HEAVY WEAPONS

摘要

Early in Operation Desert Storm's four-day ground war, the story goes, an American Abrams M-1A1 tank got bogged down in Iraqi mud. Its fast-moving unit, the 16,000-member 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, continued its push toward Basra, leaving the beleaguered tank behind to await a rescue vehicle. Suddenly, three Iraqi T-72 tanks attacked. The Abrams―built for speed―was a sitting duck before the Soviet Union's most advanced armor. But because the American tank was equipped with armor-piercing shells made from depleted uranium (DU, a waste product of the process that produces enriched uranium for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants), it was able to destroy all three of its attackers.