Cluster bomb

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Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M139 Sarin bomblets (photo circa 1960)
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Honest John missile warhead cutaway, showing M139 Sarin bomblets (photo circa 1960)

Cluster munitions are air-dropped or ground launched shells that eject multiple small submunitions (bomblets). Their primary purpose is to kill enemy infantry, although specialized weapons designed for anti-runway, anti-armor and mine-scattering purposes have also been developed.

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[edit] Threats to civilians

A US B-1 Lancer releasing its payload of cluster bombs
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A US B-1 Lancer releasing its payload of cluster bombs

The use of cluster bombs is hotly opposed by many individuals and groups, such as the Red Cross, the Cluster Munition Coalition and the United Nations, because of the high proportion of civilians that have fallen victim to the weapon. Since February 2005, Handicap International called for cluster munitions to be prohibited and collected hundreds of thousands signatures to support its call.

Cluster bombs pose a threat to civilians for two reasons: they have a very wide area of effect, and they almost always leave behind unexploded bomblets.

The area affected by a single cluster munition, also known as the footprint, can be as large as two or three football fields. Because of the weapon's very wide area of effect, they have frequently been documented as striking both civilian and military objects in the target area. This characteristic of the weapon is particularly problematic for civilians when cluster munitions are used in or near populated areas and has been documented by research reports from groups such as Human Rights Watch[1], Landmine Action and Handicap International.

The other serious problem is unexploded ordinance (UXO) of cluster bomblets left behind after a strike. These bomblets may be duds or in some cases the weapons are designed to detonate at a later stage. In both cases, the surviving bomblets are live and can explode when handled, making them a serious threat to civilians and military personnel entering the area. In effect, the UXOs can function like land mines. These are sometimes called triple-threat weapons, because they can explode in the air, on the ground, or later when stepped on or disturbed.

Even with cluster bombs that are designed to fully explode there a certain number of individual submunitions that do not explode on impact. The US-made MLRS with M26 warhead and M77 submunitions are supposed to have a 5 percent dud rate but in reality have a rate of 16 percent[2]. The rate for this type tested during the Gulf War was as high as 23 percent[3]. The M483A1 DPICM artillery-delivered cluster bombs have a reported dud rate of 14 percent[citation needed].

Given that each cluster bomb contains hundreds of bomblets and are fired in volleys, even a small failure rate can lead each strike to leave behind hundreds or thousands of UXOs scattered randomly across the strike area. For example, after the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, UN experts have estimated that as many as one million unexploded bomblets may contaminate the hundreds of cluster munition strike sites in Lebanon[4].

In addition, some cluster bomblets, such as the CBU-87, are brightly coloured in order to increase their visibility and warn off civilians. However, the colour, coupled with their small and unthreatening appearance has caused children to interpret them as toys. This problem was exacerbated in the United States military action against Afghanistan, when US forces dropped humanitarian rations from airplanes with the same yellow colored packaging as the BLU97. The rations packaging was later changed first to blue and then to clear packaging in the hopes of avoiding such hazardous confusion.

The US military is developing new cluster bombs which they claim have a much lower (less than 1%) dud rate[5]. However, in the past, new more efficient cluster bombs have not been made in sufficient quantities to push the older bombs out of the stockpiles and use. New guided weapons, including the WCMD and JSOW will substantially reduce the number of cluster munitions required for any given target with a corresponding reduction in the number and area covered by duds.

[edit] Development

Cluster bombs were developed in order to improve the efficiency of aerial attacks, particularly against "soft" targets like personnel. Single bombs are less useful for this purpose because they cover a smaller area (known as a "footprint" in military parlance), and their effectiveness is dependent on the accuracy of the bomb's drop. A cluster bomb functions like a shotgun, covering a wider area with a spread of miniature bombs.

The first cluster bomb used operationally was the German SD-2 or Sprengbombe Dickwandig 2 kg, commonly referred to as the Butterfly Bomb. It was used during the Second World War to attack both civilian and military targets. The technology was developed independently by the United States of America, Russia and Italy (see Thermos Bomb). Cluster bombs are now standard air-dropped munitions for most nations, in a wide variety of types.

Artillery shells that employ similar principles have existed for decades. They are typically referred to as ICM (Improved Conventional Munitions) shells. The US military slang terms for them are "firecracker" or "popcorn" shells, for the many small explosions they cause in the target area.

[edit] Types of cluster bombs

A US Vietnam era BLU-3 cluster bomblet.
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A US Vietnam era BLU-3 cluster bomblet.

