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Killing folks the old-fashioned
way
By Nick Turse
Let's
face it, making war is fast superseding sports as
the US national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or
covertly, the United States has been involved in
military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua,
Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti,
Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the
Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan
(again) and Iraq (again), and that's not even the
full list. It stands to reason when the voracious
appetites of the military-corporate complex are in
constant need of feeding.
As
representatives of a superpower devoted to (and
enamored with) war, it's hardly surprising that
the Pentagon and allied corporations are forever
planning more effective ways to kill, maim, and
inflict pain - or that they plan to keep it that
way. Whatever the wars of the present, elaborate
weapons systems for future wars are already on the
drawing boards. Planning for the projected
fighter-bombers and laser weapons of the decades
from 2030 to 2050 is under way. Meanwhile, at the
Department of Defense's (DoD's) blue-skies
research outfit, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), even wilder projects -
from futuristic exoskeletons to brain/machine
interface initiatives - are being explored.
Such projects, as flashy as they are
frightening, are magnets for reporters (and
writers like yours truly), but it's important not
to lose sight of the many more mundane weapons
currently being produced that will be pressed into
service in the nearer term in Iraq, Afghanistan or
some other locale the US decides to add to the
list of nations where it will turn people into
casualties or "collateral damage" in the next few
years. These projects aren't as sexy as building
future robotic warriors, but they're at least as
dangerous and deadly, so let's take a quick look
at a few of the weapons US tax dollars are
supporting today, before they hurt, maim and kill
tomorrow.
Set phasers on extreme
pain
Recently, the US Air Force Research
Laboratory called for "research in support of the
Directed Energy Bioeffects Division of the Human
Effectiveness Directorate". The researchers were
to "conduct innovative research on the effects of
directed energy technologies" on people and
animals. What types of innovative research? One
area involved identifying "biological tissue
thresholds (minimum visible lesion) and damage
mechanisms from laser and non-laser sources". In
other words, how excruciating can you make it
without leaving telltale thermal burns? And a
prime area of study? "Pain thresholds." Further,
there was a call for work to "determine the
effects of electromagnetic and biomechanical
insults on the human body". Sounds like something
out of Star Trek, right? Weaponry of the
distant future? Think again.
In a
Tomdispatch piece last spring (Living weapons labs, March 25,
2004) I mentioned a "painful energy beam" weapon,
the "active denial system", that was about to be
field-tested by the military. Recent reports
indicate that military Humvees will be outfitted
with exactly this weapon by the end of the year.
I'm sad to report that the active denial
system isn't the only futuristic weapon set to be
deployed in the near term. pulsed energy
projectiles (PEPs) are also barreling down the
weaponry-testing turnpike. They are part of a
whole new generation of weapons systems that the
Pentagon promotes under the label "non-lethal".
The term conveniently obscures the fact that such
weapons are meant to cause intense physical agony
without any of the normal physical signs of
trauma. (This, by the way, should make them - or
their miniaturized descendents - excellent devices
for clandestine torture.)
PEPs utilize
bursts of electrically charged gas (plasma) that
yield an electromagnetic pulse on impact with a
solid object. Such pulses affect nerve cells in
humans (and animals) causing searing pain. PEPs
are designed to inflict "excruciating pain from up
to two kilometers away". No one knows the
long-term physical or psychological effects of
this weapon, which is set to roll out in 2007 and
is designed specifically to be employed against
unruly civilians. But let's remember, the Pentagon
isn't the Food and Drug Administration. No need to
test for future effects when it comes to weapons
aimed at someone else.
20th-century
weaponry for 21st-century killing
Just
recently the Department of Defense's Defense
Contracting Command-Washington put out a call for
various technologies capable of "near-immediate
transition to operations/production at the
completion of evaluation". In other words, make it
snappy.
In addition to a plethora of
high-tech devices, from laser-sights for weapons
to battlefield computers, the US Special
Operations Forces had a special request: 40
millimeter rifle-launched flechette grenades. For
the uninitiated, flechettes are razor-sharp deadly
darts with fins at their blunt ends. During the
Vietnam War, flechette weaponry was praised for
its ability to shred people alive and virtually
nail them to trees. The question is, where will
those Special Ops forces use the grenades and
which people will be torn to bits by a new
generation of US flechettes? Only time will tell,
but one thing is certain - it will happen.
The Special Ops troops aren't the only
ones with special requests. The US Army has also
put out a call to arms. While army officials
recently hailed the M240B 7.62mm medium
machine-gun as providing "significantly improved
reliability and more lethal medium support fire to
ground units", they just issued a contract to FN
Manufacturing Inc to produce a lighter-weight,
hybrid titanium/steel variant of the weapon (known
as the M240E6). And these are just a few of the
new and improved weapons systems being readied to
be rushed on to near-future American battlefields.
Shell shock
Obviously, the US
military is purchasing guns and other weapons for
a reason: to injure, maim and kill. But the extent
of the killing being planned for can only be
grasped if one examines the amounts of ammunition
being purchased. Let's look at recent DoD
contracts awarded to just one firm - Alliant Lake
City Small Caliber Ammunition Co LLC, a subsidiary
of weapons-industry giant Alliant Techsystems
(ATK):
Awarded November 24, 2004: "A
delivery order amount of $231,663,020 as part of a
$303,040,883 firm-fixed-price contract for various
Cal .22, Cal .30, 5.56mm, and 7.62mm small-caliber
ammunition cartridges." Work is expected to be
completed by September 30, 2006.
