Military Properties of DU

DU has characteristics that make it extremely attractive to the military. It is in plentiful supply, extremely dense (twice as dense as Lead) and hard, such that DU-tipped projectiles can penetrate armoured steel and reinforced concrete. In the 1970s, Pentagon weapons designers also discovered its pyrophoric properties, whereby it sharpens itself on impact (unlike tungsten rounds, which tend to musroom on impact) and becomes white hot. Burning at several thousand degrees Celsius, a DU projectile literally melts its way through the target. To this day, no armoured plate can withstand this "dart of fire".

Thereafter, the US army began to use DU as kinetic-energy penetrators, (so called, because they do not contain an explose charge, but rely solely on their mechanical force, to pierce the target) - effectively cylindrical rods of solid DU metal, which harden the nose cone of shells, missiles and bullets.
Eager to exploit this silver bullet and empty its expensive U238 storage tanks, the US government began giving DU away cheaply, to the military and to arms manufacturers. Over a dozen countries now possess DU ammunition, including the US, UK, France, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece and Turkey. DU was first used on the battlefield in the 1991 Gulf War (although many reports speak of Israel as having used American prototypes in the 1973 war), and has thus irreversibly blurred the distinction between conventional and unconventional warfare.

One of the biggest culprits is the American ground-attack warplane, the A10 "Warthog". It is armed with a 30mm Gatling gun that can fire 3900 rounds a minute, one in six of which is an explosive incendiary, while the other five contain a 300g DU penetrator. This means that each A10 can release 975 kg of DU per minute, but they normally fire in bursts of 100-200 rounds.
The other major acknowledged DU munition is the 120-mm tank round, which contains about 4 kg of solid DU.
DU is also used in tank armour, which is why US tanks proved virtually impervious to Iraqi gunners during the Gulf War.


 

Future Threats On An Unprecedented Scale

Recent investigations by the independent British researcher, Dai Williams have revealed a terrifying picture of massive new DU-based "bunker-busters" (or hard target guided smart bombs).
His January 2002 report, describes a classified "dense metal" in the new generation of bunker busters, that is twice as dense as steel (and hence can only be DU or Tungsten, the latter being too expensive to buy and manufacture), allowing warheads of the same length and weight to be 30% slimmer - more like explosive spears than bombs - thus penetrating much further.
Some of these warheads contain over a thousand tonnes of DU each (eg. the GBU-128, with 1,500 kg of DU), and the new hardened cruise missiles also contain several hundred tonnes. Finally, Williams notes the largest non-nuclear device in the US arsenal, the 20,000-pound "Big BLU", containing over 5 tonnes of DU, which came into service in early 2002.
Williams also concludes that the use of DU in existing weapons is more widespread than was believed, including the widely deployed Maverick and Hellfire air-to-ground missile (up to 30 kg of DU) and some anti-tank cluster bombs.
One further implication of a DU warhead, is the probability of 100% combustion into the lethal uranium oxide form (as opposed to the kinetic DU penetrators used in A10 bullets and tank shells, "only" 40% to 70% of which are oxidised on impact).

These new bunker busters were first widely used in Afghanistan, but prototypes were probably used on Yugoslavia (and maybe Iraq too, in the December 1998 "Desert Fox" bombardment, or since).

Dai Williams' report was reviewed by Robert James Parsons in Le Monde, March 2002
Williams published a follow-up report in September 2002, focussing on the dangers of a future DU war on Iraq.