Offensive/Defensive Loads

[NARSES2]

Still trying to work out how you say a weapon is illegal in war, sounds a bit like I'm going to fight a war but with one hand tied behind my back

Don't forget Steve that origionally the cross-bow was not meant to be used against Christian's - according to a Papal edict anyway - and somewhere in the back of my mind (a dangerous and dark place) wasn't Pucket's origional machine gun designed to use round bullets against Christian's and square ones against non-Christians ?  

As for the JP233 it was designed for use in Europe where there isn't the space to have numerous runways - go to what is basically a desert and you have all the space you need.

Chris

[Hobbes]

The idea is to outlaw mines. These tend to last a lot longer than the war they were intended for, and are a bitch to clean up, so they end up making more civilian/peacetime casualties than hurting the people they were aimed at.

It wasn't the mines that were a problem with cleaning up after the first Gulf altercation, it was the cluster munitions that failed to explode that created most of the clean-up problems.  

AFAIK it wasn't the Gulf War that precipitated the mines treaty. It's places like Afghanistan and various African regions that have been saturated with land mines, often by combatants that don't keep records of where the minefields are and don't have the equipment or the inclination to clear a minefield once the war is over.  

[Geoff_B]

AFAIK it wasn't the Gulf War that precipitated the mines treaty. It's places like Afghanistan and various African regions that have been saturated with land mines, often by combatants that don't keep records of where the minefields are and don't have the equipment or the inclination to clear a minefield once the war is over.

Yeap it was the clean up in places like the Falklands, Afghanistan, Cambodia and Angola then finally the ex Yugoslavia republic that triggered the issue. They realised that modern mines are now designed to be pretty undectable and as a result remain lethal and deny use of an area long after it holds no military value.

The Gulf War did help highlight the issue of cluster bombs and their effects as allied forces were somewhat shocked by the long term ressidual effects from their own cluster bomb attacks. Scatter area was larger than anticpated often into civillian areas and unexploded munitions were greater than predicted.

BTW The US has not signed upto the accord as its still reliant on the massive minefield in Korea to divided the North from the South. It also still has its cluster bombs within its active arsenal. So Rockeyes are still valid for US Aircraft models.

Cheers

G B)