Basically, a group got together and formed an easter egg hunt like event to coincide with the White House event, in order to raise awareness of the danger of cluster bombs. Oh boy, I don't know how I feel about this one. I feel strongly about the danger od using cluster bombs and how they ravage civilian population worse than they do military targets, but this seems a bad idea.
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Certainly a lot better than some people who use children to protest. At least they're not making the kids hold up pictures of mangled corpses.
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"The unexploded BLU-97 bomblets are yellow soda-can-size objects. The U.S. Defense Department, acknowledging on November 1, 2001 the tragic possibilities of confusing these objects with similarly colored food packets, began dropping leaflets warning the civilian population of the danger and also announced it would change the color of the food packets."
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Not all cluster bombs are bad. The newer smart bombs can independetly guide themselves towards armor targets and devastate them. Those that find no target self destruct in the air. They aren't really in quantiful supply yet, but they're extremely effective and reduce the risk to the civilians by a dramatic factor.
They were used in the beginning of the Iraq War to destroy an entire Iraqi brigade (I think it was a brigade). The unit next to them saw what happened and surrendered. They never even saw it coming. Cluster bombs aren't going anywhere, especially in the hands of an air superiority giant like the US they're just too effective. They'll just get smarter.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Not all cluster bombs are bad. The newer smart bombs can independetly guide themselves towards armor targets and devastate them. Those that find no target self destruct in the air. They aren't really in quantiful supply yet, but they're extremely effective and reduce the risk to the civilians by a dramatic factor.
That's only if they work. If they don't work, they hit the ground and one never knows whether they'll go off.
quote:They were used in the beginning of the Iraq War to destroy an entire Iraqi brigade (I think it was a brigade). The unit next to them saw what happened and surrendered. They never even saw it coming. Cluster bombs aren't going anywhere, especially in the hands of an air superiority giant like the US they're just too effective. They'll just get smarter.
They will eventually find themselves in other hands as well. Failures always happen, no matter how low engineering gets the rate. The application of cluster bombs in areas civilians have access to or in cities is the danger, not the use of cluster bombs against enemy forces.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: How do they determine what is or isn't a target?
Might be heat signatures, I'm not entirely sure. They're release, and then explosive charges blow off the sides and cylinder's are released, from those, each has I think four hockey puck shaped devices called "skeets." When they release they spiral, and they have homing sensors on them. They find their target, be it a tank, or a truck and strike it, and I think they're networked so they each go after a separate target and not all the same targets. Skeets that find no target are programmed to explode above the ground at a certain height.
I'm sure some of them are going to fail, things fail, it's a fact of war. And considering their nature, they're best used around clustered vehicles, not individual targets, which usually means open ground, rather than cities. Either way, considering the advance in technology, I think it's a great improvement over dumb cluster bombs that just leave bomblets around nilly willy, a la the ones Israel left behind in Lebanon last year.
Edit to add: I looked it up, it's infrared detection of heat signatures. They explode after time has expired on them, they have timers and altimeters in them. They are set to explode above the ground causing damage to personnel and materiel if they don't find a target. And I was wrong, they aren't networked, they just lock on to whatever they find first.
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Interesting. If you happen to have on hand or come across an article discussing the specifics of the targeting and networking features, I'd love to read it (don't take the time to go looking for it; I'm curious, but I'm not asking you because I doubt what you're saying and want you to "prove" it. I can google for it myself if I have time later and think of it).
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Here is an article that gives more specifics than the short summary I gave, but I don't know if it has the kind of specifics you want. Still, it's a start. Sorry about the networking thing, I was wrong about that, though it'd be cool if they were. It's probably more expensive to network them than it is just to launch a couple extra at the target kill zone.
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Thanks, Lyrhawn, I'll check it out tonight. I remember reading something a few years ago about a networked, mobile minefield; could that be what you were thinking of?
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I read about that too. Might be some bleed through from all the military tech news I read.
With all the high tech gadgetry the US Military is always coming up with, anything and everything just seems so plausible. Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Noemon, I believe the mobile tactical minefield you were reading may have been the Metal Storm technology I read about recently. It has supposedly been in development for a few years, but there are no working examples that I know of in use.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm sure some of them are going to fail, things fail, it's a fact of war. And considering their nature, they're best used around clustered vehicles, not individual targets, which usually means open ground, rather than cities. Either way, considering the advance in technology, I think it's a great improvement over dumb cluster bombs that just leave bomblets around nilly willy, a la the ones Israel left behind in Lebanon last year.
I don't dispute that they are more effective in open areas, as that is what I have come to understand their optimal use to be as well. However, their primary use over the last decade (from Kosovo to Iraq) has been in urban or suburban areas, where their chances for collateral damage has been consistently high. While what you describe is definitely better than previous versions, better than "bad" does not necessarily mean "good."
My problem with cluster bombs is similar to that of using depleted uranium armour piercing rounds, which is that their collateral damage danger remains for years after the initial intended use.
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Metal Storm the company has been in business for like a decade, but so far as I know they haven't actually produced a unit that anyone has purchased. Last time I remember reading about them, they were trying to rush an adaptable turret system to mount on armored vehicles into production. The technology has it's limitations, but the utter power of the rate of fire is undeniably strong.
I wonder if it's any worse to leave a bomblet behind that might kill someone years later than it is to accidentally shoot them or have them be collateral damage while the war is actually going on. I think you're attaching some sort of extra badness value to something that might hurt you later as opposed to now. Sensor Fused Cluster bombs are extremely effective against their intended targets, with comparatively minimal civilian casualties to regular CBs and other conventional weapons. They aren't going anywhere.
