741You are partly correct. Hardness helps but solid copper bullets, like steel shot for shotguns, is also much lighter than lead. This lighter weight causes the round to lose energy much faster than a heavier bullet would as it passes through an object (known as "momentum loss" in ballistic terms). Thus, heavier lead bullets will often penetrate farther than lighter copper bullets in gel or other ballistic mediums at the same velocity.
FYI, the image thrown up at 2:19 is a belt of inert training rounds, not DU tipped projectiles. Any time you see that bright blue color, it's inert training ammo.
I'll throw on a little additional info/context for any that need/want it, they are inert in the fact that aren't explosive, armor piercing or incendiary and are used in training because it's more cost effective... In cases of the 25mm training rounds, the round is still a live round that will fire out of the gun, just without the Explosive or Incendiary effect on target. Same with the 5" "training" projectile which is loaded separate from the powder charge.
Blue doesn't necessarily mean fully inert. In this case it does however this is not a hard/fast rule for all ordnance. If you didn't put it there and it looks like ord, call EOD/law enforcement.
that's funny as shit, I don't find this video useful at all. I could just google that depleted uranium is called LEAD in less than a half a microsecond, also, it releases it's energy directly upon impact which is the whole point of it. much like a moab rod. oh sorry were you busy for the next 15 minutes of this video?
@@baplotnik Hi Nik. Waste of 15 minutes? Yep! Except that Simon Whistler is entertaining, which **is** mostly the point of his videos. So... there's that! 😆As you undoubtedly know, Lead (Pb) and Uranium (U) are chemically and elementally two DIFFERENT substances. Lead flattens and expands upon impact whereas uranium fractures into self-sharpening shards while maintaining its overall projectile shape (especially when alloyed with Titanium as explained in the video). Therefore totally different from each other--except that they both are heavy metals (duh) and both used in ammunition--albeit lead is commonly used and uranium much less commonly and only for special purposes.
Just to point out, Gulf War Syndrome was not solely blamed on DU, it was naps tablets and the cocktail of drugs given to the soldiers, a short term affect to keep the soldiers fighting, which then led to some of the soldiers having long term effects, to I will add a Army Medical Advisor said "Don't plan on having any more kids" That and the fact that two babies within out Regiment were born disabled in the year that followed.
I was in the first Gulf War, (UK) We were given a cocktail of injections just before the start, and a vast majority of our squadron was then sick for a few days making them Not Combat fit. When I later retired from the military we could demand a copy of our Medical Documents to pass on to our civilian doctors of any injections, medical ailments Etc. The section in my records that covered Late 90 - 92 was missing, basically, the pages were removed with a discrepancy in Page numbers.
@@rock0122Sorry to hear that fella, I served with 4 Regt AAC and the same thing happened when we recieved our injections and when I firts retired (as I rejoined) my docs were altered.
i served in Iraq the 2nd time and had several friends and knew several ppl that had very bad reactions similar if not the exact same depending on the persons. Im not saying that it was a large number, but a minority of soldiers are still having similar symptoms to this day during deployments. I currently have friends who have had severe reactions to them causing the immune systems to completely shut down. Of course lawsuits have been filed and the courts are pushing everything out till my fiends die. @@rock0122
A note on pyrophoria - it isn't just in powder form that it burns, high amounts of friction will also cause uranium to start burning. Going through hardened armor means you're going to be facing a lot of friction.
Watched a video on this last night. They're called DUDs. In the 1970's they manufactured 7.62 rifle rounds as a experimental trial. They are extremely effective for going through body armour. Tungsten rifle rounds are 2nd best. They are extremely hard to source due to the limited amount made. Fun fact in the 1970's some were accidentally sent to police stations mixed in with their standard ammunition deliveries
@@dianapennepacker6854 tungsten is quite rare while depleted uranium i believe is the byproduct you get when you enrich uranium that I believe wouldn't have many uses otherwise.
@@dianapennepacker6854 I think it is due to the manufacturing process for the round. It catches fire on contact going through plated armour. Must be complicated to form into a precise shape. Plus you've got the waste products from production, has to be done in a safe environment, then legally disposed off. Their's added complication of the rifle rounds falling into a federal category due to being classed as nuclear material. Its crazy to think that some was accidently sent to police stations with their usual ammunition supplies. If you look on RUclips for DUDS 7.62 rifle rounds, you will see the same video
Fun fact, early Boeing 747s had DU counterweights and you can still own an unlimited amount of DU in Canada without a licence as long as it is used as aircraft counterweights.
In that function, it's pretty inoffensive, though touching it may be a bad idea. You can stop alpha particles with a sheet of paper, yet ingested or breathed in they can wreak havoc.
@@sillysad3198It really isn't that radioactive (billions of years of half-life!), as long as you don't get it inside your body (it is a heavy metal after all) you won't have any problems.
My friend did 2 tours in Iraq. He said they were all prohibited from approaching wreckage destroyed by DU ammo. The worst risk cited was its toxicity after fragmentation to dust level. What sandstorms taken from outside was one thing, but a lot of it remained in destroyed interiors, often baked in by fire. The biggest problem were locals, who were swarming battlefields to harvest metals from wreckage. It was impossible to change their minds by explaining what they are facing, so they resorted to telling locals the battle sites are haunted. Iraq has zero healthcare infrastructure in many of its regions, and in the end, even if half of the local population died of cancer suddenly... no one would notice. Or, in many cases, no one would want to notice.
More than 300 Italian veterans who developed cancer after being exposed to depleted uranium ammunition have won court cases against Italy’s military. Some of the cases were brought by their bereaved relatives. The judgments have mounted in recent years, with Italian courts repeatedly finding a link between cancer and service in the Balkans where such weapons were fired. Although Italy does not have depleted uranium weapons in its own arsenal, Italian police and soldiers were deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo where NATO allies fired the controversial ammunition in the 1990s.
Back in the early 80s, I worked for a Swiss machine tool company. I had to go to Honeywell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to train people on a machine. This is the plant where they make depleted uranium bullets. When I got there the first day they said don't step in the water, there were puddles everywhere. Apparently, they had a DU fire. It burns like magnesium hard to put out. It was the grinding operation that caught fire. Left me a little unsettled.
If I put a ton of depleted uranium in my basement, it wouldn't increase the radioactivity. The radon leeching out of the ground and settling down there is far more radioactive. I certainly wouldn't recommend snorting a line of depleted uranium dust though. I wouldn't recommend inhaling dust of any heavy metal, they're all toxic.
Thats what i think all of these DU apologists are missing - it isnt the radioactivity thats deadly so much as the vaporized heavy metals fumes being inhaled. All heavy metals are carcinogenic ,and inhaling them into your lungs is arguably the worst way to be exposed to them .
The far superior penetrating power of depleted uranium compared to tungsten is well documented. US and British tankers carry DU 120mm penetrators. We also have 25mm and .50 caliber DU, but those were less used after the initial combat in the Second Gulf War. The Warthog used 30mm DU. We use it for a reason (better than tungsten), despite the risk. Depleted doesn't mean "not radioactive" or "safe," it just means not hot enough to be fissile or weapons grade.
Nah, depleted means it's not financially viable to further seperate more and less radioactive isotopes. I don't know much about combat effectiveness, I think it's just a way for the US to get rid off nuclear waste. It has to be very cheap to buy bc if nobody buys it, it will have to be stored, you can't just throw it away. Unless you do the throwing with guns.
I was in the US Navy for 11 years and one day I was on the 0-4 level on the ship and the GMs were doing maintenance on the CIWS (close in weapons system). They offered to let me hold just one shell and I was absolutely unprepared for just how heavy uranium is. It feels at least 3 times heavier than iron. Given that CIWS can fire 6000 rounds a minute, any missile successfully hit by CIWS literally gets shredded within a mile of the ship.
I wondered this same thing, so I called a PhD Chem friend of mine that had written a number of papers on his specialty, metallurgy. Depleted Uranium is ~70% heavier than lead, and as hard as steel. So it is a perfect armor piercing material.
I was a crewmember on a Bradley. We never used them. If we ever needed to deal with an armored vehicle, we had the TOW missile. It was expensive, not as effective as the TOW, no one wanted to handle them, no one wanted to deal with the paperwork and transporting it, no one wanted to deal with clean up of the fired rounds (at a range, a battlefield, or a destroyed vehicle), and no one wanted to deal with any rounds not used (we would just shoot off unused regular rounds because turning it in was a headache, a DU round would be over 10 times more annoying).
@@Genesh12 I never had to deal with it, but the military loves it paperwork. So I can't even begin to give an exact amount of forms that needed to be signed. Here is an example. We were given Kevlar vests and had to sign for that, later they gave us SAPI plates (Small Arms Protective Inserts) for those vests, so we had paper work for that. A bunch of paperwork just for one item really. The Supply sergeant had to deal with their own paperwork for those vests. So for DU rounds there would be paper work for them as ammunition in general for the supply sergeant, the First sergeant, and the captain. The people running the range would have their paperwork, and anyone who would handle them. There would be classes about them being DU, safety, clean up, and so on. That would cascade down to everyone already mentioned. The individual crews would get paperwork when getting issued the rounds, to show they had their classes on the DU safety, handling, and cleanup. There would be paper work on where the rounds would be used and showing where they were cleaned up. The Company/Troop/Battery CBRN and medic would have their onslaught of paperwork for their roles. When we went to the range, even for our rifles, and we didn't use all the rounds issued to the unit, we would fire them off because trying to return a box of ammunition that had some remaining was such a pain for the officers, they would tell us to just use them up. Even if we cracked open a crate and never used a single rounds from them. Once that seal is broken, the paperwork monster would appear. If you ever has watched the movie 'Brazil' and the comedic look at bureaucracy and forms in the movie, that would what the paperwork would be like.
Minor quibble for your Editor: any ammo with blue-tips are inert training rounds. No DU, no explosives, they are used mostly due to lower costs. Some practice ranges are smaller than the maximum range of live ammo...training ammo is often loaded for shorter ranges.
Likewise with BDU-33. Training round painted blue, same aerodynamics as a Mk82 and emits a puff of smoke to signify where it hits. AIM-9 has a blue version too.