Awarded
February 7, 2005: "A delivery order amount of
$20,689,101 as part of a $363,844,808
firm-fixed-price contract for various 5.56mm and
7.62mm small-caliber ammunition cartridges." Work
is expected to be completed by September 30, 2006.
Awarded March 4, 2005: "A delivery order
amount of $8,236,906 as part of a $372,586,618
firm-fixed-price contract for 5.56mm, 7.62mm, and
.50-caliber ammunition cartridges." Work is
expected to be completed by September 30, 2006.
Ordinary Americans can buy 400 rounds of
7.62mm rifle ammunition for less than US$40.
Imagine, then, what federal purchasing power and
hundreds of millions of dollars can buy.
Alliant Ammunition and Powder Co is also
making certain that, as the years go by, ammo
capacity won't be lacking. This February, Alliant
was awarded "a delivery order amount of
$19,400,000 as part of a $69,733,068
firm-fixed-price contract for Services to
Modernize Equipment at the Lake City Army
Ammunition Plant" - a government-owned facility
operated by ATK. Alliant notes that this year it
is churning out 1.2 billion rounds of
small-caliber ammunition at its Lake City plant
alone. But that, it seems, isn't enough when
future war planning is taken into account. As it
happens, ATK and the US Army are aiming to
increase the plant's "annual capacity to support
the anticipated Department of Defense demand of
between 1.5 billion and 1.8 billion rounds by
2006". Think about it. In this year alone, one
single ATK plant will produce enough ammunition,
at one bullet each, to execute every man, woman
and child in the world's most populous nation -
and next year they're upping the ante.
The military-corporate complex's
merchants of death
Once upon a time, a
company like ATK would have been classified as one
of the world's "Merchants of Death". Then again,
once upon a time - we're talking about the 1930s
here - the US Senate was a place where America's
representatives were willing to launch probing
inquiries into the ways in which arms
manufacturers and their huge profits as well as
their influences on international conflicts were
linked to the dead of various lands. Back then,
simple partisanship was set aside as the Senate's
Democratic majority appointed North Dakota's
Republican Senator Gerald P Nye to head the
"Senate Munitions Committee".
While
today's fawning House members can barely get aging
baseball heroes to talk to them, the 1930s inquiry
hauled some of the most powerful men in the world
like J P Morgan Jr and Pierre du Pont before the
committee. Even back in the 1930s, however, the
nascent military-industrial complex was just too
powerful, and so the Senate Munitions Committee
was eventually thwarted in its investigations. As
a result, the committee's goal of nationalizing
the US arms industry went down in flames.
Today, the very idea of such a committee
even attempting such an investigation is simply
beyond the pale. The planning for futuristic war
of various horrific sorts, not to speak of the
production and purchase of weapons and ammunition
by the military-corporate complex, is now beyond
reproach, accepted without question as necessary
for national (now homeland) security - a concept
that long ago trumped the notion of national
defense.
The future is now
While
the military-academic complex and DARPA scientists
are hard at work creating the sort of killing
machines that a generation back were the stuff of
unbelievable sci-fi novels, old-fashioned firearms
and even new energy weapons are being readied for
use by the US imperial army tomorrow or just a few
short years in the future. In February, Day &
Zimmerman Inc, a mega-company with its corporate
fingers dipped in everything from nuclear security
and munitions production to cryogenics and travel
services, inked a deal to deliver 445,288 M67
fragmentation hand grenades (which produce
casualties within an effective range of 15 meters)
to the US Army in 2006. In which country will a
civilian lose an eye, a leg or a life as a result?
Weapons made to kill are made to be used. This
year ATK's Lake City Army Ammunition Plant will
produce 1.2 billion rounds of ammunition at the
DoD's behest and the company proudly proclaims,
"Approximately 75% of the ammunition produced
annually is consumed."
With all those
exotic pain rays, flechettes, super-efficient
machine-guns, and rounds and rounds of ammunition
readied for action - and they represent only a
small part of the spectrum of weaponry and
munitions being produced for war, US-style - more
people are sure to die, while others assumedly
will experience "intense pain" from PEPs weapons
and the like. Back in October, a team of
researchers from Johns Hopkins University,
Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya
University in Baghdad, knocking on thousands of
doors throughout Iraq, demonstrated that an
estimated 100,000 civilians had already died
violently as the direct or indirect consequence of
the US-led invasion of Iraq. The main cause of
these deaths: attacks by coalition (read as "US")
forces. The future promises more of the same.
No one should be surprised by these
figures - though many were (and many also continue
to deny the validity of these numbers). It's
obvious that, if you build them; they will kill.
And you thought that we were supposed to "err on
the side of life"?
Nick Turse is
a doctoral candidate at the Center for the History
& Ethics of Public Health in the Mailman
School of Public Health at Columbia University. He
writes for the Los Angeles Times, the Village
Voice and Tomdispatch on the military-corporate
complex and the homeland security state. This
article appeared previously on Tomdispatch and is used by
permission.
(Copyright 2005 Nick
Turse.) |
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