Banning cluster munitions.

[Nilsen]

And while they are perfected, distributed to all countries using them they should still be used? It is prolly not even possible to make 100% of them detonate. Even with normal bombs and shells there are duds, but the cluster munitions delivers 10-100 and upwards of them so even a very low failiure rate leaves alot of them behind.

Here in Norway and i would guess all over were there have been fighting there is still found tons of unexploded munitions from the ww2, and the cleanup will go on for decades. I cant even imagine how it would be here if they had used them in mass back in ww2.

The focus of most of the development in weapons and munitions over the last couple of decades has been to make them more accurate to get the collatteral damage down to a minimum, but the cluster munitions go the opposite way even if they do hit the area with greater accuracy.

[Dinger]

How do you define a "Cluster Bomb" in a meaningful way so that it can be bombed? "Any weapon carrying more than one explosive submunition?" Or only certain ones?
No country is going to adopt the definition above. But if you break it down, how do you do it? "Those with Point-Detonating Fuzes"? Okay, but our DPICM uses Superquick. By failure rates? One of the reasons why the US military is moving away from extensive ICM-family usage is because the published failure rates were far from what they were getting on the field. By size? You gonna ban hand grenades?

Rules about what weapons are "legitimate" and which ones aren't are often arbitrary and rather silly. Still, some you can define fairly well -- like land mines -- others, like cluster munitions, are not.

Cluster Munitions are on their way out anyway. Militaries like the US are recognizing the dud rate causes serious problems for friendly troops, let alone civilians. The Israelis may use them in Lebanon, but it doesn't do their cause any good. Soon Cluster Munitions will be alongside Napalm in world usage, ban or no ban. Heck, napalm's been banned, but the US has a napalm-like bomb it uses in its inventory; it's just not employed as widely as before, because it's not as effective as once believed.

(Napalm first saw heavy use in Korea. American pilots thought it great because it struck fear in the hearts of the Chinese and North Koreans, who would run away, whereas with iron bombs, they would keep moving. Prisoner interviews revealed the opposite: they were running because they knew they had a chance to escape the lethal zone).

[Dinger]

Oh and Red 26 -- dang that's a lot of launchers: what is that, a battalion fire mission? I count two firing platoons visible in that last shot. 3x2x12x644 = 46,368 bomblets in forty seconds to a minute (depending on model). The brits called it the "Grid Square Eliminator" or some such.

[Hornet33]

That last video was a Battery of MLRS. To be specific it was A Brty 1/158FA Oklahoma National Guard out of Lawton OK. I know because I was there when that video was filmed during Desert Storm. Not all our launchers fired on that mission. I believe we kept 2 on standby in case we needed to hit a target again or for counter battery fire. A battery of MLRS consists of:

9 M270 SPLL, Self Propelled Loader Launchers (1st platoon, 3 squads of 3 launchers)
27 M985 HEMTT, Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (2nd platoon, 3 squads of 9 trucks)
5 M577 and assorted light vehichles for the FDC group and survey section (3rd platoon)
HQ platoon with the TOC, commo, maintence groups.

Standard rocket for the MLRS is the M26. 644 submunitions per rocket.

Artillery is the King of Battle.

[lazs2]

I would say that unexploded munitions are a bad thing.

I would ban cluster munitions if they are being used as land mines.  If they explode as much as any other munition (percent wise) then there is no problem.  

lazs

[Dago]

"I'll give up my cluster munitions when they pry them from my cold dead hands"

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Nilsen
So its ok for you to kill and injure innocent children and others that plays with or steps on the duds just because the insurgants, terrorists and criminals targets your troops and eachother?

BRILLIANT!

Punish the innocent for the deeds of the guilty. Good way to "win the hearts and minds" of your enemies and stay on the christian high-ground.

Nils you know it's not OK but civilians arent the targets.  Again newer generation of submunitions have far less dud rates and better fail safes.

[lukster]

War is not civilized. Many have tried to make it that way but all have failed.

[Dinger]

Originally posted by Hornet33
That last video was a Battery of MLRS. To be specific it was A Brty 1/158FA Oklahoma National Guard out of Lawton OK.  

Sweet. and a 155mm DPICM round carries about 1/9th of an M26 load of subs, so the hate being put downrange in one minute by an MLRS launcher is equivalent to something like 36 M109 paladins. Of course, the MLRS then has to reload, while the Paladin can keep going (at a lower sustained ROF). So the other side of that video is receiving the equivalent of a 200-tube 155mm barrage.

Although these days I suppose HIMARS is all the rage.

[Nilsen]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
Nils you know it's not OK but civilians arent the targets.  Again newer generation of submunitions have far less dud rates and better fail safes.

I know civilians are not the target, but that doesnt count for much when the soldiers are gone and the munitions keep claiming causualties decades later does it?

By all means... making better self destruct systems on them or making them better at exploding when they are supposed to helps, but I seriously doubt they can make them as good as regular munitions simply because there are so many of them released in one go. Even at that magical 1% limit that some has set as a benchmark then that still leaves 6-7 duds for every rocket. Multiply that by 12 and the number of launchers in a battery and you are not far from 1000 duds. At 0,5% (sounds very good) you still have 500.

[Maverick]

The idea of getting a JAG Officer anywhere near a combat zone and front lines.....


I think at least half of the Jag folks should be mine detectors using the foot pressure detection method. They should be followed by 3/4 of the civilian lawyers. At least we'd get something constructive out of them.

[Nilsen]

Now that is a good suggestion Mav

[Nashwan]

Again newer generation of submunitions have far less dud rates and better fail safes.

Are you sure? The US has removed (or helped remove) about 50,000 unexploded bomblets from Lebanon left over from the war this summer, and the UN estimates up to 1 million remain in total. So far, they've been finding that about 40% of all the submunitions used didn't detonate.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by Nashwan
Are you sure? The US has removed (or helped remove) about 50,000 unexploded bomblets from Lebanon left over from the war this summer, and the UN estimates up to 1 million remain in total. So far, they've been finding that about 40% of all the submunitions used didn't detonate.

Where they using the new MK82s or SFWs?  If not I rest my case.

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by Nilsen
I say its about time they go the same way as anti-personel landmines..

What do the rest of you think?. They are without a doubt a very good type of weapon in conventional warfare such as was predicted for a WW3 but the problems they cause now go far above their usefullness.

Im sure many here will not agree with this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6158806.stm

I had a quick look at the report.

Its pretty much BS. They claim 98% of casualties are civilians but this is a blatant lie. As an example their data includes post war casualties on civilians in cambodia and vietnam. But gives virtually no casualties against the military as the report was conducted post war.

So, for example, the cambodian report says 121 civilians hurt or killed by cluster munitions, 0 military casualties. Wherein truth the cluster munitions were used on the Ho Chi Minh trail probably killed thousands of NVA.

So according to that report the stat is 100% of casualties are civilians, where as the truth is more like less than 1% are civilians if you took into account military casualties pre-2006.

So in summary its statistical lies.