Minor quibble for you pirobot. There are several rounds that have a blue tip that are NOT inert. The U.S. Military has been making BLUE TIPPED "Incendiary" rounds since WW2. They range in size from rifle bullets up to cannon rounds. Before trying to correct someone else, make sure YOU are correct! I understand that your small knowledge was meant to imply that most inert training devices are painted blue. Just be careful of the information you are putting out. Someone with as little knowledge could end up hurting themselves or others. Thanks for being observant though.
@@billyo.9969 Those are small arms ammunition. Large caliber, 20mm and up (to include 40mm grenades), uses blue only to mean training ammunition (NOT inert! All training ammunition is inert, but not all inert ammunition is for training). In military terminology, "inert" only refers to the projectile, so live rounds can still be considered inert if the projectile does not explode. For @pirobot668beta, as he said, not all blue-tips are inert. That only applies to 20mm and up. However, inert does not mean no DU, it just means that the projectile does not explode. DU sabot rounds are considered inert
My stepdad recieved a givernment letter stating that while they could neither confirm nor deny the presence of depleted uranium on the ship he was posted on, the Canadian government strongly suggested that everyone that served on his class of ship should get checked for cancers (something hes had and dealt with previously)
My friend Chris Williams was a tank commander during Gulf 1. He never smoked, drank, and his job was not around any cancer causing materials . He developed lung cancer a few years after he came home. He had surgery and other treatments and was cancer free for several years. It returned a second time and took away one of the finest men I ever knew. He told me on several occasions how they drove through smoke from burning vehicles and how common this was for armor as well as infantry. He was certain the DU is what caused his cancer.
Depleted Uranium isnt all that radioactive, but it is one of the densest heavy metals, and all heavy metals are extremely toxic carcinogens that have been shown repeatedly to cause cancer. Inhaling vaporized heavy metals is one of the worst ways to be exposed to them simply due to how the lungs work, and how they are made . It is entirely plausible that inhaling DU caused his cancer, not via the radioactivity, but due to it being a carcinogenic heavy metal , regardless of its active radioactivity.There are heavy metals that are not radioactive at all - But they are still deadly carcinogens that can certainly cause cancer and other life threatening issues if ingested / inhaled.
Lets remember, plastic, as it breaks down, also produces toxic by products some of which are likely to be carcenogenic. We all breathe, eat and drink micro plastics daily and they have been found in our organs - latest studies show micro plastic has now been found in male reproductive organs. Cancer rates are going up rapidly. We'll all be joining Chris Williams sooner than we should thanks to our daft lifestyle. We know war, heat, drought, injesting oil based pollutants (including plastic) etc is bad for us yet we let our 'leaders' allow this to carry on.
I was an environmental engineer, and at 3:10 I heard a common logic process among humans. The government has to stockpile the uranium (? because it's bad ?) so one way to reduce this stockpile is to spread it all over the place... such as use the military to scatter it over the Earth (???) -- I want to believe Simon didn't quite mean that the way it sounded. (I certainly listened to that part over & over enough.)
Depleted Uranium was also used used as counterweights on aircraft control surfaces. I've handled it a few times and was amazed by the weight of it. We swapped out the counterweights back in the mid-nineties to tungsten weights.
@@johnnyllooddte3415 Why? It's literally less radioactive than the uranium in the ground. DU has a radioactivity of 2.5mSv. Do remember you are bombarded with radiation every single day. normally at a rate of 0.2mSv from the earth, sun, and everything around you. a long-haul flight, due to the altitude and reduced atmosphere can hit 3mSv, yet you don't see pilots all running to their doctors for radiation? and they spend their careers at these radiation levels. Meanwhile, a CT scan ranges from 2-30mSv yet you'll happily lay on a CT scanner if needed without question of the radiation dose. Radiation is this boogeyman that a lot of people don't understand as so fear unnecessarily because they cant see it. Meanwhile in reality we know what is and isn't safe in regards to radiation and it's not as dangerous as many people like to think.
Why is this comment section full of comments stating stuff that was mentioned in the video as if it's new information. He said it was used as weights in fixed wing aircraft.
Don’t know about those other countries but I would guess a lot of the health effects in Iraq and Kuwait could be caused by the deliberate igniting of the oil fields by the Iraq regime. Burning millions of gallons of raw crude oil is going to cause some serious health effects.
The uneducated general public has a very bad tendency to casually dismiss the very well-known carcinogenic effects of things that seem normal to us, like burning fossil fuels, while just assuming that _every damn thing_ with _any_ kind of connection to that scary "nuclear" stuff will cause cancer just by looking at it for a few seconds. Plus they don't seem to understand that all of this stuff is naturally occurring and _comes from inside the Earth_ and isn't magically created in a lab out of "chemicals" (of course, these are the kind of people who don't actually understand what "chemicals" are, think that they are all glowing green goo created in test tubes, and will get violently angry at you if you try to explain to them that everything they eat or drink or _breathe_ is made of "chemicals.") This is why the idiotic Anti-Nuclear Movement exists and has caused so many nuclear power plants to either be shut down or never built, and instead lead to even more fossil fuels power plants to be built, which cause _so damn much_ more cancer and environmental problems than clean nuclear plants ever would. The Anti-Nuclear Movement has caused so much death and environmental destruction across the planet that it could be accused of war crimes.
Radiation tends to be understood backwards by most people. Uranium isn't in fact particularly radioactive as far as such things go. It breaks down naturally extremely slowly which is where the radiation comes from for the most part. Its still hot, don't get me wrong, but that's a function of scale and mass more than anything. By and large the *shorter* the half life the more radioactive a material is, as it breaks down more often and consequently produces radiation at a higher rate. This is why uranium miners get radiation damage not from uranium with a 4 billion year half life but from one of its decay products, radium at 1600 years and one of its decay products radon at 4 days This is also why a cobalt salted bomb concept would work. Even though the direct explosive yield would be relatively small, the mini nuke would convert the cobalt[59] in to cobalt[60] that puts out enough radiation to kill *any* living thing ...but 20 years after the explosion the region would be about as radioactive as the down wind side of a coal plant
The issue with the Radon is true, but all other things you describe are beyond reality. Should give you a couple of lessons about radio chemistry and radiation protection. Would take some hours...
@@dietmarnieder9834 A quick google of cobalt salted bombs will return multiple scientific papers and articles on both salted bombs and cobalt bombs in particular. As to the other part of what I said, that's exactly how radioactive decay and half lives work. A half life is how long it takes a given mass of a radioactive element to decay and reduce its mass of that element by half. Radioactive decay is the decay of heavier elements in to lighter ones, with a byproduct of ionizing radiation. The faster a kilo of an element reduces to 0.5 kilo the more often it is putting out radiation. in particular, U238, the primary isotope in DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years and puts out radiation almost exclusively in the alpha band which is why it is used to contain much more dangerous radioactive elements..like cobalt[60] which has a half life of a little over 5 years and puts out high quantities of gamma radiation.
Seems that I've been misled over the years, so a big Thank You for correcting me. I spent some time in the Royal Artillery, but my primary weapon wasn't a gun that fired shells, it was a surface to air missile. I was always under the impression that when Uranium 238 decays, it becomes Lead 206 (It does.....This is correct). What I was wrong about, is that I'd assumed that depleted Uranium was uranium which had decayed / been used as a radiation source to the point where it had become Lead 206, therefore essentially DU artillery / cannon shells were essentially mainly just lead with a small portion of U 238. NOW I understand what all the fuss is about!
@@Spaceballerr in theory the GAU-8 Avenger creates enough recoil, it could theoretically stall the aircraft. But, it was also noted the firing rate required would possibly melt the barrels before that moment. Obviously they never tried the theory
@@Spaceballerr I've always heard that continuous fire causes it to stall. The gun doesn't stall it when they burst fire the gun but it does stall under continuous fire. They didn't worry about continuous fire because the A-10 shouldn't be on target more than a few seconds anyway.
As a nurse who used to care for nuclear workers and uranium minders/ millers/ haulers, and treating their cancers, i don't believe a word of that CDC report. I've seen too much
Having also worked in this industry all my life, I have to agree with you. The CDC say DU is fine as the clean up would cost too much and take too long ! "The ALPHA content is minimal". YUP that`s all it takes !
U238 is used a radiation shielding, normally as an alloy. Despite having slight radioactive it’s self the high density, and heavy mass of the isotopes vastly out weigh its ability to stop much stronger radiation then the little it give off its self.
DU has the nice effect of setting things on fire when it hits them - not only from the kinetic energy it releases, but also the chemical reaction when it impacts something solid.
People tend to fear the things they don't understand. Depleted uranium is relatively harmless but most folks will never understand or believe it (for example, the slight bit of alpha radiation emitted by DU can't even pass through a single sheet of paper). There are hundreds of things on a battlefield more worrying than the kind of rounds the enemy is using.
Yeah, the biggest advantage is that it's cheap, it's dense and it's self-sharpening instead of mushrooming and deforming Lead poisoning is actually more dangerous than the radioactive from DU too
@@LadyMaria_AstralClocktower FYI: The Potassium in a banana is almost 4 times more radioactive than DU and emits the more harmful beta and gamma radiation.
"Harmless " Alpha particles are actually very harmful when microscopic dust is inhaled or absorbed by mucous membranes. But the real danger of DU is the heavy metal toxicity. Much like lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium, they don't need to be radioactive to be extremely toxic. (I have a Grade 3 Industrial Wastewater Treatment Operator License and I reported directly to the DEP of whatever state I was working in to decontaminate an industrial site from nasty stuff. Like a plant that was leaking mercury from a swimming pool size tank into their septic leach field while they were filling railroad cars with chlorine gas 24/7. This creates organic forms of mercury (methyl and dimethyl mercury, 2 drops of which are 100% fatal in a few weeks). 30 years later, I've got cancer. Was it the mercury? Or the cadmium? I'll never know. But I would consider DU (especially dust, residue or any organic compound) to be extremely hazardous to handle and demand a Hazmat Suit. 30 years ago, I had no idea. Awe shucks, oh well. Last week, the doctors dosed me with Technicium 99 and my bones literally glowed with Gamma Rays (half-life 24 hours). Wee! The wonders of nuclear medicine.
