"GLOBAL ISSUES, LEADERSHIP CHOICES":

Just as drones have changed the face of modern warfare, so is 3D printing by civilians. This article from The Economist (UK) highlights DIY munitions-making in Ukraine featuring 3D printers:

"Three months ago Lyosha and a group of friends, working in their homes, designed ... an 800-gram anti-personnel bomb called the “Zaychyk”, or “Rabbit”. The group uses 3D printing to produce the bomb’s casing, before sending it to be filled with C4, an explosive, and pieces of steel shrapnel. ... Necessity is the mother of invention, and the Zaychyk is but one example of the sorts of lethal innovation that have sprung up in Ukraine in the 17 months since Russia’s invasion. Stocks of many factory-built munitions have shrunk as the fighting has worn on. But raw explosives remain plentiful. That has helped create an amateur arms industry devoted to supplying soldiers at the front with improvised weapons to use against Russian troops. Lyosha’s team prints the plastic shells of around 1,000 “candy bombs,” as these improvised explosive devices have come to be known, every week. But the Ukrainian officer who acts as the team’s military contact wants 1,500 a day, says “ADV”, the nom de guerre of a second member of the group. Another set of amateurs, the Druk (“Print”) Army, has churned out more than 30,000 candy bombs in the past four months. “Swat”, their leader, says that the production rate is growing. And still more come from beyond Ukraine’s borders. Janis Ozols is the founder of the Latvia chapter of the Wild Bees, a group of volunteer weaponsmiths from outside Ukraine. He reckons at least 65,000 bomb shells have been shipped from Europe since November 2022. ... "Diuk”, a Ukrainian serviceman in Donetsk, a region partially occupied by Russian forces, says 5kg candy bombs are now killing exposed infantry 20 metres from where they land. Bomb techies hope to extend the kill radius still further. Some “candy shops” use software to model the killing potential of different shrapnel types and mounting angles relative to the charge, says one soldier in Kyiv with knowledge of their efforts. ChatGPT, an AI language model, is also queried for engineering tips (suggesting that the efforts of OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator, to prevent these sorts of queries are not working). Some candy bombs can even be used against armoured vehicles. ... Ukrainian drone operators claim to be able to destroy Russian tanks by dropping these bombs, which weigh around half a kilo, onto the vehicle’s roof, where the armour is thinner."
www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/08/01/ukraines-latest-weapons-in-its-war-with-russia-3d-printed-bombs