Eh, that's pretty metal. What I like about it is that it's not some chemical weapon that floats on the air to hiteveryone in the vicinity. You will see where you are hitting clearly because it's like a bright tracer round. And it'll cause more injuries than deaths.
You almost have a sporting chance to get away once it's started compared to the relatively sudden chaos of explosions.
Warfare has always been hell, but now when someone hunts you down with a drone while you’re running away it makes it a particularly terrifying personal hell.
So what is russia waiting to use nuclear weapons? What is holding Putin to just push a button and end the whole thing. I mean US did it, twice, on civilians, no sanctions . And I’m not adding the bombings on Tokio which where even worse.
This is what international law has to say about incendiary weapons:
It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual
civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.
It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a
concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of
civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered
incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the
concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the
incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing,
incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.
It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by
incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or
camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.
This treeline is clearly not located within a concentration of civilians and it is concealing (or plausibly believed to be concealing) enemy combatants and therefore the use of incendiary weapons is unambiguously legal.
Now, I'm all for the freedom of defending your country... But am I the only one thinking that this is presented in a bit too much of a good light? Like, what is the title supposed to make me feel?
If the nationalities were reversed, would this have been posted here still?
I genuinely thank you for sharing this info, but I can't help feeling uncomfortable reading about atrocious killing devices in a technology thread.
For those also wondering (and I’m quoting a comment on Ars so may stand corrected…):
Isn’t this a violation of the Geneva Conventions?
Only if used to deliberately target infantry. The videoed operations so far seem to have been intended to burn away protective cover (trees/brush), which is a permitted use even if there's a risk of inflicting casualties as a side effect of the application of incendiaries.
this is interesting and whatnot, but during WW2, US research indicated that jellied gasoline (napalm) was a far more effective incendiary than thermite when it comes to burning wood.
Muss ich mir merken Thermit-Reaktion. Wenn dann bald die humanoiden Roboter in Kriegen eingesetzt werden (und sie endlich wissen wie Türen zu öffnen sind), dann werde ich die Terminator therminieren.
Oh, I see it’s an English thread. So, actually that will be my way of fighting the Terminator in the coming wars with Humanoid Robots (once they figured out how to handle door handles). I will thermitinate the Terminator. As a note to my future self.
The good thing is that each usage thus far has only been in the narrow strips of hiding trees, so there's no risk of a large fire breaking out. A lot of the people whining on social media about killing trees are purposefully ignoring that fact.
This is straight up atrocious, but Russia has been using white phosphorus during this war. No side is pristine in this conflict. War is awful, period. One thing it has shown is that Ukraine has become expert in using commodity hardware to rain death on their enemy.