"Harmless " Alpha particles are actually very harmful when microscopic dust is inhaled or absorbed by mucous membranes. But the real danger of DU is the heavy metal toxicity. Much like lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium, they don't need to be radioactive to be extremely toxic. (I have a Grade 3 Industrial Wastewater Treatment Operator License and I reported directly to the DEP of whatever state I was working in to decontaminate an industrial site from nasty stuff. Like a plant that was leaking mercury from a swimming pool size tank into their septic leach field while they were filling railroad cars with chlorine gas 24/7. This creates organic forms of mercury (methyl and dimethyl mercury, 2 drops of which are 100% fatal in a few weeks). 30 years later, I've got cancer. Was it the mercury? Or the cadmium? I'll never know. But I would consider DU (especially dust, residue or any organic compound) to be extremely hazardous to handle and demand a Hazmat Suit. 30 years ago, I had no idea. Awe shucks, oh well. Last week, the doctors dosed me with Technicium 99 and my bones literally glowed with Gamma Rays (half-life 24 hours). Wee! The wonders of nuclear medicine.
As a tanker I have never heard of anyone doing something this stupid. How was the beer drank? From the breech or the bore end? What was the reasoning for doing it in the first place?
I'm guessing from the breech and they were dumb fucking kids drinking around the motor pool. Hell probably got the idea from platoon shot smoking scene. Like I said it was a story and not all of em are true.
@@Thornbeard I would assume the gun was depressed down and pour into the breech and collected in glass or something on the other end as it pour down out the barrel. to pour it into the breech via the muzzle they would have need to elevate the cannon, at which point the end of the barrel would likely by fairly hard to reach.
It is important to note that the M242 Bushmaster 25mm is in the same velocity class as the M1A3 Tank's main gun and none of the other 20 and 30mm weapons can match its 1400m/s muzzle with sabot darts. There is a legit copy of it that fires the same ammunition with slightly higher feed reliability but nothing else can keep up with it short of the old 20mm recoilless rifle from some guy named Carl. The resultant conversion into dust by DU from it is marginally higher.
The, in theory, highly effective DU ammunition of the GAU-8 is pretty much the main reason why it's gun was and partially still is falsely held to such a high degree as ANY vehicle hit by such a bullet will, for the pilot, appear to be out of commission due to the high likelyhood of the splintering fragments catching fire and therefor giving off a lot of smoke, even if the vehicle is still fully functioning. The effectiveness of the GAU-8 is hyped to a degrees of other military myth like Tiger tanks being indistructable or T34 being most reliable ^^
Just a reminder, it's often simpler to say the battlegrounds are haunted than explaining the dangers of salvaging the metals to locals in warzones. Spooky ghost making people sick>explaining science.
@@Spaceballerr Pretty sure it was a joke. And while DU isn't as dangerously radioactive, it still starts its life as part of uranium-235, the other part of which we use in power plants and nuclear warheads. So dude also ain't technically wrong, either. Maybe smoke a bowl and chill out.
@@Spaceballerrtechnically true a DU round intact sitting there emits radiation that is easily blocked by your skin. HOWEVER if you blast it into microscopic powder, say by shooting it at metal, then ingest or inhale a shard of that powder, that radiation becomes extremely dangerous over say a decade stuck in your lung maybe you should educate yourself on the subject instead of ingesting radioactive military propaganda that doesn't mind poisoning people and then abandoning them by denying a direct link to their cancers and health issues.... they did the same thing to my father in vietnam with agent orange. I have an adult half-sister in diapers that would say agent orange was real, but she can't speak...
@@SpaceballerrIt's actually adorable of you to call people out for their ignorance, when you are actually spouting the corporate line from the people that profit by this and are completely ignorant of both a.) the way it's used in a warzone, isn't the same as a lab test about DU "safety" b.) completely ignorant of the real world suffering some of these weapons cause. if using DU rounds explodes one extra tank instead of a tungsten one, but causes 100 mothers to weep over their stillborns, or deformed children over the next 1000 years...have we fought a just war?
The great thing about DU is that it doesn't mushroom when it hits a target. It sharpens as it penetrates. It's a penetration round, not explosive due to its radioactivity (which is minimal).
8:25 the video is about depleted uranium bullets, but then it goes to a quote about total bullets fired. While I have no doubt that 6,000,000,000 bullets were fired in and around Fallujah, I'm pretty sure that is referring to small arms lead bullets. If that number was for DU rounds that would be several million A-10 sorties where they emptied their magazines.
My unit used nothing but DU rounds in out M2s while in iraq. While most of the rounds fired were basic lead rounds, there were units out there firing DU rounds on the ground. No one in my unit knew the health risks until years later.
@@ericwieboldt7042 oh, I know that more than just the A-10 uses DU, but they also quote from a report that refers to "bullets" which also indicates small arms fire, not shells some of which would use DU.
Regardless on how much DU actually contributed to the health problems talked about in the video, this is a solid example of why correlation doesn't automatically equate to causation. Always good to fully investigate something scientifically and explore all possible causes.
I don't know which conspiracy theorists you are referring to, but they were wrong about the radiation, for sure. I'm not sure how wrong they may have been on the heavy metal positioning aspect, however. I'm also not sure whether that is caused by DU more than other metals or ammunitions.
Another benefit of the DU crystals is that they're self-sharpening, when they impact armor the outside will sheer off allowing the rest to penetrate farther than tungsten rounds would.
During the first Gulf War CO's kept telling the soldiers NOT to mess with destroyed Iraqi equip. due to the use of DU ammo. Of course a good number of these soldiers were 18-20 year old chowderheads and played around anyway. Between exposure to the expended DU (willingly) and burn pits (not willingly), many vets developed Gulf War Syndrome as a result.
Although controversial, recent ecological studies have found out that tungsten cores in tank ammunition (which have been used since at least WW2) are probably worse for the environment than using depleted uranium amo. At least according to Chieftain
I think it's cobalt tungsten that is so toxic. That is why rings are tungsten carbide. Either way heavy metal poisoning is no joke. Between burning vehicles burning wells and burning trash the Gulf war was a very bad place to be. This video only focuses on radiation which was minimal
I'd like to point out that the A-10 was never specifically designed to kill tanks, it was designed as a Close Air Support platform to replace the A2 Sky Raider, so while killing tanks was a design consideration, it wasn't it's primary purpose
@mknewlan67 Considering the A10 initially came with near zero a/g targeting systems, and a bare bones gunfight, I agree. The weapon wasn't inaccurate, but the targeting systems were. A basic optical sight may have worked in fighters, but they were engaging targets much closer than an A10 doing a gun run. Current A10s can put rounds right where they want them thanks to improvements in a/g targeting technology.
Apparently people have forgotten that lead is also a heavy metal and is present in every non specialized round in common use among not only military forces but also civilian use
Always surprisingly good for a general information channel. Thank you. Uranium is a pretty common and widespread metal throughout the Earth's crust. That being the case one would assume 4.5bn years of living here would mean organisms would have come to deal with exposure very well, which they do - natural Uranium in the soil or a lump of the stuff in the hand will cause no appreciable harm. So the question becomes, "Is it basically harmless, or in the case of battlefield use is it being delivered in away that might circumvent the usual self-protection mechanisms?" The trouble is, Uranium's understandable if irrational reputation means it's rather less well understood than many other metals. So what do we do? Personally I would suggest an abundance of caution in the face of ignorance is reasonable and we would best not use it for such purposes while we go find out. Sadly as this is never going to happen I would suggest looking for other causes of the seeming observed effects as if they are real other causes are far more likely. Another pintless ramble, I suppose.
Do you take cover from a warthog? It'll probably just miss if you're standing out in the open, but if you get behind shelter, you might be hit by shrapnel.
DU rounds are chambered for 338 LM with a hollow core of incendiary material. Works wonderfully for engagements on targets taking cover behind reenforced concrete.
DU only emits alpha particles, i.e. helium. This isn't the ionizing radiation that people are concerned about, radiation wise. Aside from getting hit by it as a soft target, it's main health risk is the same as other heavy metals: ingestion.
After listing man other uses I was elated at 4:33, the Warthog and it's beloved GAU-8. I'm almost as impressed with the aircraft as I am with the weapon system.
ONE DOESNT HAVE TO BOTHER ABOUT THE URANIUM AFFECTING ONES OWN TANKS AND PEOPLE AS THE DEPLEATED URANIUM STAYS IN ENEMY TANKS. BUT THE URANIUM SHOULD BE VOID OF ALL THE VALUEABLE PLUTONIUM IN IT.
Depleted Uranium (DU) is used for several reasons. In no particular order: 1. It's relatively inexpensive because we have so much of it. 2. It's mass is useful for punching through armor. 3. It "self sharpens" which aids in punching through armor. 4. The combination of the above make it effective. The military should have warned the troops about the hazards associated with DU, but to not use it is silly. The hazards are easily mitigated. The burning oil fields probably causes more heath issues that DU.
Also remember, when talking about the rounds expended in these sites tonnage is for an unfired round. Say a 30mm round weighs 3 pounds (just an example, no idea what a complete cartridge weighs), 2.5 pounds is powder and casing.
I’ve been to Fallujah, they have a lot more problems than breathing heavy metal particles. You can see oil slicks in freshly pumped well water among them.
Holy shit actual facts?!?!?!?! I truly believed it was impossible to find facts anymore save the 3 other channels I watch. you have a new sub friend. thank you for telling objectional truths!
I recall recently they'd narrowed down Gulf War syndrome to low doses of Sarin. While Iraq didn't use chemical weapons in the war they had stockpiles that took direct fire. It's on the wiki page for GWS
2:39. Shows training inert ammunition. In NATO (i.e. Western armed forces) anything painted blue is training prop. Any other color and its a service munition or weapon. Black for armor piercing, green for ball, white tip for WP, yellow/red/sometimes green also for fragmentation, red is specialty.
