Army will study how blasts of rifles, anti-armor and artillery impact brain | Hacker News Reader

Army will study how blasts of rifles, anti-armor and artillery impact brain

taskandpurpose.com

28 pointsPaulHoule12 comments

The fact that they haven’t done this at scale yet is astounding, for the sake of humanity.

I guess for them it’s better to not know, as they’d be on the hook for any harm.

Our government screws over soldiers and their allies all the time, being on the hook is an irrelevant concept. Actually compensating servicemembers for injury (which screw up society when the soldiers return home) would be a good outcome. The US is too cheap to compensate well, but it's be something.

Regardless of the outcome, we will still need to train with and use these weapons so long as adversaries are willing to do so. Otherwise we will simply lose.

Unless new tech like drones obviate them, analogous to how guns made armor obsolete.

Absolutely the armed forces need to train with and use these. The intent of the study is (presumably) to figure out how to train more safely by understanding the impact, choosing smart limits, and educating leaders and medics as to the symptoms to look out for.

For certain values of "we". For nuclear-armed states the threat of invasion is 0 and there's no danger of losing anything more substantial than face and whatever they've invested in foreign adventures.

Israel is nuclear-armed. They seem pretty concerned about invasion. Nukes are a very large hammer and your toe might be too close for comfort. The US is more expeditionary, anyway. So long as Mexico is kept weak and Canada friendly, invasion isn't a worry. But we have allies and friends all over the place.

Who are they concerned about invading them?

Besides Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt? I'm not Jewish, but they seem to be concerned about their existence.

Israel has currently invaded both Syria and Lebanon, they are obviously not very afraid of them.

Most soldiers wear ceramic armor. But I know that’s not what you many.

Now they do, certainly. I should have mentioned that it has taken hundreds of years to create effective armor for the more common calibers.

Well obviously if it's harmful for people they'll find way to reduce the intensity of the shockwaves.

Compared to inventing the LCD that's child's play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com