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US Army May Use Hollow Points In New Pistols In Violation Of International Protocol
A few months back, when "boots on the ground" trial balloons were floating around Washington, one argument made for sending so-called "forward spotters" to Iraq and possibly to Syria was that US airstrikes against ISIS needed to be made more efficient and more precise in order to minimize collateral damage.
As a reminder here’s an excerpt from a Bloomberg piece published on May 22:
Conducting precision airstrikes that avoid civilian casualties is more difficult without spotters using laser designators and other tools to guide them, particularly in and around cities, said a State Department official who spoke under ground rules requiring anonymity.
A U.S. airstrike in November against a different extremist group in Syria killed two children and wounded two adults, the Defense Department reported Thursday.
On Capitol Hill Thursday, retired General Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff of the Army, said deploying JTACs, also called forward air controllers, could quickly shift the balance against Islamic State by making its fighters more vulnerable to U.S. and coalition air attacks.
"Seventy-five percent of the sorties we are currently running with our attack aircraft come back without dropping bombs, mostly because they cannot acquire the target or cannot properly identify the target," he said. "Forward air controllers fix that problem."
As we noted at the time, carefully worded trial balloons don’t get much better than that. You see, the problem is that we are accidentally killing innocent children on our bombing runs and that’s if we’re lucky enough to be able to drop any bombs at all which apparently we only do a quarter of the time, and the whole "problem" could be "fixed" by deploying a couple of "spotters" with laser pointers.
Interestingly, officials seem to pay quite a bit more attention to collateral damage when citing civilian casualties can serve as a means to an end - an end like invading Syria, a state which is ripe for 'regime change.'
Conversely, when a drone strike vaporizes a 'high value' target from the stratosphere and a few innocents turn up in the smoldering wreckage, well, that’s just the cost of doing business if you’re the CIA.
In that context, we thought it was interesting that the US Army is considering using hollow point ammunition in their new standard issue handguns on the premise that doing so will reduce civilian casualties. Fragmenting ammunition does a lot more damage and thus has more "stopping power" than full metal jacket ammo, so one might reasonably suspect that the Army’s goal in giving every soldier a magazine full of hollow points is simply to increase the kill rate. Not so, says the Army - it’s all about preventing collateral damage. Here’s Army Times with more:
The Army is considering the use of expanding and fragmenting ammunition, such as hollow point bullets, to increase its next-generation handgun's ability to stop an enemy.
After a recent legal review within the Pentagon, the Army can consider adopting "special purpose ammunition," said Richard Jackson, special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War, according to an Army news release. This marks a departure from battlefield practices over a century old.
Jackson told Army Times that while this isn't the first approved use of such bullets in the military, the stance represented "a significant re-interpretation of the legal standard" for ammunition. He also said a lot has changed since the initial movements against the round, especially with the increased prevalence of asymmetric warfare.
Most of the Army uses full metal jacket, or ball ammunition, in both handguns and rifles. These rounds are designed to hold together, increasing penetration and narrowing the tunnel of damaged tissue.
Expanding and fragmenting bullets can flatten or break apart, and are more likely to remain in the body of a target and transfer all of their energy to it. A wider swath of tissue is typically destroyed.
On the battlefield, the U.S. has generally observed the 1899 Hague Convention rule barring expanding and fragmenting rounds, despite the fact that it never has been signatory to that particular agreement, Russell said.
The U.S. reserved the right to use different ammunition where it saw a need. For example, Criminal Investigations Command and military police use hollow points — as do law enforcement agencies around the country — in part to minimize collateral damage of bullets passing through the target. Special Forces also uses expanding/fragmenting rounds in counter-terrorism missions.
"The use of this ammunition supports the international law principles of preventing excessive collateral effects and safeguarding civilian lives," an Army statement said.
So the US never signed up for this ban on special purpose ammo and always reserved the right to use it "where it saw the need", which apparently is now everywhere.
