According to a story in The Register this morning, BAE Systems, the UK’s largest arms manufacturer, wants to go green. On the agenda:
- Lead-free bullets, so as not to “harm the environment and pose a risk to people”
- Reduced emission jet engines
- Quieter warheads to produce less noise pollution
- Grenades that produce less smoke
I’m a closet armementophile. I go to airshows and defence exhibitions and I write about this stuff sometimes. However, military folk and arms manufacturers tend to be fairly realistic about what they do. You may not approve but at the sharp end nobody pretends that bullets don’t kill. Until now.
I feel like the satirist who quit when Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger got the Nobel peace prize. Unfair competition. Really, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Related posts:
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Indeed. Brothers Grimm could not have made up this kind of fairytale. Next they’ll be lobbying for bio-degradable dum-dums!
I’ll leave any pun to your imagination.
I can just imagine the frontline at some unfortuate warzone with the 511th Dukes Green Highlanders being told to keep a bio-degradable up the chamber!
You crack me up, Matthew. You’re right. You couldn’t make this stuff up!
As I clicked on this post from a post about writing, I kind of expected something about bullet-points, leaded or not.
Guess those still have a long way to go before becoming lethal
{ 1 trackback }