conventional arms
Non-nuclear military equipment
Conventional arms are military weapons that are not nuclear, biological, or chemical—the ordinary instruments of warfare like guns, tanks, missiles, and aircraft.
The term appears most often in arms control contexts, where treaties distinguish between conventional and weapons of mass destruction: The treaty limits conventional arms in Europe.
A conventional arms race involves buildup of standard military hardware rather than nuclear stockpiles.
- battleshipsHeavily armed naval vessels
- fighter jetsArmed military aircraft
- pistolsSmall one-handed firearms
- bombersAircraft designed for airstrikes
- artilleryLarge-caliber battlefield weapons
drones · tanks · transport aircraft · submarines · mortars · land mines · rifles · reconnaissance planes · armored personnel carriers · attack helicopters · howitzers · aircraft carriers · naval vessels · light weapons · machine guns · assault rifles · military hardware · ground forces
- arms controldisarmament, nonproliferation, nuclear treaty, nuclear ban, weapons ban
- non-nuclearfossil fuels, fossil fuel, petroleum, diesel, coal
- Arms Treatiesdisarmament, weapons ban, weapon bans, cluster munitions, cluster bombs
conventional armsnuclear weapons
Explosive devices using fission
weapons of mass destruction · nuclear arms · WMD · atomic weapons · thermonuclear weapons
conventional, convention, conventions, conventionally, unconventional, conventionality, arms, armaments, disarm