Uranium Weapons

Depleted uranium weapons (using the uranium left over after fissionable U-235 has been extracted) were extensively used by the US in Bosnia and in the first Iraq war. Uranium is a very dense and hard metal - 1.6 times as dense as lead and almost 5 times as hard as steel. These qualities, and the fact that it burn in air, make it a very effective penetrating weapon against hard targets such as tanks or fortified underground bunkers.

It has some adverse collateral effects. Use in Bosnia and the first Iraq war is linked to clusters of cancers that occurred in local civilians afterwards.

Robert Fisk, writing in The Independent, reports on evidence that the Israelis used uranium weapons in the most recent war against Lebanon. Two oddities stand out: the weapons were used very close to the Israeli border, where winds are likely to carry the toxic dust into Israel, and the uranium used seems to be very slightly enriched in U-235 rather than depleted.
Many Lebanese, however, long ago concluded that the latest Lebanon war was a weapons testing ground for the Americans and Iranians, who respectively supply Israel and Hizbollah with munitions. Just as Israel used hitherto-unproven US missiles in its attacks, so the Iranians were able to test-fire a rocket which hit an Israeli corvette off the Lebanese coast, killing four Israeli sailors and almost sinking the vessel after it suffered a 15-hour on-board fire.

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