Tuesday, September 1, 2009

You know you work on weapons when...(#4)

You end up asking yourself...what does "less lethal" mean?

Really, isn't it clear, either something is lethal or not lethal. If you don't know, then don't state it. Don't use some ambiguous phrase like less lethal.

In the munition world this probably means that you are too cheap to find out how lethal your munition is. I still don't think you should be able to measure the lethality of something but you can, I guess.

If you have less lethal munition, you are trying to be non-lethal but you don't know if it will possibly kill someone. Even munition that is labeled non-lethal can end up killing a person at some point. If you are standing too close to a non-lethal munition when it goes off, you might be in the "kill zone" and you shouldn't have been that close. I guess you will have learned your lesson. Or I think the engineers doing their testing and analysis shouldn't have been able to label their munition non-lethal because their testing and analysis should have showed that there was a possibility for the munition to be lethal.

Lethality should be black and white. Either it kills or it doesn't. But in fact, there are a lot of gray areas.

There is way to much talk around me and thought in me for me to be comfortable about lethality of weapons. How do I go on doing my job? I like the work, not the big picture, but the hour to hour grind of the engineering and I really like the people that I work with at ATK. They are why I continue what I do.

I thought this was going to be a quick, short post before bed but my passion against weapons got the best of me.

I am helping defend our country and helping our soldiers do their jobs better (at least that is what everyone keeps telling me).

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think lethality of a weapon also indicates the weapon's potential: how many people will be killed. If its potential is only one, the it is less lethal that weapon with potential of 50.