By Marina Malenic
The Department Defense last week released a cluster munitions policy requiring that more than 99 percent of the submunitions that make up a cluster bomb detonate on impact, thereby reducing the quantity of potentially dangerous unexploded ordnance left behind on a battlefield.
Limiting the amount of live ordnance left behind on a battlefield would diminish the danger to both civilians and friendly troops maneuvering in a bomb-saturated area following bombardment. The new rule, outlined in a memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month, would take effect in 2018 and apply to all DoD stockpiles, as well as Foreign Military Sales (FMS) orders.
Senior U.S. officials have said that the United States has not used cluster munitions since the 2003 Iraq invasion, according to a recently released Congressional Research Service report. In Kosovo and Yugoslavia in 1999, NATO forces dropped nearly 1,800 cluster bombs containing some 295,000 submunitions, according to the report. From 2001-2002, the United States dropped just over 1,200 cluster bombs containing nearly 250,000 submunitions in Afghanistan, and U.S. and British forces used almost 13,000 cluster munitions containing an estimated 1.8 to 2 million submunitions during the first three weeks of combat in Iraq in 2003.
The Pentagon will begin the process of reducing its inventory of cluster bombs that do not meet the new departmental guidelines next summer, according to sources in two of the military services.
“As soon as possible, military departments will initiate removal from active inventory cluster munitions that exceed operational planning requirements or for which there are no operational planning requirements,” a July 9 Defense Department statement on the issue read. “These excess munitions will be demilitarized as soon as practicable within available funding and industrial capacity.”
The new policy comes on the heels of a new international treaty outlawing all cluster munitions. That agreement, endorsed by 111 nations and set to be formally adopted in December, also would require that cluster bomb stockpiles be destroyed within eight years. China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States–all leading cluster bomb- producing nations–did not participate in the talks.
All of the cluster bomb-producing nations are, however, involved in negotiations at the U.N. Convention of Conventional Weapons (CCW) that began on July 7.
“The United States has called for the completion of a new cluster munitions protocol by the end of the year,” the Pentagon’s July 9 statement says. “The CCW, unlike the Oslo process, includes all of the nations that produce and use cluster munitions, making any agreement reached there much more practically effective.”
The first weapon in the U.S. arsenal scheduled to begin conforming to the new policy via technological improvements is the Army’s Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS).
Lockheed Martin [LMT] currently produces two MLRS variants–one with a unitary warhead and precision, satellite-guided capability; and the cluster variant, known as the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM).
The Army last month approved the requirement for an Alternative Warhead Program (AWP) for the DPICM variant, MLRS program manager Col. Dave Rice told Defense Daily on July 10.
“In line with Pentagon policy, we plan to do competitive prototyping to mitigate as much risk as possible,” said Rice.
To that end, a Configuration Steering Board (CSB) led by senior Army officials will oversee the AWP and examine several possible technical solutions.
“MLRS will be the first legacy system to go through this process and conform to the new policy,” Rice said.
The Army has plans to produce just under 44,000 new MLRS munitions of assorted variants over the next five years, Rice added.
Pentagon sources estimate that upward of 80 percent of U.S. cluster munitions reside in the Army artillery stockpile. Still, air-launched cluster bombs will also be affected by the new rules.
The Headquarters Air Force Weapons Requirements Office provided the following list of five cluster munitions systems currently residing in the service’s arsenal: the CBU-87 Combined Effects Munition (CEM), a ballistic canister/dispenser that delivers BLU-97 CEM submunitions; the CBU-103 Wind Corrected Munitions Dispenser (WCMD); the CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon (SFW), a ballistic canister/dispenser that delivers BLU-108 SFW infrared-aimed projectiles for armored targets; the CBU-105 WCMD; and the AGM-154A Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), a long-range glide canister with CBU-87 CEM submunitions.
In addition, the service is in the process of acquiring one new cluster bomb–the CBU-105 WCMD/SFW, which was designed at its inception to comply with the stricter dud-rate policy, according to the requirements office. The Air Force is in the last production year for the system.
Regarding its stockpile, the Air Force Weapons Requirements Office said in a statement that “the Joint Staff will be working with the Services to draft plans to comply with the new DoD policy in the near future.”