So the problem with DU ammunition it's it's pryophoric. Self-igniting. When you slam that shit in to the atmosphere at several thousand meters per second it catches fire and sends particles of burning uranium all over the place. When it hits steel the uranium penetrator rod self-sharpens. Which means pieces of it sheer off in such a way that the point never dulls. It's great for making dinner-plate sized holes in tanks then filling the interior with burning uranium. But you get a whole shitload of particulate uranium going in every direction. It's dirty AF. And then the burning uranium touches off the fuel, ammunition, and literally oxygen in the vehicle and it all fucking explodes. If you've ever seen a video of tank spewing a fountain of fire out of it's turret hatch, or even a tank with the turret blown clean off and spewing fire, that's all the explosives and propellant in the ammunition cooking off. And sending particulate uranium all over the area.

And the problem isn't radiation. Like the dude says, uranium is radioactive, but not to a degree that's any serious concern. The problem is severe heavy metal poisoning. You ingest that stuff and it's going to cause problems, just like lead or copper or other heavy metals.

The really cool thing about this is you don't even need it. Tungsten penetrator rods work just as well as uranium does without being nearly as toxic. And against the older MBTs being used in this war conventional shaped charge warheads should do the job just fine. If they're not getting results with conventional shaped charge ammo then DU is only going to be a moderate improvement. It's totally fucking unnecessary. Afaik the US only even uses DU since there's so much of it lying around from nuclear fuel production, and the US nuclear power system is really just an excuse for producing plutonium for the nuclear weapons program. It's all totally fucked, both from a practicality level, an environmental and human health level, and on a big strategic level. They're just turning Ukraine in to a wasteland because of a dispute over which group of crooked ex-Soviet oligarchs people are going to pay taxes too. It's fucking ridiculous.

Side note on anti-tank weapons. Pretty much only 105mm and 120mm cannons on UkkkS tank cannons and Bri*ish tank cannons use DU penetrators. The projectile is made up of a casing with the powder charge. The actual bullet is a plastic sabot that surrounds the penetrator rod. The sabot is a piece of plastic that allows the massive power of the propellant in the shell to push the very narrow penetrator rod with it's full power. Soon after it leaves the barrel the sabot splits off, freeing the penetrator to continue along at massive velocities. Uranium is so much harder and more dense than steel, and it's self sharpening, that it just pushes the steel aside penetrating in to the tank. They're aces for killing tanks.

Conventional tank shells use shaped-charge warheads. A shaped charge uses a very carefully shaped explosive to turn a metal disk in to a jet of super-hot, dense liquid. If it hits at the right angle that jet will cut right through steel armor, spraying super-heated metal and chunks of steel around the interior of the tank. A lot of modern defenses are designed around preventing the precise math and timing that makes that jet of super-heated liquid metal from forming correctly. If it doesn't form at exactly the right distance from the armor in exactly the right way it'll usually just spray on the surface or fail to form at all. The "Cope cages", a 70 year old type of defense known as slat armor or spaced armor, serves to pre-detonate the HEAT round when it's too far away from the vehicle to properly form it's jet of armor penetrating metal. Other types of armor include Explosive Reactive Armor, ERA. When the round hits the ERA panel the ERA explodes, deforming the shape of the jet and preventing it from penetrating. The famous "Chobam" armor of British Challenger tanks is allegedly layers of ceramic, composit, and steel and can supposedly prevent penetration from HEAT rounds. And the US Abrams and some other vehicles use big fucking slabs of depleted uranium that are just so hard and so dense that the metal jet usually can't penetrate.

There are various types of weapons to defeat these modern armor systems. Tandem rounds have two war-heads. The first warhead it well forward, intended to detonate ERA panels so that the shaped charge coming in milliseconds later won't be interruptedZ. Modern AT missiles can do what's called "Top Attack", where the missile pops up in an arc as it approaches the target and comes down directly on top of it. For a wide variety of reasons most armored vehicles have significantly less armor on the top of the vehicle and are largely helpless against modern top attack guided missiles. It's generally agreed that the era of tank warfare is over since tanks are so vulnerable to anti-tank guided missiles, though the war in ukraine has called that long held position in to question. Both sides seem to have realized that if you can't stop modern anti-tank weapons you don't need modern tanks. Old tanks are just as not-survivable as cutting edge tanks, but still carry canons and machine guns. And if you don't have good anti-tank weapons then tanks are just as unstoppable and deadly as they've ever been.

Either way, that's my tank warfare micro essay.