Conventional Weapon

The terms conventional weapons or conventional arms generally refer to weapons that are in relatively wide use that are not weapons of mass destruction (e.g. nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons). Conventional weapons include small arms and light weapons, sea and land mines, as well as (non-nuclear) bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and cluster munitions. These weapons use explosive material based on chemical energy, as opposed to nuclear energy in nuclear weapons.

The acceptable use of all types of conventional weapons in war time is governed by the Geneva Conventions. Certain types of conventional weapons are also regulated or prohibited under the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Other are prohibited under the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction.

Famous quotes containing the words conventional and/or weapon:

    My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    But what is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of reason.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)