ELi5 What happens when you demilitarize munitions/weapons, and why is it a thing?
In: Other
why: normally its treaty compliance (ie “we aggreed with the russians that we’d both reduce our nuclear bomber fleets by 50 planes”) or they are looking to scrap weapons in a safe manner (ie not sell off fully functional anti-tank weapons to Joe Bloggs form Dorset, for him then use in his boundary dispute with Mr Doe, who at number 51 next door), or to make it a display piece or trophy and want to ensure its legal to be hung on the wall of a office or parked by the gate to look cool.
what: basically, you render the weapon unfireable, in such a manner that you’d need access to a full factory to repair it. for rifles and such, you can do stuff like immerse them in concrete (which will get inside, fill up cracks, and generally prevent anyone form using it again, as it will never work reliably again), or weld the bolt carrier shut, remove the firing pin, and stick some sort of blocking material into the barrel, and for bigger guns like tank cannons, a common method is to remove the breech block of the gun, as its a high quality, precision part that needs to be strong withstand the pressure of the cannon firing, so its hard to manufacture a new one.
for ammunition, you do stuff like just pour out the powder and remove the primer. bigger shells, your cheapest option is just a controlled detonation, or else you disassembling the entire shell to laboriously remove all explosive filler.
a lot of this stuff is, strictly speaking, repairable or reversible, but the tools, expertise and cost required to do so are enough that anyone who could, would be able to just make new weapons themselves for less effort.
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