It's Still Not Chemical Warfare

My more liberal colleagues and I are having a debate over Israel's use of white phosphorus artillery shells in Gaza, as seen in this picture (and in photos in many other newspapers). My first thought was how ignorant many newspapers are that they didn't know what this was, but I suppose that's the price of news room cutbacks. No military experience in there. The caption in the UK Times is "Israeli artillery shells explode with a chemical agent designed to create smokescreen for ground forces." Well, technically, it's a chemical composition, but not a chemical agent per say.

Smart money is that this is an American-designed M825A1 White Phosphorus 155-mm artillery round, designed to place quick or immediate smoke on a target for either screening enemy forces or for marking a target for further artillery bombardments. It can also be used (incorrectly) as a device to flush combatants or noncombatants out of an urban area, as the white phosphorus fumes are noxious and slightly toxic. During the Fallujah campaign in 2005, US artillery units did the latter and wrote about it. The question being debated is, are the Israelis (and the US troops) deliberately using incendiary chemical weapons to indiscriminately burn and maim civilians? I say, no.

As I noted way back in November 2005, the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Incendiary Weapons outlines what is and what is not an incendiary device.

"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.

It's a fine line, but pretty clear that WP munitions are not, primarily, incendiary weapons; they do have "incidental incendiary effects." I don't have detailed knowledge of what the Israelis are doing. Maybe they're targeting Hamas fighters with WP; maybe they're putting up a quick screen of smoke between Hamas snipers/anti-tank gunners and their forces; maybe they're marking targets for further artillery strikes. Based on the evidence available and lacking any formal statement from the Israeli government, it appears likely that the use of WP munitions in Gaza is legitimate. However, the use of WP munitions in an urban setting continues to be a controversial tactic, given the potential impact on civilians and their homes. As one of my more learned colleagues noted, the repulsion here is not that noncombatants become casualties during war, it's that nations make war on each other for the wrong reasons.

Comments

[FDChief]

They're using it as an indecendiary.

QS/IS is a ground burst mission and HC smoke would be better for a QS mission, anyway. Screening in the atack is usually a deliberate smoke mission with HC. You wouldn't used WP airburst for a smoke marker; the WP would frag (as you see it doing) and start little fires everywhere.

So they're burning down the town to crisp the Hamas boyos and the random kid or twenty.

War is hell, yo.

[J.]

I hear you, FDChief, but my (limited) experience with the Field Artillery has been that they never wanted to carry HC shells in their inventory. Rationale was that 1) they never got that many calls for smoke missions (usually covered by smoke grenades or mortars), and 2) WP could stand in for HC in a pinch (a dual-purpose shell).

Again, I'm not in Gaza, can't tell what the Israelis are doing, but it seems to me that using WP as incendiaries would be counterproductive for two reasons - first of all, their troops have to operate in the same area (additional hazard), and second, international condemnation (such that it is) and costs to rebuild Gaza would be high.

I'm holding out as a skeptic that this is not intentional use of incendiaries against civilians (and Hamas militants). Much easier just to use FAE or HE if that was your goal.

[Sven Ortmann]

Exactly; WP is a DP shell, not just smoke. It's rather SMK-INC.
They could use better shells if they wanted only smoke (and actually, I cannot exclude the possibility that maybe they don't use WP).

Maybe we'll learn about their intent and effects after the war. So long I'd like to observe that they lost credibility about the "minimization of civilian losses" thing if that's really WP.

@FDChief: Maybe they airburst it to get smoke into streets while base ejection smoke could land on rooftops or in a street (and the smoke would be limited to that one street)?

[UNRR]

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 1/7/2009, at The Unreligious Right

[Andy]

Jason,

I don't see the line as fine at all. The convention specifically excludes smoke munitions which have incendiary effects. It seems to me this clause is clearly aimed at WP smoke rounds. Even if one considers the M825 a combined-effects or DP munition, it's still excluded from the convention because "the incendiary effect is not specifically designed to cause burn injury to persons." The M825 is clearly not designed to cause burn injuries to persons. WP can, I think, be made into a weapon for that purpose, but it's characteristics and design would be quite different.

FDChief,

Heya. I read your blog and enjoy it immensely. I think I have to disagree a bit here. Ground burst seems problematic in dense urban terrain for a variety of reasons and would be much more likely to cause incendiary effects than an airburst. For one thing, with ground burst if the shell misses the street or whatever you're trying to cover, chances are it's going to slam into a building and then you'll have the WP concentrated in an area that will likely have a lot of flammable material, not to mention people trying to avoid the fighting. You also get a wider smoke dispersal with an airburst.

Also, it doesn't seem like they're actually "burning the town to a crisp" since I haven't seen any reports that any of these rounds have started any fires. Most of the WP-impregnated felt submunitions are going to land on rooftops or in the street. From the many pictures I've seen of Gaza (haven't actually been there), most buildings appear to be concrete construction with concrete roofs. None of that makes much sense if one's intention is to use it for its incendiary effect.