dense inert metal explosives
In 2006, the Israeli military began using a new type of weapon against the populations of Lebanon and Gaza. It was designed to create an extremely intense explosion over a very limited area. The weapon, dubbed the Dense Inert Metal Explosive, or DIME, was originally designed for the U.S. Air Force at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California. However, Israel is the only country that has made use of the weapon. The DIME gets its name from the tungsten, an inert metal, that is incorporated into the weapon. Upon detonation, the tungsten is pulverized, causing horrific wounds.
Physicians working in Gaza during the 2008/09 massacre described wounds completely unlike traditional shrapnel wounds. One doctor described "bodies arriving severely fragmented, melted and disfigured,...internal burning of organs, externally minute pieces of shrapnel. When we opened many of the injured people we found dusting on internal organs." These small pieces of shrapnel do not show up under x-ray, making detection of damaged organs difficult.
Though the design of the weapon's intensely powerful, short range blast is ostensibly to limit "collateral damage" in urban conflicts, cloaking a weapon of such devestating power within such justification can and already has led to cavalier use in populated areas, leading to horrible civilian casualities. The DIME is a new weapon, so movements to ban or monitor its use are in their early stages, but the grotesque nature of the wounds caused make it a weapon of mass mutilation.
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