In WW2 they were using Tungsten in anti-tank kinetic rounds. DU is much denser. Uranium has a half life of between 700 million to 4 billion years, which means it's only slightly radioactive. Coal is probably more dangerous, but so having no heat in the wintertime. DU is added to the mix of various aggregates used in the construction of nuclear reactors. Lead is also slightlyradioactive.
The interesting thing about DU versus Tungsten in US weapons systems is that the US, as you noted, has HUGE supplies of DU, so the availability is high and the cost is very low. Considering its usefulness, those two additional factors make it a winner. A simple search of Tungsten producing countries shows that the US doesn't make the top 10 on the list, though a number of our geopolitical adversaries do; so sticking with DU instead of risking reliance on our adversaries makes good sense.
Depleted Uranium is mostly used in tank shells those APDS to be specific because they are highly effective at piercing through armor even if it is a composite modern armor because steel alone is no longer a valid material to make a Tank out of due to what is called chemical shells such as HEAT and HESH which were specifically made to take out heavy thick Soviet armor but then tanks evolved to what I mentioned earlier to composite plates or having composite armor covering the whole tank then reactive armor was also applied and tested so HEAT and HESH were no longer an option so DU APDSFS shells were created but are they always going to do their job? No because if they don't hit a weak spot on the Tank the Sabo simply shatters or gets defected or bounces off the armor however if it manages to penetrate the Tank it goes through without any problem killing anything in its path
When these projectiles impact a hard surface the heat of compression ignites the material and it burns through armor. That's why it's used. Because it works.
If they want fragmenting rounds, just make an aluminum round, and fill it with tungsten bars possibly lightly epoxy in place. It will shoot out the tungsten bars on impact.
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Do a story on the 3rd wave high school experiment history.
Whoever wrote the script should really learn what uranium isotopes are. Depleted uranium isotopes are extremly radioactive. Even worse, it is an extremly dense heavy metal.
www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=Side+effects+of+depleted+uranium+exposure
A simple google search proves this video wrong.
In breeding are norm in Middle East and it’s a main aspect why they are sick
If the general population would know how much Uranium is spread out on the fields where their food is grown, they would flip out. Simply google Uranium in phosphate fertilizer.
Nice whitewash video on DU. 👎 The title should be "DU For Normies". With the closing lines: "Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep." I've been following and reading about DU for 20 years. For those of you who want to learn of the death and horror caused by DU, I recommend 2 documentaries to get started: "The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium and The Dying Children." And "Beyond Treason". Also, contrary to every science book and website: alpha particles are *not* stopped by a sheet of paper. This is proven false by an alpha cloud chamber experiment on RUclips, where the content creator discovers that chicken skin over an alpha emitter, still emits alpha particles into the air. But then again, don't listen to me, I don't have 3.14 million RUclips subscribers. I am just some guy in the comment section. What do I know? I have given up on trying to reason with people with facts and evidence.
The fact that DU is a heavy metal far outweighs the residual radiation it emits. Heavy metal poisoning is the true danger. Unless of course you happen to be in the vehicle it impacts.
DU rounds as they penetrate armor layers is "self sharpening" --- have watched a few videos about this and its counter intuitive but it is true. In ww2 since U wasnt in common use (aka none for most part) they tried to use wolfram aka tungsten as the penetrators.
As purely a guess, I'd bet that the cause of many of these health effects comes from the common military practice of burn pits for waste disposal
@@nimbusentry7093 its also a claim that they were exposed to chemical agents from the iraqis
@@nimbusentry7093Your guess is closer to the true than you think sir. As a former Abrams tanker who served in Iraq in 2004 those damn burn pits were far more toxic than any DU that sat behind me for months
In the impacted vehicle you would still get the heavy metal poisoning, only it would be quite accute and instant😅
I was exposed to depleted uranium during the First Gulf War. My battalion's tent city was about 200 meters downwind from the ammunition dump for the airbase where we were stationed. I have many of the symptoms associated with DU: weakened soft tissue, weakened bone density, and other symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome. I have been wearing dentures since I was 32, and tooth loss is common among Gulf War veterans. I am part of a long-term study by the Veterans Administration. These symptoms may be complicated by the injuries I had during my service in many areas of the world, especially when I was with XVIII Airborne Corps. I am also part of a study by the VA into long-term effects of concussion, for example.
There are other potential causes of Gulf War Syndrome including the PB pills we were required to take, and the "pudding shots" that we received before deployment. In both cases, some received the real deal while others received a placebo. The soldiers of the Gulf War were not only fighting a war, we were test subjects without knowing it.
There are still no definitive results from any of the studies into the reason why so many Gulf War veterans are sick, but the studies continue, and the answers may not come until after my death.
My father died of a disease caused by Agent Orange, but that was not acknowledged until ten years after his death at the age of 49. I always wonder what my kids will learn ten years after my demise.
My uncle also suffered from agent orange. You are appreciated.
Just got my 80% disability rating and finally went through the screening. Right there with ya!
@@Buconoir Thanks, Buddy.
Thank you for your service and sacrifice. We wish the government took as good care of our veterans as the do the politicians.
Studies, in reference to the video, like these seem to me like a way to get ahead of information. That seems to follow in the future. Subverting information always seems to be followed by a long study pointing in opposition.
"Depleted" in the context of uranium refers to its radioactivity, which is minimal. The real hazard from use of depleted uranium munitions is the resultant toxicity due to heavy metal contamination.
Exactly, the scare tactics about a radiation level less than naturally occurring uranium it part of the reason that we won't be able to both produce energy and deal with climate change anytime in the near future.
Heavy metal contamination is a major problem with literally any metals used for projectiles, DU, tungsten, lead, copper, brass, etc. In fact lead is probably much more of a risk given how much of it can be used in war relative to DU ammunition.
Depletion does not reduce the radioactivity significantly! Only the fissible U-235 is enriched for NPP usage or military abuse. The danger for people when ingested or inhaled or via injuries remains huge.
I'm educated in radiation protection, so I know what I say.
Lead, Tungsten, Depleted Uranium, bullets are toxic whatever they are made off,, !
Didn't the video present data which showed no additional toxicity from its use and exposure?
"Your heavy metal poisoning and radiation sickness is not service related"
The VA
Agent orange was safe when it was first used.
@@davidelkins3229wtf did you just say to the world 😂
Quack bang out
Thats what they told us after Desert Storm
There was a doc about du called beyond treason. Same schtick
I was an infantry soldier in Somalia in 93. We stayed at places that had lots of depleted and expired ammunition. Old Soviet supply dumps, etc. Overtime EOD gathered up over 40 tons of it and blew it up (what a sight). But now, 30 years later at least 10 of us are already gone (before the age of 50) and most of us have respiratory issues. This is a company I’m talking about. It does seem quite high and we were given enormous amounts of inoculations prior to every deployment and we had to take mefloquine tablets which give you the worst headache and I think were eventually banned. So, don’t become a soldier if you wanna live long.
Not to mention it's almost a prerequisite for most deployments than you smoke at least a pack and a half of cigarettes, and drink massive amounts of caffeine, in any form you can obtain.
There's no such thing as a "healthy" MRE either. They are calorie dense sustenance meant to keep soldiers going for the next bit of adrenaline rushed action.
In conclusion, anyone who signs on the dotted line and raises their hand for the pledge is acknowledging that they have given both their physical and mental selves over to the whims of those in control of those who ultimately order their lessers into harms way.
The fact that you thrived, survived and returned to civilian life is a testament to your training, your personal attention to your safety, and your willingness to do what it takes to get back to those who are dependent on you and others like yourself.
Good job, soldier!
P. S.
I also got that whole "overseas package" of injections, and also suffer from COPD, hearing loss, and have been a (upper) denture wearer for over 15 years.
@DDtch6669 Dirty Soviet conditions and Chernobyl had nothing to do with it I’m sure.
@DDtch6669 Had nothing to do with the civil wars and all that right?
@DDtch6669 Of course it is. And the tapes and murders and all that?
@@SeanP7195typical american excusing its government use of DU on foreign soil just wait till they start using it on you
Uranium exhibits higher performance as a kinetic energy penetrator than tungsten alloys because it exhibits greater strain hardening, and so the adiabatic shear bands form closer to penetrator/target interface, causing a uranium penetrator to "self-sharpen" to a greater degree than tungsten, mushrooming less, and preserving a lower frontal cross section during penetration.
Evan -- Are you saying that uranium is harder than tungsten?
@@LaHayeSaint No, it's not harder. If I wanted to say that it's harder, I'd have said that.
@@Evan_Bell Evan -- Could you say then as the round penetrates the armour, it is tempered from the heat and kinetic energy, to make it harder. Does the steel of the tank breach temporarily melt to form a ferro-uranium alloy on penetration?
I'm not a metallurgist, so please bear with me!
@@LaHayeSaint No, it's not tempering. It's work hardening. No, the penetrator and armour do not melt.
@@LaHayeSaintwhat more or less is happening as it penetrates the armor is that is sheers close to where the strain of the penetration happens (closer to the point), causing it to become sharp again, instead of say, peeling back and curling outwards. This is what gives it its generating power.
From what I learned in my ballistics class for my gunsmithing program. With bullets, there's something called Sectional Density. It's essentially how dense the bullet is in relation to its diameter. It's the one factor that absolutely dictates how good a bullet is at penetration or perforation. Depleted Uranium is the heaviest natural element. This makes it perfect for rounds that need to punch through armor. Form factor is big part of Ballistics Coefficients: Sectional Density/ form factor = BC. The higher the BC, the better the bullet is at overcoming air resistance. Not only that, but higher BC bullets perform better at long distance, they tend to maintain momentum at longer ranges, too.
its also how U falls apart as the leading edge of the penetrator ablates, it shears away leaving a point as the length of the penetrator dwindles... KE = 1/2 MV^2.... as you lose mass but keep the velocity up the KE stays higher than keeping all the mass...
Tungsten is more dense than DU
You are confusing density and molecular weight.
Yes uranium is the heaviest but is one factor that affect weight density the other being how tightly the atoms can be packed. In fact the video cited 7 denser element including tungsten.
