Ooops - WP Clarification

I have to apologize to you readers - or perhaps more appropriately, revise and extend my remarks on the white phosphorus issue. When I heard of this story and started blogging about it, I focused on the use of WP munitions in the case of artillery - which, as noted by others in this discussion, is a smoke munition designed to be used for marking targets that would then get a "fire for effect" salvo of good old high explosives.  Thus I made comments about the point that WP, while it burns, was not designed as an incendiary device.  That's not entirely correct.

Clarification - there IS a WP grenade that IS designed to be an incendiary. This grenade burns for about 60 seconds at about 5000 Fahrenheit - will burn through engine blocks and safes - very good for destroying equipment and/or documents in said safes if your operations base is being overrun. More information here about WP munitions - it appears to be recently updated. Note the discussion about the smoke effects - irritating but not lethal. But in any case, the US troops in Fallujah were not throwing WP grenades at the insurgents and civilians - so I stand (mostly) by my original posts.

It's still not chemical warfare. Targeting civilians with ANY munitions is immoral. We ought to have military leaders that know better than to hand the adversary ready-made propaganda, but then again... our military may be smart but I get the feeling that they're tired, pissed off, and getting sloppy. Time to seriously consider such options as Rep. Murtha (D-PA) , a Marine Corps vet of many years, has proposed.

UPDATE: Huh. I probably should have read the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons.

"Incendiary weapon" means any weapon or munition which is primarily designed to set fire to objects or to cause burn injury to persons through the action of flame, heat, or combination thereof, produced by a chemical reaction of a substance delivered on the target.
(a) Incendiary weapons can take the form of, for example, flame throwers, fougasses, shells, rockets, grenades, mines, bombs and other containers of incendiary substances.
(b) Incendiary weapons do not include:
(i) Munitions which may have incidental incendiary effects, such as illuminants, tracers, smoke or signaling systems;
(ii) Munitions designed to combine penetration, blast or fragmentation effects with an additional incendiary effect, such as armour-piercing projectiles, fragmentation shells, explosive bombs and similar combined-effects munitions in which the incendiary effect is not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons, but to be used against military objectives, such as armoured vehicles, aircraft and installations or facilities.

More accurately, perhaps those critics of WP munitions should have read it.

Comments

[Stygius]

I think you've nailed this from the get-go. I did a post on this this evening, linking to a Denver Post piece you should check out.

[J Thomas]

We weren't targetting civilians. Many of our troops were told that there weren't any civilians in Fallujah, that they'd all left.

We targetted insurgents and ignored the possibility that we might be hitting civilians too.

WP burst shells are intended as incendiary, aren't they?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/smoke.htm

Not that that's a bad thing in itself.

[J.]

"WP burst shells are intended as incendiary, aren't they?"

NO. See original post and go to the links on the munition - they're smoke only. If they were intended as incendiary, they'd be burning down buildings as a result of the impacts. Just because they burn doesn't mean they're designed as incendiary.

[J Thomas]

Did you see my link?

I haven't checked that they're parroting an official source, but if they are....

So, are they getting used in direct fire to burn down buildings? Can you tell from the reports?

[wonderdog]

I agree with your main point on WP, but bursting-type WP shells are, in fact, incendiaries, although that is not their primary use. The very links you provide describe them as incendiaries. Furthermore, note that Field Artillery magazine referred to using HC smoke for routine marking purposes and saving WP for "lethal missions."

When used in that way, you could very well argue that bursting WP falls under para a, i.e. they are shells containing incendiary substances, if they were used for incendiary purposes. Base-ejecting WP and HC smoke shells would fall under para b.

You shouldn't be surprised that troops would use WP against enemy personnel. That has long been considered one of its uses. And this is clearly taking advantage of its incendiary effect, regardless of the original design purpose.

[J Thomas]

Wonderdog, for persuading entrenched infantry to leave their holes in a "breach" with direct-fire WP, is it the heat or the asphyxiation that's most useful?

[J.]

Wonderdog, I would take exception if you're referring to the global security links on the WP munitions. I checked them, and all the projectiles say that they are smoke/obscurants or markers, and incendiary is a secondary effect. That makes them legal munitions. That's all I'm trying to say. I understand that combat soldiers might use them for that secondary effect, but that's not what they were designed for, and I leave that decision of use in the hands of the combat leaders. Not sure I would do it, but I'm not being shot at. As for the FA magazine, I thought what they said was, that they wished they had HC munitions for smoke so they wouldn't have to waste WP munitions for smoke missions. My impression (when I served briefly in an FA battalion) is that the arty guys never packed many HC rounds because only pussies do smoke when the option to use HE was available.

[wonderdog]

To clarify, I'm not arguing that they are illegal munitions. However, the manner of use may be illegal regardless of the design purpose.

Although the convention, which you quote, does refer to design, an argument could be made that using WP for incendiary purposes would fall under para a, not para b. The question would be how it was used.

The same goes to J. Thomas's point: if you use smoke for the purpose of asphyxiation -- and HC smoke will do it, too, in an enclosed space -- then you're breaching chemical weapons treaties, but the distinction is how you use it.

This entire discussion (not ours, but the wider discussion) is full of silly red herrings like the argument over whether WP is a chemical weapon.

What matters is whether it actually was used with careless disregard for civilian casualties, and if so, who made the decisions. Was someone negligent? If so, who? That's actually got nothing to do with WP and everything to do with the people and organizations.

[J.]

Wonderdog, I agree that the issue of whether the Army disregarded the safety of civilian noncombatants (or whether the Italian media was spun by Iraqi insurgents) is at the core of this issue. We ought to know this and it's not clear. However, I do disagree with your interpretation of international law/agreements - by the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Conventional Weapons Convention, it DOES matter what munition you use and not how it works. You're never going to get me to agree that "asphyxiation" by WP or HC smoke is a chemical warfare attack. It just ain't so. Everything rides on the design of the weapon and/or what target is hit, not secondary effects. Enough said, let's move on.

[J Thomas]

J, you might easily be right about what the CWCs say.

However, it makes no sense to accept dual-use weapons as weapons with only the most innocuous use. How they actually get used is important. We were ready to say Saddam couldn't have chlorine to disinfect civilians' water because he might use it as poison gas.