From Peter Urben
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
There is too much killing, and too little thought, in “The science of
killing” (4 May, p 37).
The Claymore mine is an infantry weapon. That means it must be portable.
Seven hundred balls, each weighing 150 grammes, tot up to more than 100
kilograms. Allowing for explosive and casing, that suggests an all-in weight of
perhaps 150 kilograms. The US evidently bred mighty strong infantrymen in the
1950s, a period when the average rifle or machinegun bullet weighed half an
ounce—less than 15 grams (they have become lighter since).
The whole mine debate is bedevilled by humanitarians who will swallow the
most implausible assertions without undertaking even elementary arithmetic. The
Valdara mine on your cover is a case in point. It has recently figured in bank
advertisements which give it the ability to cut all bystanders to pieces at a
distance where the probability is ten to one against it even touching them.
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Weapons designers do not maximise killing potential. Their aim is to maximise
incapacitation. A corpse can be forgotten, but a seriously injured man
incapacitates two or more others while he is carried from the field and is
nursed as he recovers. Killing him is counterproductive. That is why minefields
leave so many footless farmers. Anti-personnel mines are not intended to
kill.