The big advantage that DU would bring over tungsten if the self sharpening effect and its relative cheapeness, since DU is a waste product with only few current industrial and commercial applications, it is dirt cheap, cheaper than uranium ore and much cheaper than tungsten.
Please nite, I'm NOT an expert and am only dtating my understanding because Im genuinely interested in understanding where I'm misinformed.
Doesnt hardness and velocity play a significant role in penetration?
As an example, lead is dense... but it is also soft. Copper is (proportionally) light and hard. In my reloading experience (NOT expert), solid copper bullets seem to move significantly faster, and penetrate significantly farther than lead.
Am I misunderstanding a mechanism of penetration that's causing me to use my experience as flawed confirmation bias?
(I promise, Im genuinely asking)
@@marcush4741You are partly correct. Hardness helps but solid copper bullets, like steel shot for shotguns, is also much lighter than lead. This lighter weight causes the round to lose energy much faster than a heavier bullet would as it passes through an object (known as "momentum loss" in ballistic terms). Thus, heavier lead bullets will often penetrate farther than lighter copper bullets in gel or other ballistic mediums at the same velocity.
FYI, the image thrown up at 2:19 is a belt of inert training rounds, not DU tipped projectiles. Any time you see that bright blue color, it's inert training ammo.
I'll throw on a little additional info/context for any that need/want it, they are inert in the fact that aren't explosive, armor piercing or incendiary and are used in training because it's more cost effective... In cases of the 25mm training rounds, the round is still a live round that will fire out of the gun, just without the Explosive or Incendiary effect on target. Same with the 5" "training" projectile which is loaded separate from the powder charge.
Blue doesn't necessarily mean fully inert.
In this case it does however this is not a hard/fast rule for all ordnance. If you didn't put it there and it looks like ord, call EOD/law enforcement.
that's funny as shit, I don't find this video useful at all. I could just google that depleted uranium is called LEAD in less than a half a microsecond, also, it releases it's energy directly upon impact which is the whole point of it. much like a moab rod. oh sorry were you busy for the next 15 minutes of this video?
@@baplotnik Hi Nik. Waste of 15 minutes? Yep! Except that Simon Whistler is entertaining, which **is** mostly the point of his videos. So... there's that! 😆As you undoubtedly know, Lead (Pb) and Uranium (U) are chemically and elementally two DIFFERENT substances. Lead flattens and expands upon impact whereas uranium fractures into self-sharpening shards while maintaining its overall projectile shape (especially when alloyed with Titanium as explained in the video). Therefore totally different from each other--except that they both are heavy metals (duh) and both used in ammunition--albeit lead is commonly used and uranium much less commonly and only for special purposes.
@@baplotnikDU is more dense than lead. Take 5 more seconds on that search.
Just to point out, Gulf War Syndrome was not solely blamed on DU, it was naps tablets and the cocktail of drugs given to the soldiers, a short term affect to keep the soldiers fighting, which then led to some of the soldiers having long term effects, to I will add a Army Medical Advisor said "Don't plan on having any more kids" That and the fact that two babies within out Regiment were born disabled in the year that followed.
I was in the first Gulf War, (UK) We were given a cocktail of injections just before the start, and a vast majority of our squadron was then sick for a few days making them Not Combat fit. When I later retired from the military we could demand a copy of our Medical Documents to pass on to our civilian doctors of any injections, medical ailments Etc. The section in my records that covered Late 90 - 92 was missing, basically, the pages were removed with a discrepancy in Page numbers.
@@rock0122Sorry to hear that fella, I served with 4 Regt AAC and the same thing happened when we recieved our injections and when I firts retired (as I rejoined) my docs were altered.
i served in Iraq the 2nd time and had several friends and knew several ppl that had very bad reactions similar if not the exact same depending on the persons. Im not saying that it was a large number, but a minority of soldiers are still having similar symptoms to this day during deployments. I currently have friends who have had severe reactions to them causing the immune systems to completely shut down. Of course lawsuits have been filed and the courts are pushing everything out till my fiends die. @@rock0122
you got any aditional information on that?
@@stefishawhat do you wanna know?
A note on pyrophoria - it isn't just in powder form that it burns, high amounts of friction will also cause uranium to start burning. Going through hardened armor means you're going to be facing a lot of friction.
Watched a video on this last night. They're called DUDs. In the 1970's they manufactured 7.62 rifle rounds as a experimental trial. They are extremely effective for going through body armour. Tungsten rifle rounds are 2nd best.
They are extremely hard to source due to the limited amount made. Fun fact in the 1970's some were accidentally sent to police stations mixed in with their standard ammunition deliveries
DU is cheaper though then Tungsten? That is weird that is harder to source.
@@dianapennepacker6854 tungsten is quite rare while depleted uranium i believe is the byproduct you get when you enrich uranium that I believe wouldn't have many uses otherwise.
@@dianapennepacker6854 I think it is due to the manufacturing process for the round. It catches fire on contact going through plated armour. Must be complicated to form into a precise shape. Plus you've got the waste products from production, has to be done in a safe environment, then legally disposed off.
Their's added complication of the rifle rounds falling into a federal category due to being classed as nuclear material. Its crazy to think that some was accidently sent to police stations with their usual ammunition supplies.
If you look on RUclips for DUDS 7.62 rifle rounds, you will see the same video
@@Shadow-bk1im It could ultimately be used in a nuclear fuel cycle.
i thought it was/is DUP ?
Fun fact, early Boeing 747s had DU counterweights and you can still own an unlimited amount of DU in Canada without a licence as long as it is used as aircraft counterweights.
i wouldn't touch it for the same reason i avoid Cadmium.
In that function, it's pretty inoffensive, though touching it may be a bad idea. You can stop alpha particles with a sheet of paper, yet ingested or breathed in they can wreak havoc.
@@sillysad3198It really isn't that radioactive (billions of years of half-life!), as long as you don't get it inside your body (it is a heavy metal after all) you won't have any problems.
@@sillysad3198 Is as safe as Lead to handle and the PPE for both is the same.
@@sillysad3198Cadmium from tire wear is why people in the know don't forage roadside mushrooms and berries.
My friend did 2 tours in Iraq. He said they were all prohibited from approaching wreckage destroyed by DU ammo. The worst risk cited was its toxicity after fragmentation to dust level. What sandstorms taken from outside was one thing, but a lot of it remained in destroyed interiors, often baked in by fire. The biggest problem were locals, who were swarming battlefields to harvest metals from wreckage. It was impossible to change their minds by explaining what they are facing, so they resorted to telling locals the battle sites are haunted.
Iraq has zero healthcare infrastructure in many of its regions, and in the end, even if half of the local population died of cancer suddenly... no one would notice. Or, in many cases, no one would want to notice.
More than 300 Italian veterans who developed cancer after being exposed to depleted uranium ammunition have won court cases against Italy’s military. Some of the cases were brought by their bereaved relatives.
The judgments have mounted in recent years, with Italian courts repeatedly finding a link between cancer and service in the Balkans where such weapons were fired.
Although Italy does not have depleted uranium weapons in its own arsenal, Italian police and soldiers were deployed to Bosnia and Kosovo where NATO allies fired the controversial ammunition in the 1990s.
Justice served
Back in the early 80s, I worked for a Swiss machine tool company. I had to go to Honeywell in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to train people on a machine. This is the plant where they make depleted uranium bullets. When I got there the first day they said don't step in the water, there were puddles everywhere. Apparently, they had a DU fire. It burns like magnesium hard to put out. It was the grinding operation that caught fire. Left me a little unsettled.
As to your closing statement, I can't think of a single round I would want to be on the receiving end of.
How about a free round at a bar?
A merry-go-round?
Or a round of applause?
If you had a really bad day...
Given the low "hit rate" quoted earlier against a tank, you probably get little benefit from ducking/hitting the deck.
If I put a ton of depleted uranium in my basement, it wouldn't increase the radioactivity. The radon leeching out of the ground and settling down there is far more radioactive.
I certainly wouldn't recommend snorting a line of depleted uranium dust though. I wouldn't recommend inhaling dust of any heavy metal, they're all toxic.
Thats what i think all of these DU apologists are missing - it isnt the radioactivity thats deadly so much as the vaporized heavy metals fumes being inhaled. All heavy metals are carcinogenic ,and inhaling them into your lungs is arguably the worst way to be exposed to them .
@@mikebryant614 I wonder if, and if yes, how much more Uranium rounds pollute/create dust and vapors on impact compared to other rounds.
The far superior penetrating power of depleted uranium compared to tungsten is well documented. US and British tankers carry DU 120mm penetrators. We also have 25mm and .50 caliber DU, but those were less used after the initial combat in the Second Gulf War. The Warthog used 30mm DU. We use it for a reason (better than tungsten), despite the risk. Depleted doesn't mean "not radioactive" or "safe," it just means not hot enough to be fissile or weapons grade.
Nah, depleted means it's not financially viable to further seperate more and less radioactive isotopes.
I don't know much about combat effectiveness, I think it's just a way for the US to get rid off nuclear waste. It has to be very cheap to buy bc if nobody buys it, it will have to be stored, you can't just throw it away. Unless you do the throwing with guns.
@@leow.2162in counties on the other side of the world lol
I was in the US Navy for 11 years and one day I was on the 0-4 level on the ship and the GMs were doing maintenance on the CIWS (close in weapons system). They offered to let me hold just one shell and I was absolutely unprepared for just how heavy uranium is. It feels at least 3 times heavier than iron. Given that CIWS can fire 6000 rounds a minute, any missile successfully hit by CIWS literally gets shredded within a mile of the ship.
A golf size ball weighs a kilo
I wondered this same thing, so I called a PhD Chem friend of mine that had written a number of papers on his specialty, metallurgy. Depleted Uranium is ~70% heavier than lead, and as hard as steel. So it is a perfect armor piercing material.
I was a crewmember on a Bradley. We never used them. If we ever needed to deal with an armored vehicle, we had the TOW missile. It was expensive, not as effective as the TOW, no one wanted to handle them, no one wanted to deal with the paperwork and transporting it, no one wanted to deal with clean up of the fired rounds (at a range, a battlefield, or a destroyed vehicle), and no one wanted to deal with any rounds not used (we would just shoot off unused regular rounds because turning it in was a headache, a DU round would be over 10 times more annoying).
