Given one of their main drawbacks was their limitted range requiring operators to get rather close to what they intend to burn, I think those flamethrower drones will give the weapon a bit of a renascence. Probably less as a weapon per-say and more as a quick way to clear problematic shrubbery without endangering any infantrymen.
Flame thrower survives as a viable weapon till now
- Thread starter Khanzeer
- Start date
Butterfly away the thermobaric rocket. A thermobaric rocket, man portable or otherwise, fulfills pretty much the exact same tactical niche as a similarly mounted flamethrower does at much less weight, much longer range, and hence with much less risk to the operator.
you can't, range is too short, ammo too impractical and heavy to carry around, role can be filled by a number of other weapons with far grater general utility.
This goes for any ranged man portable explosive warhead launcher like the RPG-7 or carl gustav. in general you have to handwave away the concept of the rocket launcher/recoiless rifle with several munitions types (be it napalm, HE, HE-FRAG or similar, I mean even HEAT rockets does the same job in a pinch, just look at the RPG-7) and that is such a widespread concept post-wwii that it is essentially ASB.
Soviets did the best attempt at keeping it in post war with heir lighter 3 shot LPO-50 but in a VERY niche and limited role in combat engineer units that got replaced with a specialized launcher.
This goes for any ranged man portable explosive warhead launcher like the RPG-7 or carl gustav. in general you have to handwave away the concept of the rocket launcher/recoiless rifle with several munitions types (be it napalm, HE, HE-FRAG or similar, I mean even HEAT rockets does the same job in a pinch, just look at the RPG-7) and that is such a widespread concept post-wwii that it is essentially ASB.
Soviets did the best attempt at keeping it in post war with heir lighter 3 shot LPO-50 but in a VERY niche and limited role in combat engineer units that got replaced with a specialized launcher.
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Something tells me that the flame thrower is simply a weapon that has gone away. If we ever had to do proper war fighting in built up areas with dug in troops in reinforced or hard to attack positions, the flamer would probably come out of retirement. Otherwise its a very capable weapon but in an incredibly limited role and one that has many drawbacks to counter how brutally effective it can be. Its the embodyment of a niche weapon.
Problem isn't just that it is a niche weapon, its a niche weapon that has been replaced with frankly vastly superior alternatives even within its niche. Dug in/urban fighting is still very much a thing but to take the US experience in Iraq as example, their answer wasn't to bring back flamethrowers but rather using white phosphorous as a stopgap and reintroducing the M72 and carl gustav with HE ammo.
Aye but lets not also forget that the flamer's a horrific weapon to use and is very indiscriminate. If the US broke out the flame thrower and started burning insurgents alive in city fighting during the uprising in Fallujah, there's all the very very negative press that would go with it. If folks were in a war to the knife, to the bone, then flame throwers might well be brought out to 'play' once more. In the modern age of concern over collateral damage, they won't be used.
That's not in evidence. Thermobarics and willy-pete were used copiously in Fallujah and are just as indiscriminate and inflict burns every bit as horrific as a flamethrower (if not considerably worse). It's all a matter of playing the military PR game, in which there is a fair bit of hypocrisy in how military necessity is portrayed: when "we" do it, it's a military necessity, and when "they" do it its causing a humanitarian tragedy. The White Phosphorous is a case in point: official US line is that we aren't using Willy-Pete as a weapon, since that is illegal under international law, but to mark targets and anyone who gets burned by the Willy-Pete rounds is therefore "accidental".
The reality is that flamethrowers are not used because they are an older, less effective means to fulfilling the exact same tactical niche that much newer weapons like thermobarics have managed to fill in a more effective way, not out of any PR concerns.
So was white phosporous but the marines did not seem to care much. Incindiary weapons are perfectly legal and so US won't have much qualms about using them if they deem them to be a weapon fit for purpose as most methods used for killing tend to leave pretty borrifying results no matter what. Problem is, there aren't a lot of niches where it is fit for purpose any more.
What several of the posts above, including this one, seem to have missed is that it's not just a matter of negative PR when using flamethrowers in built-up areas. It's that the USA, as well as most other states, and all civilized states, are signatories of CCW 1980 Protocol III. That severely restricts the usage of incendiary weapons whenever there is a danger of damage to civilians or civilian objects. Say houses that are not being used by the enemy, but that are adjacent to an enemy position. Fires spread.
WP rounds were used by US forces even relatively recently not just because that was an ingenious field improvisation. They were still available to troops in the field exactly for the reason that under Article 1.(b)(i.) of that Convention, they are not considered as incendiary weapons (their primary purpose is making smoke, not fire). So there was no concern against their use.
Incendiary weapons and in particular flamethrowers might still be useful, and not so restricted in use by treaty as to be impractical, for attacking, say, hardened military bases that still have air vents, shooting slits and the like. But at that point, a thermobaric warhead works on the same principle and can be a stand-off weapon. Bunker-buster HE warheads that perforate a good thickness before detonating and cause shock waves also work well.
Heh. Provided their use is in compliance with CCW 1980 Protocol III, you mean.
That makes them somewhat impractical to use in many situations in which they were used to good effect before 1980, and namely in built-up areas and in the vicinity of civilian objects and populations.
Which, as I noted, opens up the wonderful loophole of using the Willy-Pete to "mark targets" de-jure when it is really using them as a "weapon" de-facto...
Which the US has not ratified and have openly stated that they are perfectly willing to break should circumstances require it. Only applies in confirmed heavily populated civilian areas in any case.
Yes. I did mention that. Now, I think the US armed forces aren't the only ones that did that.
I'd underline that while WP smoke rounds do start fires under the right conditions and do cause burn wounds, they aren't as lethal and burning as the same payload in a napalm-based or thermobaric warhead.
You are wrong in every sentence.
The USA ratified all of the Protocols of CCW 1980, albeit with long delays. Protocol III was ratified on 21.01.2009.
The USA never stated they are willing to openly violate the treaty should circumstances require it. They ratified it with a reservation (a not uncommon practice), which you can read here
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/appl...t&documentId=3AB9E36D37F951ECC1257558003E6A3F
and which is pretty sensible since it says they will consider using incendiaries even in areas where under the treaty they shouldn't be, if they are expected to cause less collateral damage than other weapons. I.e., the USA do accept the spirit of the treaty. The classic example is using incendiary bombs to take out a chemical weapons plant in a city; burning the place up burns any gases that would escape, and cause collateral civilian damage, if normal HE bombs were used.
And finally, "confirmed heavily populated civilian areas" isn't wording that can be found in the Protocol, or the US reservation, or the US understanding, or in the JAG's Operational Law Handbook. The latter does say that Protocol III "restricts their use near civilian areas to increase civilian population protections."
Yeah, I could pretty much only imagine it being used to clear foliage, or perhaps to destroy camps and supplies. Actually using a flamethrower to clear out enemy infantry would be a bad idea. I would think it would be quite heavy too, making it even less attractive for infantry use. Using them atop of drones to clear foliage or other things is probably the most probable.
Barry Bull
Donor
Shouldn't a ecologist be invited to talk how human is encroaching natural habitat of many animals next?
Barry Bull
Donor
The Soviet discovered that, to their dismay, their opponents are seldom so stupid to hide a shallow cave that can be covered by the flame of a flamethrower. For the guerrillas, it is simply a matter of walking deeper and enter another interconnected cave before leaving the cave and fight again.