Technology

59989 readers

2384 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

617

Ukrainian drones now spray 4,000° F thermite streams right into Russian trenches (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 months ago by return2ozma to c/technology

282 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Rade0nfighter 79 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

For those also wondering (and I’m quoting a comment on Ars so may stand corrected…):

Isn’t this a violation of the Geneva Conventions?

Only if used to deliberately target infantry. The videoed operations so far seem to have been intended to burn away protective cover (trees/brush), which is a permitted use even if there's a risk of inflicting casualties as a side effect of the application of incendiaries.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There’s a lot of people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to this “that’s a war crime!!1!”, but it really is not. Incendiary weapons (like thermite, white phosphorus and napalm) are not illegal to use against legitimate military targets, including enemy combatants. It’s only a war crime when it’s used indiscriminately against civilians or in civilian areas.

Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I looked it up and you're 100% right. Incendiary weapons are allowed as long as it doesn't hit civilians or start a forest fire

https://www.weaponslaw.org/weapons/incendiary-weapons

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Incendiary_Weapons

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You can start a forest fire if said forest is used for cover or concealment by enemy military forces. All feasible precautions must be taken to limit the damage to military targets only.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.

I wonder why? 🤔

[–] Maggoty 9 points 3 months ago

Honestly war crimes just have a lot of misinformation generally. Even in the military. There were people who thought we couldn't shoot someone with a .50 cal machine gun. While this spawns funny jokes like aiming for their uniform buttons, it just isn't true.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Honestly, I think it’s more that people take this info from movies and just run with it than malicious (Russian) misinformation bots (although they don’t mind giving this an extra push I imagine).

[–] Maggoty 16 points 3 months ago

Oh God no. Nobody cares what you do to the Infantry. It's the civilians. Don't use this around civilians.

Sincerely, an old infantryman.

[–] Agent641 0 points 3 months ago

The Geneva suggestions