1965

Cluster Munition

There are two ways to look at cluster munitions. On the one hand, they are horrible. Like AK-47s, they kill people and destroy property with stunning efficiency. On the other hand, if the goal is to kill the enemy and destroy enemy property efficiently, cluster munitions are an engineering achievement.

Early cluster bombs, first deployed in Laos and Vietnam in 1965, were very simple. Imagine a bomb casing filled with a large number of small explosives similar to hand grenades. An airplane would drop the bomb, the casing would open midair to release the bomblets, and they would explode when they hit the ground. Any human being caught within the footprint of the cloud of bomblets would die in the maelstrom of shrapnel the bomblets all produced. An unfortunate side effect of the process would be the duds—bomblets that would fail to detonate for some reason on impact. They would remain dangerous for years, causing countless casualties.

Modern cluster bombs like the CBU-105, also known as a Sensor Fuzed Weapon, are completely different. When the bomb opens midair, ten BLU-108 submunitions deploy and fall slowly under individual parachutes. A radar sensor in the bottom of the BLU-108 detects the height above the ground. At the appropriate height, the BLU-108 fires a small solid rocket that spins the canister and increases its altitude. The rotational force allows the canister to throw out four spinning bomblets, each with its own sensors and intelligence to detect heat-producing vehicles on the ground. Each bomblet seeks a vehicle and then fires an explosively formed penetrator at it, destroying the vehicle. The bomblets also automatically self-destruct if they did not acquire a target, eliminating duds.

Imagine a squad of soldiers encountering a column of enemy vehicles on the move, or an encampment of enemy vehicles. One CBU-105 would selectively destroy all of the vehicles, and no duds would be left behind to harm civilians. This approach is significantly better than the simple cluster bombs that preceded the CBU-105.

SEE ALSO Trinity Nuclear Bomb (1945), AK-47 (1947).

M190 Honest John chemical warhead section containing demonstration M134 GB (Sarin) bomblets.