I can only describe what was standard back when I was on riot duty with the National Guard, and that was back in the 1970s, in the US. This is now 2018, and that is France on our TV screens.
We did not have flashbangs for riot control. We had concussion grenades, for demolition and assaulting fortified positions, and ‘simulators’ for training. The former were cylindrical, the same size as the smoke and burn type tear gas grenades, and black
in color. The latter were cylindrical, smaller than the combat munitions, white, and used a friction fuse rather than the combat ring-pin and spoon detonators of the standard grenades. The simulators replaced the previous training grenades, remembered as the “M80”, which were basically big fire-crackers.
The burn type tear gas grenades were the same size and shape as the smoke grenades, and worked the same way, except that there were lachrymal agents (CN, CS, or both) in the smoke generating charges that started burning as soon as the grenade was thrown or launched. There were also training versions which had much less and much milder tearing agent in the burn charge, but I only heard about those; the NG didn't get them. We used regular smoke grenades for chemical agent (including tear gas) training. Yellow smoke grenades were preferred, as they smelled pretty bad anyway. The CS bursting grenades were spherical, about the size of a baseball, and tan, with a colored stripe around them. The igniter was a button on the top of the grenade: push the button and 5 seconds (more or less) later the disbursing charge would go ‘pop’ and spread the very fine CS powder through the air. The tan plastic shell of the grenade was very fragile so that the disbursing charge would shatter it completely and not spread fragments with the CS. In fact, the shell was so fragile that the grenade would break open if you dropped it on a hard surface, and the CS would disburse itself on any stray air currents.
I do not know what the current tear gas agents are in the current military inventory, nor what they look like. I would assume that the different weapons and munitions would look different and have different sizes and shapes to keep the users from using the wrong one in the field, under the stress of action, but I may be giving the Ordinance Corps and Departments too much credit for good sense. The police departments use even a wider variety of agents and munitions than the military, with no standardization that *I* can see, and many of the ‘pepper’ (capsicum) based agents are available to almost anyone on the civilian market.
That was an excellent explanation...thank you for taking the time to do it.
I kind of assumed that the relative shape and function of say, a tear gas canister, would remain largely unchanged over time, a good and simple design...In retrospect I guess that wouldn’t be true.