Re: [HoE] Caseless ammo and modern weapons

[Matthew DeForrest <mmdeforrest@worldnet.att.net>]

One thing about modern technology and its viability and affordability.  I recently
saw the new infantry weapon written up in (I think) Popular Mechanics magazine.  I
once was talking to someone in Boston who was shocked by a similar write-up of the
Stealth fighter.  When he next saw his uncle, who worked in the Skunk Works, he
asked him why the US government allowed people to publish such specific
information about our most advanced weapon systems.  His reply:  "Oh, that?  I
remember seeing plans for those back in the 1970s."

We don't see most weapon systems until they are viable and producable at a
"reasonable" price (although I could probably live the cost of the wing of the
F-111 for a year quite comfortably).  I am more inclined to go along with the idea
that, with an apocalypse, more common weapons would be more likely to be found.

Oh, I think I can also supply the answer of why flechette rounds did not find
there way into common military usage.  They were deployed in small numbers in
Vietnam and were determined to be against the Geneva Convention based on their
tendancy to bend and fragment after entering the body and not exiting.  This
resulted in massive internal trauma with a very small entrance wound and no exit
wound.  Medical personel could not accurately diagnose how serious the wounds
were.

Take care.

Matt
--
Matthew M. DeForrest, Ph.D.         Adjunct Professor of Communications and
Adjunct Professor of English           Adjunct Professor of English
UNC Charlotte                               Wingate University
Charlotte, NC 28223-0001              Wingate, NC 28174-0157

"Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead - I say?  There is no death.  Only a change of worlds."  Chief Seattle, "Our
People are Ebbing Away like a Receding Tide," 1855.