Note that the Hague Convention rule wasn't something that was adopted for no reason. The ban on non standard rounds was put in place because, again quoting the Army Times, "the bullets caused unnecessary and therefore inhumane injury unrelated to stopping a combatant from continuing to fight."
After reading the above, you might be tempted to think that this is yet another example of the US simply ignoring international protocol - and you'd be right. But don't worry (and here's the punchline), the Pentagon thought about it and as it turns out, the fragmenting ammunition rule doesn't "make much sense", so much like territorial sovereignty in the Middle East, the US Army is free to ignore it:
"There's a myth that [expanding/fragmenting bullets] are prohibited in international armed conflict, but that doesn't make any sense now" - Richard Jackson, special assistant to the Army Judge Advocate General for Law of War
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Who cares, over a billion of these were purchased by various IG's of the various Departments (Even NOAA) w/i the US gov't for 'protecting the homeland.'
Well, those terrists hate weather stations.
My recollection of the reason jacketed bullets were first used had nothing to do with saving lives or protecting innocent bystanders. It had to do with tying up personnel. If a soldier is killed, end of story. If, however, he is merely wounded, a huge amount of military energy is drawn away from combat and devoted to getting him to safety, transferring him to rear positions for emergency treatment and evacuating him to safe locations for further treatment. Sort of like "Mash" but with a lot more investment in time, personnel and equipment. And a lot less dumb jokes by bad actors.
Exactly! See my post from 00:36...
@ Macon Richardson
" If, however, he is merely wounded, a huge amount of military energy is drawn away from combat "
This is, and always has been, absolute crap.
If you get hit on the battlefield, you generally have to suck it up until the fight is over, and if you can still fight, keep fighting. The fight goes on.
This is the same sort of BS that got 'spray and pray' consensus viewed as somehow being a way to behave in a fight. All it does is waste ammo and get the wrong people killed (usually including you).
If you are in that sort of fight, you had better make your first shot count, and every subsequent round count, and if your buddy alongside you gets hit, the best thing you can do for him is keep fighting, and encourage him to keep making as many aimed shots as he can.
No, I wouldn't be slapping a bandaid on a female combatant either.
Given that any opponent will be justified in using this ammo too it should save the US government lots of money having to look after all those wounded vets. http://rt.com/usa/273475-us-veterans-die-waiting-treatment/
No.. that stuff when it fragments is going to be very hard ti identify from what gun it came from... and that is part of the point of the non-fragmenting.. evading that law increased the penalty, so you might say that this is a nasty poker game in which winning is everything... very narsistic and more...
The US hasn't given a damn about fragmenting ammo since the introduction of the M-16. That round has a very nasty 'habit' of fragmenting and the M193 would fragment at close ranges and send lead everywhere (and the ensuing victim would end up with a bit of lead poisoning that would maybe cause a lowering of IQ and a few health problems that would cut a few years off. The body would usually encapsulate these fragments, cutting the lead leakage to a minimum (my great grand-dad got a bullet lodged in his neck when he was in his late thirties and lived into his 80's - the 1880's).
Now if these new rounds are lead free, half the augment is gone and considering the past performance of the 5.56x45mm round that the military has been using, they even used hollow tips, against the Geneva Convention, in sniper applications a few years past.. well how the F#ck is going to stop them. The real object is to get that bullet to stick to the target on the first shot. if it expands, it will not ricochet and the dweeb with that ceramic plate gets the full force that equals a sledgehammer punch to that plate and he gets the wind knocked out of him, so the second shot is much easier and that one gives him that god seeing third eye at 50 yards/meters plus.. now that is assuming that the fire-arm is as accurate as a 1980's Colt Goldcup .45cal.. and that is a very tough standard to achieve. I've yet to handle a .40 S&W round gun that can do what an out of the box '80's Goldcup can do and I mean single handed, off hand at a pace of every two seconds. the nice thing about the .45 was that with the right light and at a fair distance, one could actually see the base of the flying bullet, like at a range over 75 yards. No, I don't own one and that was many days past and since then I've come to occasion to handle many a crappy auto pistol.. the Mil. spec Berretta 9mm was pretty good for a nine that most are pretty crappy at any range over 20 yards making me always remember a day out with a Goldcup down in the river bottom that shot so amazingly well. [and all you that have followed the military and the side arm fiascos know that Browning’s .45 always comes back at the 'standard' to beat].