A basic cluster bomb is a hollow shell (generally streamlined if intended for carriage by fast aircraft) containing anywhere from three to more than 2,000 submunitions. Some types are dispensers that are designed to be retained by the aircraft after releasing their munitions. The submunitions themselves may be fitted with small parachute retarders or streamers to slow their descent (allowing the aircraft to escape the blast area in low-altitude attacks).

Incendiary cluster bombs, also called firebombs, are designed to start fires. They are generally are specifically designed for this purpose, with payloads of white phosphorus or napalm, but they are often combined with a payload of anti-personnel and anti-tank submunition to make firefighting efforts more difficult. When used in cities they were often preceded by the use of conventional explosive bombs to break open the roofs and walls of buildings to expose flamable contents for the incindiaries. This type of munition was extensively used by both sides in the strategic bombings of World War II. It was bombs of this type that were used to start firestorms such as those in Dresden and Tokyo.

Anti-personnel cluster bombs use explosive fragmentation to kill troops and destroy soft (unarmored) targets. Along with Incendiary cluster bombs, these were among the first forms produced by Germany during WWII. They were most famously used during the Blitz with delay and boobytrap fusing to prevent firefighting and other damage control efforts in the bombed areas. They were also used with a contact fuse when attacking entrenchments. Anti-personnel cluster bombs are much more effective than conventional munitions because each individual conventional bomb or artillery shell has a very small chance of hitting a targeted fortification. The larger number of individual bombs in a cluster bombing attack increases the chance of destroying fortified positions.

Most Anti-armor munitions contain shaped charge warheads to pierce the armor of tanks and armored fighting vehicles. In some cases, guidance is used to increase the likelihood of successfully hitting a vehicle. Guided submunitions can use either a shaped charge warhead or an explosively formed penetrator. Unguided shaped-charge submunitions are also very effective against entrenchments that encorporate overhead cover. To simplify supply and increase battlefield effectiveness by allowing a single type of round to be used against nearly any target, submunitions that incorporate both fragmentation and shaped-charge effects are produced. In United States Army and Marine Corps Field Artillery units, this is the most common type of shell used in conventional warfare.

Anti-runway submunitions such as the JP233 are designed to penetrate concrete before detonating, allowing them to shatter and crater runway surfaces. In the case of the JP233, the cratering effect is achieved through the use of a 2-stage warhead that combines a shaped charge and conventional explosive. The shaped charge is designed to create a small crater which the conventional explosive falls into and then enlarges by its explosion. Anti-runway submunitions are usually used along with anti-personnel submunitions equipped with delay or booby-trap fuses to make repair more difficult.

Mine-laying weapons do not detonate on contact, but scatter their cargo of land mines for later detonation. They come in antipersonnel and antitank forms. Antitank mines are nearly always used in combination with antipersonnel mines to make the antitank minefield more difficult to clear. Since such mines usually lie on exposed surfaces, the antipersonnel forms, such as the US Area Denial Artillery Munition normally deploy tripwires automatically after landing to make clearing the minefield more difficult. In order to avoid rendering large portions of the battlefield permanently impassable, and to minimize the amount of mine-clearing needed after a conflict, scatterable mines used by the United States are designed to self-destruct after a period of time from 4-48 hours.

During the 1950s and 1960s the United States and Soviet Union developed cluster weapons designed to deliver chemical weapons, ranging from lethal nerve gas like Sarin to defoliants and tear gas. International pressure has made the use of chemical weapons politically volatile, although both the U.S. and Russia retain such weapons in their arsenals.

An anti-electrical cluster weapon — the CBU-94/B — was first used by the U.S. in the Kosovo War in 1999. These consist of a TMD (Tactical Munitions Dispenser) filled with 202 BLU-114/B submunitions. Each submunition contains a small explosive charge that disperses 147 reels of fine conductive fiber; either carbon fiber or aluminium coated glass fiber. Their purpose is to disrupt and damage electric power transmission systems by producing short circuits in high voltage power lines and electrical substations. On the first attack, these knocked out 70% of the electrical power supply in Serbia. There are reports that it took 500 people 15 hours to get one transformer yard back on line after being hit with the conductive fibers.

Modern cluster bombs and submunition dispensers are often multiple-purpose weapons, containing mixtures of anti-armor, anti-personnel, and anti-materiel munitions.