WHAT KIND OF PAPERWORK DID YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH BECAUSE OF THIS TYPE OF AMMUNITION?
@@Genesh12 I never had to deal with it, but the military loves it paperwork. So I can't even begin to give an exact amount of forms that needed to be signed. Here is an example. We were given Kevlar vests and had to sign for that, later they gave us SAPI plates (Small Arms Protective Inserts) for those vests, so we had paper work for that. A bunch of paperwork just for one item really. The Supply sergeant had to deal with their own paperwork for those vests. So for DU rounds there would be paper work for them as ammunition in general for the supply sergeant, the First sergeant, and the captain. The people running the range would have their paperwork, and anyone who would handle them. There would be classes about them being DU, safety, clean up, and so on. That would cascade down to everyone already mentioned. The individual crews would get paperwork when getting issued the rounds, to show they had their classes on the DU safety, handling, and cleanup. There would be paper work on where the rounds would be used and showing where they were cleaned up. The Company/Troop/Battery CBRN and medic would have their onslaught of paperwork for their roles. When we went to the range, even for our rifles, and we didn't use all the rounds issued to the unit, we would fire them off because trying to return a box of ammunition that had some remaining was such a pain for the officers, they would tell us to just use them up. Even if we cracked open a crate and never used a single rounds from them. Once that seal is broken, the paperwork monster would appear. If you ever has watched the movie 'Brazil' and the comedic look at bureaucracy and forms in the movie, that would what the paperwork would be like.
It is used on the Abrams A1 Tank and the A-10.
@@Mortlupo bro the bradely has an auto canon.
@@MortlupoGo to the 3 minute 49 second mark of the video. Tell me what it says from that point to 3 minutes 57 seconds.
Minor quibble for your Editor: any ammo with blue-tips are inert training rounds.
No DU, no explosives, they are used mostly due to lower costs.
Some practice ranges are smaller than the maximum range of live ammo...training ammo is often loaded for shorter ranges.
Likewise with BDU-33. Training round painted blue, same aerodynamics as a Mk82 and emits a puff of smoke to signify where it hits. AIM-9 has a blue version too.
Minor quibble for you pirobot. There are several rounds that have a blue tip that are NOT inert. The U.S. Military has been making BLUE TIPPED "Incendiary" rounds since WW2. They range in size from rifle bullets up to cannon rounds.
Before trying to correct someone else, make sure YOU are correct! I understand that your small knowledge was meant to imply that most inert training devices are painted blue. Just be careful of the information you are putting out. Someone with as little knowledge could end up hurting themselves or others. Thanks for being observant though.
You mean "any ammo with a blue round" as blue tips are incendiaries.
No one cares @@billyo.9969
@@billyo.9969 Those are small arms ammunition. Large caliber, 20mm and up (to include 40mm grenades), uses blue only to mean training ammunition (NOT inert! All training ammunition is inert, but not all inert ammunition is for training). In military terminology, "inert" only refers to the projectile, so live rounds can still be considered inert if the projectile does not explode.
For @pirobot668beta, as he said, not all blue-tips are inert. That only applies to 20mm and up. However, inert does not mean no DU, it just means that the projectile does not explode. DU sabot rounds are considered inert
My stepdad recieved a givernment letter stating that while they could neither confirm nor deny the presence of depleted uranium on the ship he was posted on, the Canadian government strongly suggested that everyone that served on his class of ship should get checked for cancers (something hes had and dealt with previously)
My friend Chris Williams was a tank commander during Gulf 1. He never smoked, drank, and his job was not around any cancer causing materials . He developed lung cancer a few years after he came home. He had surgery and other treatments and was cancer free for several years. It returned a second time and took away one of the finest men I ever knew. He told me on several occasions how they drove through smoke from burning vehicles and how common this was for armor as well as infantry. He was certain the DU is what caused his cancer.
Depleted Uranium isnt all that radioactive, but it is one of the densest heavy metals, and all heavy metals are extremely toxic carcinogens that have been shown repeatedly to cause cancer. Inhaling vaporized heavy metals is one of the worst ways to be exposed to them simply due to how the lungs work, and how they are made . It is entirely plausible that inhaling DU caused his cancer, not via the radioactivity, but due to it being a carcinogenic heavy metal , regardless of its active radioactivity.There are heavy metals that are not radioactive at all - But they are still deadly carcinogens that can certainly cause cancer and other life threatening issues if ingested / inhaled.
Lets remember, plastic, as it breaks down, also produces toxic by products some of which are likely to be carcenogenic. We all breathe, eat and drink micro plastics daily and they have been found in our organs - latest studies show micro plastic has now been found in male reproductive organs. Cancer rates are going up rapidly. We'll all be joining Chris Williams sooner than we should thanks to our daft lifestyle. We know war, heat, drought, injesting oil based pollutants (including plastic) etc is bad for us yet we let our 'leaders' allow this to carry on.
I met a 21 year old woman who had lung cancer, she never did any of that either and had lived a very healthy childhood. She died at 22.
I was an environmental engineer, and at 3:10 I heard a common logic process among humans. The government has to stockpile the uranium (? because it's bad ?) so one way to reduce this stockpile is to spread it all over the place... such as use the military to scatter it over the Earth (???)
-- I want to believe Simon didn't quite mean that the way it sounded. (I certainly listened to that part over & over enough.)
"The solution to pollution is delusion." I think that saying goes back to the 60's and 70's.
@@phiksit dilution, not delusion. Although, if the population is drugged and propagandized sufficiently....
Depleted Uranium was also used used as counterweights on aircraft control surfaces. I've handled it a few times and was amazed by the weight of it. We swapped out the counterweights back in the mid-nineties to tungsten weights.
see your doctor soon
@@johnnyllooddte3415 Why? It's literally less radioactive than the uranium in the ground. DU has a radioactivity of 2.5mSv. Do remember you are bombarded with radiation every single day. normally at a rate of 0.2mSv from the earth, sun, and everything around you.
a long-haul flight, due to the altitude and reduced atmosphere can hit 3mSv, yet you don't see pilots all running to their doctors for radiation? and they spend their careers at these radiation levels.
Meanwhile, a CT scan ranges from 2-30mSv yet you'll happily lay on a CT scanner if needed without question of the radiation dose.
Radiation is this boogeyman that a lot of people don't understand as so fear unnecessarily because they cant see it.
Meanwhile in reality we know what is and isn't safe in regards to radiation and it's not as dangerous as many people like to think.
Man the alpha radiation isnt even gonna go through ur skin bro@@johnnyllooddte3415
Why is this comment section full of comments stating stuff that was mentioned in the video as if it's new information. He said it was used as weights in fixed wing aircraft.
@@FalconX88oh damn did he also talk about the density and self-sharpening aspects? reading the comments I thought he didnt talk about those.
Don’t know about those other countries but I would guess a lot of the health effects in Iraq and Kuwait could be caused by the deliberate igniting of the oil fields by the Iraq regime. Burning millions of gallons of raw crude oil is going to cause some serious health effects.
The uneducated general public has a very bad tendency to casually dismiss the very well-known carcinogenic effects of things that seem normal to us, like burning fossil fuels, while just assuming that _every damn thing_ with _any_ kind of connection to that scary "nuclear" stuff will cause cancer just by looking at it for a few seconds.
Plus they don't seem to understand that all of this stuff is naturally occurring and _comes from inside the Earth_ and isn't magically created in a lab out of "chemicals" (of course, these are the kind of people who don't actually understand what "chemicals" are, think that they are all glowing green goo created in test tubes, and will get violently angry at you if you try to explain to them that everything they eat or drink or _breathe_ is made of "chemicals.")
This is why the idiotic Anti-Nuclear Movement exists and has caused so many nuclear power plants to either be shut down or never built, and instead lead to even more fossil fuels power plants to be built, which cause _so damn much_ more cancer and environmental problems than clean nuclear plants ever would.
The Anti-Nuclear Movement has caused so much death and environmental destruction across the planet that it could be accused of war crimes.
That and the burn pits commonly used for waste disposal during military operations
Saddam Huiesan reportedly used chemical weapons within Iraq, but not during the gulf war as far as I'm aware of.
Dubya lied about those WMDs. Iraq 2 was all about oil and filling the pockets of his buddies.
@ryanadshead4809 wouldn't surprise me if the chemicals were still in the dirt thus being kicked up by the time the gulf war came around
Radiation tends to be understood backwards by most people. Uranium isn't in fact particularly radioactive as far as such things go.
It breaks down naturally extremely slowly which is where the radiation comes from for the most part. Its still hot, don't get me wrong, but that's a function of scale and mass more than anything.
By and large the *shorter* the half life the more radioactive a material is, as it breaks down more often and consequently produces radiation at a higher rate.
This is why uranium miners get radiation damage not from uranium with a 4 billion year half life but from one of its decay products, radium at 1600 years and one of its decay products radon at 4 days
This is also why a cobalt salted bomb concept would work. Even though the direct explosive yield would be relatively small, the mini nuke would convert the cobalt[59] in to cobalt[60] that puts out enough radiation to kill *any* living thing ...but 20 years after the explosion the region would be about as radioactive as the down wind side of a coal plant
Thank you, I facepalm every time people seem to imply that a long half-life makes an isotope more dangerous.
The issue with the Radon is true, but all other things you describe are beyond reality. Should give you a couple of lessons about radio chemistry and radiation protection. Would take some hours...
@@dietmarnieder9834 A quick google of cobalt salted bombs will return multiple scientific papers and articles on both salted bombs and cobalt bombs in particular.
As to the other part of what I said, that's exactly how radioactive decay and half lives work.
A half life is how long it takes a given mass of a radioactive element to decay and reduce its mass of that element by half.
Radioactive decay is the decay of heavier elements in to lighter ones, with a byproduct of ionizing radiation.
