I really don’t have a lot of background on cluster munitions; it only really came into my perception in response to the controversy over the US providing them to Ukraine. As I understand it, the controversy is because they often don’t all explode reliably, and unexploded munitions can then explode months or years later when civilians are occupying the territory, making it similar to the problems caused by landmines.
In an age where things like location trackers, radio transmitters, and other such local and long-range technology to locate objects are common place, what’s stopping the manufacturers of these munitions from simply putting some kind of device to facilitate tracking inside each individual explosive, to assist with detection and safe retrieval after a conflict? I get that nothing is a 100% effective solution, but it seems like it’d solve most of it.
Can someone with actual knowledge explain why this is still a problem we’re having?
Well, technically it is a solved problem. Spain fielded electronically fused cluster bomblets that were disabled via a drained capacitor if not exploded in 5 minutes. This eliminated the possibility of live duds.
This Espin system has since been removed from service. Not sure if there are any similar system currently in use.
That’s really interesting!
This Espin system has since been removed from service.
Do you know why this is? That seems like a functional and easy to implement solution.
I believe is was pulled from service after Spain signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
If the bomb-makers could make any sort of bomb they wanted, they would not make a bomb that lies around unexploded. They want that bomb to blow up the enemy and the enemy’s stuff, not sit around waiting for some noncombatant kid to pick it up weeks or years later. If it does not blow up in a timely fashion, it is not doing the job of a weapon in Western military doctrine — which is to stop the enemy from being able to continue to wage war.
The goals of “stop the enemy” and “don’t blow up some kid weeks or years later” are both met by making the bomb more reliable at blowing up right away. So they probably focus on that, not on adding extra bells & whistles that could potentially be used by the enemy to avoid being blown up.
Active transmitters need high capacity batteries to be able to transmit signals for long periods after deployment. And batteries don’t like heat in general. They will also require fairly complex electronics which again need to be designed to handle the forces involved. It’s not like this hasn’t been done before (eg. GPS guided shells), but it’s just very costly and needs a good amount of physical space.
Instead, most modern cluster munitions (and mines) have mechanisms to disable themselves after a certain period of time. But like you said, nothing is perfect.
Military hardware is designed to be as simple as possible because military conditions are extremely unpredictable and messy.
Furthermore, war necessitates trimming everything that doesn’t involve killing the enemy out of one’s designs.
This is because unlike competition against nature — where requirements are finite — competition against another army means dealing with infinite requirements.
If one side builds cluster munitions that have these tracking transmitters, and the other side builds cluster munitions that don’t, then the latter is going to have more cluster munitions.
This may not seem like that big a deal because it would be a coincidence if the two were so evenly matched that the transmitters became the deciding factor.
But wat is not coincidental. War happens specifically when there is a specific set of conditions:
- Side A might be able to dominate side B
- But that is uncertain
If A >> B in terms of power, no war happens. Instead, A rules B.
If A == B in terms of power, no war happens. Instead, A and B trade.
War happens when A ~= B, ie when A believes it might be more powerful than B, but B also believes that A might be wrong.
So war has a built-in condition where the two powers are close enough in power that they both must give their all in order to win.
This means that hardware involved in war is subject to ultra-narrow design requirements in terms of efficiency.
And those ultra-narrow requirements mean you gotta trim everything that isn’t winning the war.
Another way to look at it is that war is the shortest-term form of human planning. Long-term planning during war takes energy away from the short-term planning required to win the war.
This is reflected individually in our own physiology, where readiness to fight is optimized for the moment, and causes damage long term.
Wow, you’re digging deep to come across this post a year later!
That said, thanks for the detailed explanation!
Two words:
Lowest. Bidder.
Most cluster munition is probally from the cold war and in an active conflict there really isnt a possibility to safely detonate leftover cluster munition. Plus they get buried under debry and dirt
Ah, that’s a great point - I hadn’t considered that we’d still be using the same cluster bombs that were made in the Cold War era, but that does make sense.
