ELi5 What happens when you demilitarize munitions/weapons, and why is it a thing?
In: Other
Basically just trashing them.
Mostly the point is to show others, hey, we were ready to blow you the heck up, but since we came to an agreement to not do that to each other, we’re going to start reducing our weapons stockpiles while you guys do the same, so neither one of us can just suddenly turn around jump the other one with lots of planes and bombs and whatnot.
Because of the intent it’s generally important to render those weapons inert in a way that still leaves them identifiable as weapons. That way some foreign inspector/ambassador can show up on a visit, look at it and go, yep that’s 10,000 destroyed missiles/rifles/shells/etc. And they aren’t just disassembled so they can be put back together easily, but are filled with concrete so that’s good.
As another example as part of an international arms reduction treaty the US was required to destroy a bunch of B-52s. The ones that carry nukes. There’s an aircraft boneyard out there where they chopped a bunch of em up with a huge guillotine and crane and left them out for people to take satellite photos of.
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