The faster a kilo of an element reduces to 0.5 kilo the more often it is putting out radiation.
in particular, U238, the primary isotope in DU has a half life of 4.5 billion years and puts out radiation almost exclusively in the alpha band which is why it is used to contain much more dangerous radioactive elements..like cobalt[60] which has a half life of a little over 5 years and puts out high quantities of gamma radiation.
@@dietmarnieder9834 Please detail what he got wrong. It's not much use for anyone to say he is wrong and then not explain what he got wrong.
@@dietmarnieder9834 Give me the tldr
Seems that I've been misled over the years, so a big Thank You for correcting me. I spent some time in the Royal Artillery, but my primary weapon wasn't a gun that fired shells, it was a surface to air missile. I was always under the impression that when Uranium 238 decays, it becomes Lead 206 (It does.....This is correct). What I was wrong about, is that I'd assumed that depleted Uranium was uranium which had decayed / been used as a radiation source to the point where it had become Lead 206, therefore essentially DU artillery / cannon shells were essentially mainly just lead with a small portion of U 238. NOW I understand what all the fuss is about!
It takes over 4 BILLION years for uranium to change to lead. Not exactly overnight!
It's not wearing out the gun that A-10 pilots are actually worried about. Its the fact that continuously firing the gun stalls the aircraft.
A-10s were designed around the GAU so they wouldn’t stall from firing. You might be confused with Soviet aircraft.
@@Spaceballerr in theory the GAU-8 Avenger creates enough recoil, it could theoretically stall the aircraft. But, it was also noted the firing rate required would possibly melt the barrels before that moment.
Obviously they never tried the theory
@@Spaceballerr I've always heard that continuous fire causes it to stall. The gun doesn't stall it when they burst fire the gun but it does stall under continuous fire. They didn't worry about continuous fire because the A-10 shouldn't be on target more than a few seconds anyway.
DU rounds have an aluminum jacket to prevent barrel wear,because the DU is hard and won't engage the barrel rifling.
@@ianbelletti6241 Why would an aircraft's gunfire rate have anything to do with the aircraft stalling?
As a nurse who used to care for nuclear workers and uranium minders/ millers/ haulers, and treating their cancers, i don't believe a word of that CDC report. I've seen too much
Having also worked in this industry all my life, I have to agree with you. The CDC say DU is fine as the clean up would cost too much and take too long ! "The ALPHA content is minimal". YUP that`s all it takes !
antivaxxer
"I've seen too much"
Literally the opposite. You've seen just anecdotes. Not data.
@hermesaquila642 good of you to assume 🙄
You receive more radiation from a sun burn then from du. Fact tested over and over.
i have not once ever seen him whistle
Have you seen the painting of his mother?
If you become a Patron and scroll back a long ways, there is a video of baby Simon whistling. :-) -Daven
What? He sometimes whistles a tad when saying his own name lol
@@Sk1m_Beeble Simon Sibilance, there's heaps of it in this vid.
U238 is used a radiation shielding, normally as an alloy. Despite having slight radioactive it’s self the high density, and heavy mass of the isotopes vastly out weigh its ability to stop much stronger radiation then the little it give off its self.
DU has the nice effect of setting things on fire when it hits them - not only from the kinetic energy it releases, but also the chemical reaction when it impacts something solid.
People tend to fear the things they don't understand. Depleted uranium is relatively harmless but most folks will never understand or believe it (for example, the slight bit of alpha radiation emitted by DU can't even pass through a single sheet of paper). There are hundreds of things on a battlefield more worrying than the kind of rounds the enemy is using.
Yeah, the biggest advantage is that it's cheap, it's dense and it's self-sharpening instead of mushrooming and deforming
Lead poisoning is actually more dangerous than the radioactive from DU too
@@LadyMaria_AstralClocktower FYI: The Potassium in a banana is almost 4 times more radioactive than DU and emits the more harmful beta and gamma radiation.
"Harmless " Alpha particles are actually very harmful when microscopic dust is inhaled or absorbed by mucous membranes. But the real danger of DU is the heavy metal toxicity. Much like lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium, they don't need to be radioactive to be extremely toxic. (I have a Grade 3 Industrial Wastewater Treatment Operator License and I reported directly to the DEP of whatever state I was working in to decontaminate an industrial site from nasty stuff. Like a plant that was leaking mercury from a swimming pool size tank into their septic leach field while they were filling railroad cars with chlorine gas 24/7. This creates organic forms of mercury (methyl and dimethyl mercury, 2 drops of which are 100% fatal in a few weeks). 30 years later, I've got cancer. Was it the mercury? Or the cadmium? I'll never know. But I would consider DU (especially dust, residue or any organic compound) to be extremely hazardous to handle and demand a Hazmat Suit. 30 years ago, I had no idea. Awe shucks, oh well.
Last week, the doctors dosed me with Technicium 99 and my bones literally glowed with Gamma Rays (half-life 24 hours). Wee! The wonders of nuclear medicine.
"Harmless " Alpha particles are actually very harmful when microscopic dust is inhaled or absorbed by mucous membranes. But the real danger of DU is the heavy metal toxicity. Much like lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium, they don't need to be radioactive to be extremely toxic. (I have a Grade 3 Industrial Wastewater Treatment Operator License and I reported directly to the DEP of whatever state I was working in to decontaminate an industrial site from nasty stuff. Like a plant that was leaking mercury from a swimming pool size tank into their septic leach field while they were filling railroad cars with chlorine gas 24/7. This creates organic forms of mercury (methyl and dimethyl mercury, 2 drops of which are 100% fatal in a few weeks). 30 years later, I've got cancer. Was it the mercury? Or the cadmium? I'll never know. But I would consider DU (especially dust, residue or any organic compound) to be extremely hazardous to handle and demand a Hazmat Suit. 30 years ago, I had no idea. Awe shucks, oh well.
Last week, the doctors dosed me with Technicium 99 and my bones literally glowed with Gamma Rays (half-life 24 hours). Wee! The wonders of nuclear medicine.
I'd argue that if you can see the Warthog coming, it's probably already too late
Reminds me a story of a tank crew getting heavy metal poisoning after drink beer that was poured down a tank barrel...
As a tanker I have never heard of anyone doing something this stupid. How was the beer drank? From the breech or the bore end? What was the reasoning for doing it in the first place?
Well there's a crew deserving of a fucking darwin award! 🙄🤨
I'm guessing from the breech and they were dumb fucking kids drinking around the motor pool. Hell probably got the idea from platoon shot smoking scene. Like I said it was a story and not all of em are true.
@@Thornbeard
I would assume the gun was depressed down and pour into the breech and collected in glass or something on the other end as it pour down out the barrel.
to pour it into the breech via the muzzle they would have need to elevate the cannon, at which point the end of the barrel would likely by fairly hard to reach.
It is important to note that the M242 Bushmaster 25mm is in the same velocity class as the M1A3 Tank's main gun and none of the other 20 and 30mm weapons can match its 1400m/s muzzle with sabot darts. There is a legit copy of it that fires the same ammunition with slightly higher feed reliability but nothing else can keep up with it short of the old 20mm recoilless rifle from some guy named Carl. The resultant conversion into dust by DU from it is marginally higher.
Carl Sagan was not Recoilless ;)
12:16 The vaporize ammonia would be stuck in the vehicle? If only there was a recently added hole for that gas to escape out of…
Very interesting and informative.
I found your narrative much more understandable at a 75% playback audio setting. You are a VERY FAST speaker! This was a very interesting video.
Great recommendation! Pardon the pun but it helped me with the dense information presented.
lol I'm from New Zealand we often play American content at 1.25
I play most youtube videos at 1.25x or 1.5. You're absolutely correct about this guy, he speaks too fast given the subject matter is fact heavy.
@@SimonBrisbane He speaks WAY TOO FAST.
The, in theory, highly effective DU ammunition of the GAU-8 is pretty much the main reason why it's gun was and partially still is falsely held to such a high degree as ANY vehicle hit by such a bullet will, for the pilot, appear to be out of commission due to the high likelyhood of the splintering fragments catching fire and therefor giving off a lot of smoke, even if the vehicle is still fully functioning.
The effectiveness of the GAU-8 is hyped to a degrees of other military myth like Tiger tanks being indistructable or T34 being most reliable ^^
Because its extremely dense so combined with the weight, size of the projectile and its velocity it will pierce any current armor.
Just a reminder, it's often simpler to say the battlegrounds are haunted than explaining the dangers of salvaging the metals to locals in warzones. Spooky ghost making people sick>explaining science.
Density. The radiation isn’t really a problem compared to the kinetic force
Great way to get rid of radioactive waste on enemy land
DU doesn’t have harmful radiation, it’s effectively harder lead. You hear the word uranium and freak out because you’re uneducated on the subject.
@@Spaceballerr Pretty sure it was a joke.
And while DU isn't as dangerously radioactive, it still starts its life as part of uranium-235, the other part of which we use in power plants and nuclear warheads. So dude also ain't technically wrong, either. Maybe smoke a bowl and chill out.
@@Spaceballerrtechnically true a DU round intact sitting there emits radiation that is easily blocked by your skin.
HOWEVER if you blast it into microscopic powder, say by shooting it at metal, then ingest or inhale a shard of that powder, that radiation becomes extremely dangerous over say a decade stuck in your lung
maybe you should educate yourself on the subject instead of ingesting radioactive military propaganda that doesn't mind poisoning people and then abandoning them by denying a direct link to their cancers and health issues....
they did the same thing to my father in vietnam with agent orange.
I have an adult half-sister in diapers that would say agent orange was real, but she can't speak...
@@SpaceballerrIt's actually adorable of you to call people out for their ignorance, when you are actually spouting the corporate line from the people that profit by this and are completely ignorant of both
a.) the way it's used in a warzone, isn't the same as a lab test about DU "safety"
b.) completely ignorant of the real world suffering some of these weapons cause.
if using DU rounds explodes one extra tank instead of a tungsten one, but causes 100 mothers to weep over their stillborns, or deformed children over the next 1000 years...have we fought a just war?
Then don't be an enemy.
