uranium ammunition
Uranium ammunition, DU ammunition, is armored ammunition, whose projectiles contain depleted uranium. Compared to Natururan, this consists, to a lesser extent, of the fissile uranium isotope 235U and thus, to a large extent, of the isotope 238U which can not be cleaved by thermal neutrons. Due to the high density of the uranium, these projectiles develop a great puncture force when they hit the target. In this case, the radioactivity of the depleted uranium does not fulfill any military purpose, except for the possibility of deterrence. Furthermore, uranium ammunition can also contain traces of transurans, For example plutonium. More recently, several thousand tons of uranium ammunition have been deployed mainly in Indian-Pakistani border conflicts, Chechnya, Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, the Second Gulf War and the Iraq War. Alone during a three-week deployment in the Iraq war in 2003, the coalition of the willing was between 1000 and 2000 tons of uranium munitions.