There's maybe one way you can perfectly calculate a ballistic trajectory that will pinpoint land an artillery shell on a position: if you're in a vacuum

When you start adding environmental factors like wind and temperature differences you start getting into needing in-flight course correcting shells, which do indeed exist (they guide themselves via GPS), but even America with its $1.8 trillion military budget doesn't exclusively use them because they're so expensive (in the realm of $70,000 per shell vs $800 for an unguided one)

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know nothing of spotting round best practices, but surely there are other appropriate smoke screen chemicals that are less incendiary? Do all countries typically use WP for this purpose?

[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

After a cursory glance, it seems like your options for smoke generation are primarily either WP, or various ways of making literal clouds of hydrochloric acid

[–] fiat_lux@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh OK, my cursory search turned up Hexachloroethane which is only classed as an irritant, but I thought maybe you knew of a reason that wasn't appropriate to use.

[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I saw that as an alternative but at least according to wikipedia:

According to Steinritz et al., "Due to its potential pulmonary toxicity," zinc chloride producing smoke grenades "have been discharged from the armory of most western countries (...)."

Despite its continued use by FPS (Federal Protective Services) as a riot control agent, the Department of Defense has begun to phase out the use of HC smoke after a 1994 report by the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory due to ensure the safety of US soldiers, noting that, "Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities."

Leave it to the cops to use something the army is phasing out as too dangerous domestically on protestors