Safe and effective they'll say 😂
don't notice patterns bigot
The great thing about DU is that it doesn't mushroom when it hits a target. It sharpens as it penetrates. It's a penetration round, not explosive due to its radioactivity (which is minimal).
bot
8:25 the video is about depleted uranium bullets, but then it goes to a quote about total bullets fired. While I have no doubt that 6,000,000,000 bullets were fired in and around Fallujah, I'm pretty sure that is referring to small arms lead bullets. If that number was for DU rounds that would be several million A-10 sorties where they emptied their magazines.
My unit used nothing but DU rounds in out M2s while in iraq. While most of the rounds fired were basic lead rounds, there were units out there firing DU rounds on the ground. No one in my unit knew the health risks until years later.
@@ericwieboldt7042 oh, I know that more than just the A-10 uses DU, but they also quote from a report that refers to "bullets" which also indicates small arms fire, not shells some of which would use DU.
I can see how the the video may confuse some people.
I do not always engage the enemy with armor piercing rounds but when I do, I DU. DU HAST. DU HAST MICH!
Regardless on how much DU actually contributed to the health problems talked about in the video, this is a solid example of why correlation doesn't automatically equate to causation. Always good to fully investigate something scientifically and explore all possible causes.
TLDR: The conspiracy theorists were wrong. Again.
I don't know which conspiracy theorists you are referring to, but they were wrong about the radiation, for sure. I'm not sure how wrong they may have been on the heavy metal positioning aspect, however. I'm also not sure whether that is caused by DU more than other metals or ammunitions.
@@holysecret2 Maybe I'm misremembering, but I'm pretty sure all of those were addressed in the video.
bovid
Another benefit of the DU crystals is that they're self-sharpening, when they impact armor the outside will sheer off allowing the rest to penetrate farther than tungsten rounds would.
During the first Gulf War CO's kept telling the soldiers NOT to mess with destroyed Iraqi equip. due to the use of DU ammo. Of course a good number of these soldiers were 18-20 year old chowderheads and played around anyway. Between exposure to the expended DU (willingly) and burn pits (not willingly), many vets developed Gulf War Syndrome as a result.
Although controversial, recent ecological studies have found out that tungsten cores in tank ammunition (which have been used since at least WW2) are probably worse for the environment than using depleted uranium amo. At least according to Chieftain
I think it's cobalt tungsten that is so toxic. That is why rings are tungsten carbide. Either way heavy metal poisoning is no joke. Between burning vehicles burning wells and burning trash the Gulf war was a very bad place to be. This video only focuses on radiation which was minimal
@@SmokeElectronics it’s probably cobalt tungsten as you say.
Regardless, beware of heavy metals
@14:20 I'm not sure what kind of cover you could even take against a warthog.
I'd like to point out that the A-10 was never specifically designed to kill tanks, it was designed as a Close Air Support platform to replace the A2 Sky Raider, so while killing tanks was a design consideration, it wasn't it's primary purpose
Plus this was in 1979, I’d like to see a new test with the exact same set up. I’d put money that there’d be a lot more rounds on target.
@mknewlan67 Considering the A10 initially came with near zero a/g targeting systems, and a bare bones gunfight, I agree. The weapon wasn't inaccurate, but the targeting systems were.
A basic optical sight may have worked in fighters, but they were engaging targets much closer than an A10 doing a gun run.
Current A10s can put rounds right where they want them thanks to improvements in a/g targeting technology.
Apparently people have forgotten that lead is also a heavy metal and is present in every non specialized round in common use among not only military forces but also civilian use
The army dropped lead in the 5.56 like 10-15 years ago
Always surprisingly good for a general information channel. Thank you.
Uranium is a pretty common and widespread metal throughout the Earth's crust. That being the case one would assume 4.5bn years of living here would mean organisms would have come to deal with exposure very well, which they do - natural Uranium in the soil or a lump of the stuff in the hand will cause no appreciable harm. So the question becomes, "Is it basically harmless, or in the case of battlefield use is it being delivered in away that might circumvent the usual self-protection mechanisms?"
The trouble is, Uranium's understandable if irrational reputation means it's rather less well understood than many other metals. So what do we do?
Personally I would suggest an abundance of caution in the face of ignorance is reasonable and we would best not use it for such purposes while we go find out. Sadly as this is never going to happen I would suggest looking for other causes of the seeming observed effects as if they are real other causes are far more likely.
Another pintless ramble, I suppose.
I'm exhausted. Talking fast for 14:45 minutes is auditory torture. Breathe.
Do you take cover from a warthog? It'll probably just miss if you're standing out in the open, but if you get behind shelter, you might be hit by shrapnel.
DU rounds are chambered for 338 LM with a hollow core of incendiary material. Works wonderfully for engagements on targets taking cover behind reenforced concrete.
DU only emits alpha particles, i.e. helium. This isn't the ionizing radiation that people are concerned about, radiation wise. Aside from getting hit by it as a soft target, it's main health risk is the same as other heavy metals: ingestion.
I always wondered why depleted uranium was used. Thanks for the video!
After listing man other uses I was elated at 4:33, the Warthog and it's beloved GAU-8. I'm almost as impressed with the aircraft as I am with the weapon system.
Standing on one's head at job interviews forms a lasting impression.
What a well spoken smart gentleman right here. Pleasure watching your vid, very interesting!
I’m just learning about these rounds now they sound really fun🤑🥳😁🦾
ONE DOESNT HAVE TO BOTHER ABOUT THE URANIUM AFFECTING ONES OWN TANKS AND PEOPLE AS THE DEPLEATED URANIUM STAYS IN ENEMY TANKS. BUT THE URANIUM SHOULD BE VOID OF ALL THE VALUEABLE PLUTONIUM IN IT.
how does the intense heat generated when firing and especially when it hits the target alter/excite the molecules of DU ?.
DU can be used for radiation shielding?
Depleted Uranium (DU) is used for several reasons. In no particular order:
1. It's relatively inexpensive because we have so much of it.
2. It's mass is useful for punching through armor.
3. It "self sharpens" which aids in punching through armor.
4. The combination of the above make it effective.
The military should have warned the troops about the hazards associated with DU, but to not use it is silly. The hazards are easily mitigated. The burning oil fields probably causes more heath issues that DU.
Great content. Very thorough and unbiased based on facts as always.
I'll make it super simple. Heavy shit goes through more stuff 😂
I thought the CIWS depleted Uranium rounds were 20mm, not the 25mm you mentioned at the 3:47 mark. In the Navy we called it a Sea Whiz!!
Also remember, when talking about the rounds expended in these sites tonnage is for an unfired round. Say a 30mm round weighs 3 pounds (just an example, no idea what a complete cartridge weighs), 2.5 pounds is powder and casing.
I’ve been to Fallujah, they have a lot more problems than breathing heavy metal particles. You can see oil slicks in freshly pumped well water among them.
Holy shit actual facts?!?!?!?! I truly believed it was impossible to find facts anymore save the 3 other channels I watch. you have a new sub friend. thank you for telling objectional truths!
its used in ammunition because when they tried to dispose of it in bicycle frames people got angry.
where can we buy some?
5:27 dude! do you buy cassette tapes?
How many channels does this dude have
11:00 it's not our fault, here are all my best friends who agree with me.
What about all the burning oil wells and other fires during the war. There was a lot more contamination than just DU .
I recall recently they'd narrowed down Gulf War syndrome to low doses of Sarin. While Iraq didn't use chemical weapons in the war they had stockpiles that took direct fire. It's on the wiki page for GWS
I could have sworn that years ago I saw a video showing US troops blowing up Iraqi ammo stores, so yeah.
Simon really hates the Warthog lol. He makes 1 video about how bad it is, and now in this video, he talks about the jet all over again lol
I had headphones in and i thought my neighbor was playing piano.
I'm curious - why the particle effects over still images?
why on earth do have you added the flickering effect to still images and some video? It makes the videos unwatchable
So, where can I buy them?
2:39. Shows training inert ammunition. In NATO (i.e. Western armed forces) anything painted blue is training prop. Any other color and its a service munition or weapon. Black for armor piercing, green for ball, white tip for WP, yellow/red/sometimes green also for fragmentation, red is specialty.
In WW2 they were using Tungsten in anti-tank kinetic rounds. DU is much denser. Uranium has a half life of between 700 million to 4 billion years, which means it's only slightly radioactive. Coal is probably more dangerous, but so having no heat in the wintertime. DU is added to the mix of various aggregates used in the construction of nuclear reactors. Lead is also slightlyradioactive.
What about the use of DU in tank armour?
Does DU "rust" or corrode to a power-like form if spent rounds are left in the environment?
Yes but I've had a hard time understanding if DU ordnance is soft metallic uranium or hard uranium oxide.
The interesting thing about DU versus Tungsten in US weapons systems is that the US, as you noted, has HUGE supplies of DU, so the availability is high and the cost is very low. Considering its usefulness, those two additional factors make it a winner. A simple search of Tungsten producing countries shows that the US doesn't make the top 10 on the list, though a number of our geopolitical adversaries do; so sticking with DU instead of risking reliance on our adversaries makes good sense.
Depleted Uranium is mostly used in tank shells those APDS to be specific because they are highly effective at piercing through armor even if it is a composite modern armor because steel alone is no longer a valid material to make a Tank out of due to what is called chemical shells such as HEAT and HESH which were specifically made to take out heavy thick Soviet armor but then tanks evolved to what I mentioned earlier to composite plates or having composite armor covering the whole tank then reactive armor was also applied and tested so HEAT and HESH were no longer an option so DU APDSFS shells were created but are they always going to do their job? No because if they don't hit a weak spot on the Tank the Sabo simply shatters or gets defected or bounces off the armor however if it manages to penetrate the Tank it goes through without any problem killing anything in its path
My dad said it's weird that I know this I was googling uranium in high school to freak people out because Rammstein
Hey, it's an interesting topic and you also learn a bit about chemistry and physics
When these projectiles impact a hard surface the heat of compression ignites the material and it burns through armor. That's why it's used. Because it works.
If they want fragmenting rounds, just make an aluminum round, and fill it with tungsten bars possibly lightly epoxy in place. It will shoot out the tungsten bars on impact.