From: jaskew@spam.maths.adelaide.edu.au (Joseph Askew)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Clearing cities with non-lethal gas (Baghdad?)
Summary: 'Non Lethal' Gas still not on
Date: 27 Aug 92 16:24:57 GMT
Followup-To: sci.military
Organization: Statistics, Pure & Applied Mathematics, University of Adelaide


From jaskew@spam.maths.adelaide.edu.au (Joseph Askew)


In article <BtJnBo.8oJ@lawday.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> tedrick%whistle.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick) writes:
>
>From tedrick%whistle.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Tom Tedrick)
>
>One of the classical problems with tanks is that they aren't
>at their best in street fighting and for clearing cities. I've
>been working my way through "Armored Warfare" (J.F.C. Fuller)
>and he mentions that gas is the best (as of 1932 anyway :-)
>weapon for clearing cities.
>
>Obviously, for political reasons, the USA doesn't want to get
>into using poison gas for such purposes, but I wonder if using
>large quantities of non-lethal gas (tear gas or whatever the
>current state-of-the-art is) might not be useful. For example,
>an armored thrust on Baghdad during the recent "Desert Storm"
>should have been workable, then when on the outskirts of the
>city non-lethal gas might have been used to try to clear the city
>of defenders without getting bogged down in street fighting.
>
>Gas is a favorite weapon of SWAT teams when clearing buildings,
>and it seems like it might work analogously, on a larger scale,
>when clearing cities.

The United States has used non lethal gases widely in the past. In
Vietnam they used at least two types of tear gas and one type of
irritant. The main point is that this is still illegal. (Tear Gas
was also used by the Germans in WW1, but was rapidly replaced by
gases which killed rather than embarrassed). Tear gas is not a
harmless substance either, it is just that the concentrations
required to kill are rather low. When the US used it in Vietnam
they did in fact kill rather a lot of people - perhaps several
thousand. This was done either because the gas was used in narrow
constricted spaces where the concentrations got to be very high
(ie a tunnel) or because of the delivery system. Such gases were
often deployed from helicopters who used a pod of rocket launched
cansiters which created a very highly concentrated cloud over a
smallish area. These were occasionly used on villages when the
lauching system would achieve very high localised concentrations
which were known to kill anyone standing nearby.
Thus any use of gas has two problems, firstly it is illegal and
secondly there ain't no such thing as a nonlethal gas.
As for tanks being used in cities - they do have their purposes.
The Soviets would place a tank in the middle of an intersection
with the result that nothing moved down the nearby streets.
I have a picture of them doing this in Hungary, it seems to work.
Of course it helps if you don't care how badly messed up the city
gets :-)
In Baghdad I would have thought there was no need to clear cities by
street fighting. I imagine that the Iraqi's would have killed anyone
remotely related to the regime the minute they got the chance. Someone
said in a newspaper the other day that even the Secret Police were out
on the streets celebrating after the US victory....


Joseph Askew
jaskew@spam.maths.adelaide.edu.au
Newsgroups: sci.military