#bomblets

Cluster bombs: Unease grows over US sending cluster bombs to Ukraine By Kathryn Armstrong & Antoinette Radford  BBC News  July 9, 2023 Several allies of the US have expressed unease at Washington’s decision to supply Ukraine with cluster bombs. On Friday, the US confirmed it was sending the controversial weapons to Ukraine, with President Joe Biden calling it a “very difficult decision”.  In…

The Children Experiment

theclusterproject.com/bombs/the-children-experiment

The Children Experiment (9:45) is a short documentary investigation in which replicas of cluster bomblets are placed in Virginia playgrounds as surveillance cameras secretly record the reaction of local children. Around the world, children are tragically attracted to these kinds of small, unexploded bombs — do American children possess the same impulse? 

Mystery bomblets. Courtesy of Guy Marot

The mystery of the unidentified cluster munitions found last year in Libya has deepened as the days have passed. More and more specialists have been in touch with the blog, by e-mail and a few by phone. The short of it is this: they have not seen this weapon before, and it does not appear to be in the various databases and identification books used by explosive ordnance disposal experts in the field.

Let’s catch up. On Feb. 1, this blog asked readers for help, and to take on a challenge: to try to identify an unusual so-called cluster bomb that was found in Libya in 2011. The submunition in question was of a class known as a Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition, or DPICM, that is released from cargo canisters in the air and distributed to the targeted area below. Each bomblet carries a small shaped charge designed to penetrate light armor and to blast small metal fragments intended to wound people – thus that blandly euphemistic “dual purpose” label.

Various specialists had confirmed what this DPICM was not, but no one knew exactly what it was. (Many readers suggested that the submunitions were a variant of the American-made M77, but while they do fall within the same general family as the M77 they are quite a different weapon.)

Civilian de-miners working in Libya have found another type of cluster bomb used last year during the war that overthrew Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to the United Nations and Mines Advisory Group, or MAG, a nongovernment organization helping to clean up areas littered with mines and unexploded ordnance.

The cluster munitions, known as PTAB-2.5M’s, were found last month scattered in the desert near the eastern city of Ajdabiya.

A product of the Soviet Union, PTAB’s were first designed and fielded during Stalin’s time, and they have been used in several wars in the decades since. Each is a narrow bomblet shaped roughly like an aerosol spray can equipped with stabilizing fins at the tail. Each holds a shaped explosive charge designed to penetrate armor.