I was in Law enforcement in Italy, in a paramilitary unit, meaning that we had to usemilspec rounds, fmj. boy, those things ricochet like magic balls, so in a civvy environment, the rationale about using frags is that if they hit anything, they fragmetn and lose most of their energy within a short space.
We always had HP when I was on the Force.
I still have my service weapon, a Glock22 I dropped a Wolf match barrel into and converted it to with 9mm Hornady evolution rounds.
I can only imagine what impact the 5.45X45 NATO round will have if they go to JHP for that load. The military round already had a tumble to it at the right velocity.
If it will be used within US borders only, then it is very O.K.
Or against combatants that don't wear a recognisable uniform.
What is behind this, is lead free ammunition really, really sucks (and it is not necessasy to stop using lead, the 'studies' used for calling for lead bans have been rigged and supply absolutely wrong data to be used in justification for it - lead is more stable in the environment, than the substitutes, which is constantly proven by lead musket balls that have been in the soil for centuries).
Lead free ammo has already been banned from military ranges (already causing groundwater contamination and metal fever in those using the ranges with that ammo, where there was never a problem with lead ammo). Substitutes tend to have extremely restricted 'sweet spots' where velocity and range are just right.
This has resulted in a new 5.56 NATO round having 62,000 psi chamber pressure, in the attempt to restore effectiveness. This is way beyond the sensible limits that the M-16/M-4 bolt demands, for example. Would you want to use such a round in a bullpup configuration rifle, with your checkbone so close to the bolt and chamber?
Well I wouldn't (not that I'd have any interest in using bullpup ergonomics in combat anyway).
PS. Battlefields are usually really dirty, dusty, muddy, mucky places. Do you want such airborn and ground based crap getting trapped in the ammo you are putting in your weapons? Unreliability and misfires will go stratospheric.
The USSA Army follows the Israeli model, such as the torturing in Iraq, Israelis were involved in "training" the USSA troops in that little abomination. Israel uses cluster bombs and bunker busters against civilian targets in the Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, anywhere they like and they IGNORE the 242 UN sanctions against them. But that IRAN now they are the ENEMY aren't they? What a disgusting charade the USSA is, EVIL, and to think how our founding fathers must be spinning in their graves. See George See George Spin!
Don't worry the troops of the USSA will be more than happy to use hollow points on White Americans. After all what do you think .gov is gearing up for?
Federal Bureau of Reclamation buying 52,000 rounds of ammo
Agency’s request for 52,000 rounds of ammo for Hoover Dam prompts inquiry
Hollowpoints don't do more damage in the long run to the person you are shooting at, because in the long run you are going to kill him. If you kill him in 1 shot or 8, it's all the same to him.
The problem is, if those 8 shots are 8 shots because you are using ball ammo in a pistol, then those 8 shots are contiuning through him to hit semi-random things behind him, like women, children, etc. If the one shot was expanding ammo, then it stays in the target and doesn't kill anyone but him.
There's no good reason to base our ammunition choices now on nineteenth century superstitions (which is LITERALLY what this is.) This is the same era (and the same people) who gave us Marxism.
We caved in and quit using Flechettes during the Vietnam War, now we are backtracking and doing mental gymnastics to justify using fragmenting meat grinder rounds now?
These things are nasty little customers that are well suited to home defense, but do not meet the battlefield rule. Why not bring back flechettes, phosphorus rounds and poison gas?
Consequently, police have been using hollow point ammo on their own kind for years.