🚀 go-pugleaf

Arved Sandstrom wrote:

> I wasn't following the thread precisely, and some key posts appear to show
> up only quoted in others, but I gather at some point an observation was made
> about wounding versus killing, on the battlefield.
>
> I had a (friendly) argument with a buddy about this - he was absolutely
> convinced that weapons systems that have a high rate of wounding were/are
> purpose-built to be that way. My position is that this is almost never the
> case, not in the sense he meant.
>
> On the face of it, one can indeed argue that many weapons systems are
> designed to wound rather than kill, or at least have mostly wounded as a
> percentage of casualties. But this argument invokes a rather common logical
> fallacy, that if X happens, then it must have been intended to happen.

Many weapons systems are designed to wound rather than kill.  First of all, you
have to break down the weapons systems types into categories. Some weapons
systems are anti personal while others are anti aircraft, anti armour.
Munitions can come in anti personnel, anti armour, high explosive, white
phosphorous,  penetrating, bunker busting etc.  Some have been adapted for
several functions. The Daisy Cutter, for instances, was designed to be dropped
into jungles or forests and blast down trees to make an instant landing zone.
The same ordinance has been used as an anti personnel weapon.


Rifles,handguns, submachine guns and light, medium machine-guns use smaller
calibre and full metal jackets. If they wanted them to kill they would use dum
dum bullets or expanding bullets similar to hunting cartridges.  Anti personnel
artillery munitions are designed to break about and blast an area with
fragments. The smaller the pieces, the more fragments there will be and the
greater the chance of striking an enemy soldier, but less likely to be a lethal
wound.



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