I don't like the idea of hurting civilians. But then I don't like the idea of war in general. I do however like the idea of winning. While better than bad might not always mean good, in this specific case I think it does. The focus should be on phasing out dumb cluster bombs as soon as possible in favor of smart ones. Focus your attention on the lives that can be saved.
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I don't understand what you're wondering. Are you asking whether it is acceptable to have collateral damage if the result of damaging the enemy can take place? Maybe you are posing that rhetorically for another reason. I may be unclear on what you say in that regard.
As for what you think I am attaching, I can assure you that I'm not attaching any more danger to the issue than really exists. There are still bomblets found in Kosovo, though far fewer in the past few years, and some have resulted in deaths. Even were the cluster bombs you linked used the majority of the time by our forces, and as of the Iraq war they are not, they still have a failure rate and that failure rate is not a danger in the "if" sense of the term but in the "when" sense of the term. Also, I am not making up claims when I say that cluster bombs have been used more in suburban and urban areas than anywhere else by countries that employ them, including the US. There is no need for exaggeration in that regard because no one is admitting otherwise. They were used for a specific purpose in urban and suburban areas, and the failure rates of bomblets, not the bombs, provide the lasting danger to civilians and clean up crews alike.
I mentioned their similarity to depleted uranium because the lasting effects of our use of depleted uranium shells back in 1991 in Iraq has been documented, much the same as the lasting effects of bomblets in Kosovo has been documented. There are always collateral losses in war campaigns, but I think that our main difference is what we define as acceptable as compared to effectiveness against an opposing force, not the technical aspects of the devices themselves.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Metal Storm the company has been in business for like a decade, but so far as I know they haven't actually produced a unit that anyone has purchased. Last time I remember reading about them, they were trying to rush an adaptable turret system to mount on armored vehicles into production. The technology has it's limitations, but the utter power of the rate of fire is undeniably strong.
Of that I have no doubt. The video demonstration I saw had a computer animated sequence showing a multi-payload metalstorm box used to cover a section of terrain and operated by a networked computer with a single soldier at the console. That was where I came to the conclusion that Noemon was talking about the mobile networked mine field, as that demonstration displayed all of the same characteristics.
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I guess my question was more of a philosophical one, but it wasn't rhetorical. Consider some of these questions:
Are Cluster Bombs more evil than a regular conventional bomb? Evil being a determination of how "bad" a bomb is, how much unacceptable devastation it causes.
Now the problem with a cluster bomb is that if they fail to explode, a bomblet might be picked up by some kid a year or five years later and thinking it's a bocce ball he'll play with it and get blown up. So we consider this an ESPECIALLY evil weapon, because the effects are long lasting, yes?
Now such an effect is a side effect and a default in the weapon, it is not the weapon's intended purpose.
A conventional bomb has no long lasting effects, they almost always explode in contact, and if they don't well they're huge and we know right where we left them, so finding them is easier, and even if they don't (failure rates are about the same), they LOOK like bombs, which might reduce the chances of a kid playing with it.
So when we accidentally bomb a school or a church or something and innocent civilians die, we decry the event, we investigate, but we don't call for a banning of all bombs.
So I wonder if you consider cluster bombs to be MORE evil than a regular bomb. And if you do, why?
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I think your attribution of evil is misplaced. Weapons aren't evil in and of themselves. Weapons are tools. The tools we are talking about here are more dangerous than alternatives and have been repeatedly used in urban and suburban areas? Do you at all dispute that last part about their use? Please note that I haven't once disagreed with their effectiveness at striking a dispersed target within an open space. However, they have repeatedly been used in urban and suburban areas, taking an already dangerous weapon and turning playgrounds, backyards, parks, and alleyways into minefields. I am not calling it evil, I am calling it unnecessarily misused. Is a rifle more evil than a handgun? A handgun more evil than a knife? A knife more evil than a stick? A stick more evil than a fist? These may be interesting philosophical questions in theory, but in reality it always comes down to application and intent that determines the morality.
What I am viewing our difference being is the definition of what is acceptable collateral damage. Do you disagree?
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quote:Their goal was visibility. "Our families just want to participate in a great American tradition."
quote:"We're not trying to hit kids over the head with this; we want them to have fun. We also want to bring attention to the fact that our munitions cause a lot of death and destruction to civilians, especially children." "Our families just want to participate in a great American tradition," said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Pride Coalition, the group that led the effort."
What a bunch of morons. Let's look for pretty Easter Eggs and pretend the Easter bunny kills our kids. "We don't want to hit our kids over the heads with this, we want them to have fun."
And at Christmas I suppose Santa will deliver skud missles disguised as Tickle Me Elmos.
Regular bombs are used in urban areas too, and sometimes they are misused, and sometimes they kill whole bunches of innocents rather than one here and there.
My point, is that there's no real difference between cluster munitions used in urban areas, and regular munitions used in urban areas. They both have the same end result when they fail or are misused: Dead civilians.
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Just a quibble: cluster bomb failure rates vary from between 5% and have had reports of up to 20% failure rate during the 1991 Gulf War. Are you really claiming that conventional bombs have that high a failure rate? Did you know that the estimated actual failure rate for the bombs used in south Lebanon approaches 40% (source)?
There were nearly 300,000 unexploded bomblets found in Kosovo, and over 450,000 reported in Lebanon. I say, once again, that your assurances to the contrary of the relative reliability of these devices does very little to change my opinion that the price is not worth the presumed tactical advantage, especially when these bombs are used in highly populated areas. The acceptability of this collateral damage is where we disagree. I do not disagree that they can be very efficient in attacking a target.
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