A growing trend in cluster bomb design is the "smart" submunition, which uses guidance circuitry to locate and attack particular targets, usually armored vehicles. Some recent weapons of this type include the U.S. CBU-97 sensor-fused weapon, first used in combat during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Munitions specifically intended for anti-tank use may be set to self-destruct if they reach the ground without locating a target, theoretically reducing the risk of collateral damage to civilians and non-military targets. Another limitation of the "smart" submunition is cost: such weapons are many times more expensive than standard cluster bombs, which are cheap and simple to manufacture.

[edit] Cluster bombs and international treaties

Although other problematic weapons, such as land mines have been banned in many countries under specific legal instruments for several years, notably the Ottawa Treaty and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, cluster bombs are not yet banned by any international treaty and are considered legitimate weapons by some governments. International governmental deliberations revolve around the broader problem of explosive remnants of war, a problem to which cluster munitions have contributed in a significant way. However, despite calls from humanitarian organisations and some governments, no international governmental negotiations or formal discussions are underway to develop specific measures that would address the humanitarian problems cluster munitions pose. But this could change following the decision by Belgium to ban this weapon in February 2006, as well as Norway's adoption of a moratorium and call for an international treaty banning this weapon.

In November 2006, a new international law is coming into force requiring countries to clear up unexploded bombs and mines or pay teams of de-miners to do it.[1]

[edit] Civilian deaths from unexploded cluster bomblets

  • In Vietnam, people are still being killed as a result of cluster bombs and other objects left by the US military. Estimates range up to 300 per year.[2]
  • In post-war Kosovo unexploded cluster bomblets caused more civilian deaths than landmines.[3]
  • In Lebanon as many as 70% of the bomblets dropped may not have detonated [4]. 16 have been killed and 100 civilians were injured [5] by unexploded bomblets since the August 14, 2006 ceasefire in the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon conflict. Unofficial reports indicate that the US State Department is inquiring into whether Israeli use of US-made cluster bombs during the conflict conformed with the terms of agreements between them as to the conditions of the munition's use. It is confirmed that Hezbollah also used clusters. Israel has expressed readiness to cooperate[6]. In August 2006, the UN's Mine Action Coordination Center in Tyre, Lebanon, raised an alarm over the post-conflict impact on returning civilians of unexploded cluster bombs used by Israel in village areas.[7]. Israel immediately after the cease-fire gave UNIFIL maps indicating the likely locations of unexploded ordnance, to aid the international attempt to clear these areas and avoid injury to the population. Furthermore, immediately after the cease-fire the it distributed warning notices to the residents in the areas of warfare, and recommended that they wait a few days before returning to the south until the UNIFIL forces were deployed there and the area had been cleared of unexploded ordnance.[8]

[edit] Areas with significant cluster bomb UXO problems

[edit] International legislation

Although covered by the general rules of international humanitarian law, cluster munitions are not currently covered by any specific international legal instrument. So far Belgium is the only country to have issued a ban on the use (carrying), transportation, export, stockpiling, trade and production of cluster munitions.[9] However, several countries, including Austria, Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland have seen considerable parliamentary activity on cluster munitions. In some of these countries, there are ongoing discussions concerning draft legislation banning cluster munitions, along the lines of the legislation adopted in Belgium. Norway has also committed itself to an international ban on cluster munitions and recently announced a moratorium on the weapon. Austria has also committed itself to an international legally-binding instrument on cluster munitions, after the Parliament passed a resolution on cluster munitions in July. On December 5, 2006, Senator Lyn Allison, leader of the Australian Democrats, introduced a private bill, titled the Cluster Munitions (Prohibition) Bill 2006, to prohibit Australia's use, manufacture and possession of cluster munitions. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee will scrutinize the bill early in 2007.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ (2003-12). "Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq" (PDF). Human Rights Watch.
  2. ^ 1 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, "Unexploded Ordnance Report," table 2-3, p. 5. No date, but transmitted to the U.S. Congress on February 29, 2000
  3. ^ (August, 1993). "Operation Desert Storm: Casualties Caused by Improper Handling of Unexploded U.S. Submunitions" (PDF). US General Accounting Office. Retrieved on 2006-09-01.
  4. ^ "'Million bomblets' in S Lebanon", BBC, 2006-09-26. Retrieved on 2006-09-26.
  5. ^ (February, 1993). "Army RDT&E Budget Item Justification, Item No. 177, MLRS Product Improvement Program" (PDF). Defense Technical Information Center. Retrieved on 2006-09-01.

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