July 11, 2004

Cluster Bombs. What are they? Where are they? How do they affect kids in war zones? What would they say if they could talk? And why are so many organizations calling for a ban on them?

Also: Is there a case to be made for them? (And who is this insidious-sounding "anti-cluster bomb lobby"?)

posted by scartol 20 years ago
  • What are they? Evil.
  • Warning - clicking on first link shows disturbing & NSFW stuff.
  • And now that I've done some reading... thanks for the links, scartol. This is some disturbing shit that we should all know more about.
  • Word. I meant to include a warning on that first link but then I forgot to go back and do it.. I'm pretty alarmed by the claims that these things pose more of a threat than land mines in some places..
  • NSFW depending where you work. Small price to pay to be aware. Any bombs dropped in populated areas are (to my mind) irresponsible, but the indiscriminatory nature of these non-target munitions are just fucking evil. Strange how the shotgun was banned by the Geneva convention as being 'inhumane', but then no amendments were made post-'Nam after the use of cluster munitions on civilians. (re. more dangerous that landmines: a bomb tech friend of mine was saying the prevalence of these things in Eastern Europe and South East Asia means people were still digging them up out of the ground 20 years later, and since they were designed to explode on impact, they're less stable than mines - using a radio within 20 ft can detonate one, or the vibrations of just walking around them. And of course it's mainly kids that find them).
  • Depends on what you think the alternative is. Implicit in all this is that were there no cluster bombs, all these folks would be just fine. But that's not obviously true. In the absence of cluster bombs, any given war would still have been waged in one way or another; a likely alternative seems to me to be good old WW2-style bombing/shelling the living bejesus out of everywhere that seems to have enemy. It's hard to say whether or not cluster bombs are "net" killers of civilians, since their use coincides with a bunch of other things that happened to make battlefields vastly more lethal and also more controlled than before. I really liked the spokesman for the HRW who noted that trying to get them banned would be pointless, so they work on limiting their use to less-inappropriate situations and harping on militaries to bring the dud rate down and otherwise reduce the long-term danger. But then I like pragmatism.
  • I actually think WW2-style bombing is preferable to the use of cluster bombs, since they're moderately targeted munitions, and so far more discriminatory than little packages of death floating down in a cloud. I guess what I'm going on about is accountability of weapons used in war. A single 5,000 pound bomb is better than 5,000 single-pound bomblets, at least in terms of non-intended casualties. (Yes, you could argue civilians still die with precision-guided missles, but that's due to poor targeting at a strategic level, not an operational munition issue).
  • I actually think WW2-style bombing is preferable to the use of cluster bombs, since they're moderately targeted munitions, and so far more discriminatory than little packages of death floating down in a cloud. Huh? Bombing and artillery campaigns decimated cities and utterly destroyed towns and villages. And, AFAIK, they don't just pop open the CBU casings at 35000 feet and let them fall willy-nilly. They seem to be about as targeted as your basic dumb bomb. I guess what I'm going on about is accountability of weapons used in war. A single 5,000 pound bomb is better than 5,000 single-pound bomblets, at least in terms of non-intended casualties. And I'm saying that, if you look ahead, that probably won't be the alternative. You won't see 1 5000 pound bomb instead of 5000 bomblets -- you'd see 5000 500 pound bombs, or 1000 500 pound bombs and a sustained artillery barrage.
  • Huh? Bombing and artillery campaigns decimated cities and utterly destroyed towns and villages. As I said, this was a strategic-targeting problem, not operational. The decision to 'decimate cities and utterly destroy' etc. was made by command, not at the level where munitions choice is made. They seem to be about as targeted as your basic dumb bomb. You move to strike a factory in a city - a conventional bombing run is focused on that target. Yes there will be collateral damage. A cluster bomb run is not 'focused', by definition. It is often used in an anti-personnel role and in areas of high foliage precisely because targeting is so damn difficult in those conditions. The problem is they're not as targeted because they spread over a wider area and many remain unexploded, which is what the previous comments re. landmines was all about. They sit there to be discovered. Up to 30% of the sub-munitions don't explode upon impact. The 'preferable alternative' was supposed to illustrate a point: to avoid the kind of collateral damage you get from cluster bombs, focus your attacks better. It's the same principle as other weapons classed as inhuman by the Geneva Convention.
  • (or, inhumane)
  • cluster bombs are being 'upgraded' to 'smart submunitions'. (kind of like mini-MIRVs) This is relatively new tech, only being recently used in Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. (mixed reports on the accuracy of that statement - some say SFWs have been used as early as Serbia '97, others not until the war with Iraq '03) a good description of the function of cluster bombs