There’s a lot of people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to this “that’s a war crime!!1!”, but it really is not. Incendiary weapons (like thermite, white phosphorus and napalm) are not illegal to use against legitimate military targets, including enemy combatants. It’s only a war crime when it’s used indiscriminately against civilians or in civilian areas.
Honestly war crimes just have a lot of misinformation generally. Even in the military. There were people who thought we couldn’t shoot someone with a .50 cal machine gun. While this spawns funny jokes like aiming for their uniform buttons, it just isn’t true.
Honestly, I think it’s more that people take this info from movies and just run with it than malicious (Russian) misinformation bots (although they don’t mind giving this an extra push I imagine).
You can start a forest fire if said forest is used for cover or concealment by enemy military forces. All feasible precautions must be taken to limit the damage to military targets only.
There’s a lot of people who seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to this “that’s a war crime!!1!”, but it really is not. Incendiary weapons (like thermite, white phosphorus and napalm) are not illegal to use against legitimate military targets, including enemy combatants. It’s only a war crime when it’s used indiscriminately against civilians or in civilian areas.
Lot of misinformation out there on this it seems.
I wonder why? 🤔
Honestly war crimes just have a lot of misinformation generally. Even in the military. There were people who thought we couldn’t shoot someone with a .50 cal machine gun. While this spawns funny jokes like aiming for their uniform buttons, it just isn’t true.
Honestly, I think it’s more that people take this info from movies and just run with it than malicious (Russian) misinformation bots (although they don’t mind giving this an extra push I imagine).
I looked it up and you’re 100% right. Incendiary weapons are fine as long as it doesn’t hit civilians or intentionally start a forest fire
https://www.weaponslaw.org/weapons/incendiary-weapons
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Incendiary_Weapons
You can start a forest fire if said forest is used for cover or concealment by enemy military forces. All feasible precautions must be taken to limit the damage to military targets only.