Cluster Bombs

Attached dispensers stay attached to the aircraft and can be reloaded and used again. Their payload is dispersed out the rear or from the bottom of the dispenser.

SUBMUNITIONS

The ball-type submunitions are APERS. They are very small and are delivered on known concentrations of enemy personnel, scattered across an area. Like a land mine, it will not blow up until pressure is put on it.

The APERS submunition can be delivered by aircraft or by artillery. When it hits the ground, a small fragmentation ball shoots up and detonates about 6 feet above the ground. The area-denial APERS submunitions (FASCAM) are delivered into areas for use as mines. When they hit the ground, trip wires kick out up to 20 feet from the mine. All area-denial submunitions use antidisturbance fuzing with self-destruct fuzing as a backup. The self-destruct time can vary from a couple of hours to as long as several days.

The AMAT and/or AT submunitions are designed to destroy hard targets such as vehicles and equipment. They are dispersed from an aircraft-dropped dispenser and function when they hit a target or the ground. Drogue parachutes stabilize these submunitions in flight so they hit their targets straight on. The submunitions are also used to destroy hard targets such as vehicles and equipment. The only difference is that the fin assembly stabilizes the submunition instead of the drogue parachute.

AT area-denial submunitions can be delivered by aircraft, artillery, and even some engineer vehicles. These FASCAMs all have magnetic fuzing. They will function when they receive a signal from metallic objects. These submunitions, similar to the APERS area-denial submunitions, also have antidisturbance and self-destruct fuzing. AT and APERS area-denial mines are usually found deployed together.

Submunition function reliability requirement is no less than 95 percent. With a 95 percent submunition function reliability, one CBU-58 (with 650 submunitions) could produce up to 38 unexploded submunitions. A typical B-52 dropping a full load of 45 CBU-58/CBU-71, each containing 650 submunitions, could produce an average of some 1700 unexploded sub-munitions. The numbers of submunitions that fail to properly function and the submunitions’ dispersion determine the actual density of the hazard area.

Sources and Resources