New weapon made debut in Iraq
By Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
From the International Desk
Published 5/19/2003 6:14 PM
Up to date "Bow and Arrows." Who would have thunk it!
WASHINGTON, May 19 (UPI) -- A number of new weapons made their combat debut in the war in Iraq, including one that was secretly developed and built in the six months leading up to the war, according to Air Force officials.
It is indicative of a new trend in weapon building in the U.S. military, officials said. While conventional wisdom suggests bombs just get bigger and more accurate, the military is actively seeking accurate bombs that do less and less damage.
The CBU-107 Passive Attack Weapon is the Air Force's modern answer to the classic bow and arrow: a high-speed volley of more than 3,000 metal arrows, projected from a single canister, meant to destroy a "soft" target with a minimum of damage to surrounding structures.
Because it is not an explosive, it was designed to be especially useful against targets where an explosion would be a bad thing -- say at a chemical plant or a suspected biological weapons laboratory. A plume of smoke from such targets could carry with it deadly gases or pathogens, according to a Pentagon official.
Just two CBU-107s were used in the war during the first two weeks of April, according to Col. James Knox, the program director for the Area Attack System Program Office at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.
After a classified study in the spring of 2002 determined the need for a new class of precise, non-explosive weapon with projectile submunitions, the Air Force put $40 million toward the CBU-107 in September. By January, Knox and his team had delivered the first of the 1,000-pound weapons for use on the F-16 fighter, the B-52 bomber and the F-15E strike fighter.
Each weapon packed into a standard bomb dispenser has three types of metal projectiles: 350 15-inch long rods, 1,000 7-inch long rods; and 2,400 small penetrators, about the size of a 10-penny nail. The bomb itself is propelled by the forward motion of the plane from which it is dropped and the force of gravity. Gliding toward a target, the bomb's path is "corrected" for the effect of the wind by an inexpensive tail kit, which gives the weapon accuracy of closer than 30 feet. Before impact, however, an inner chamber containing the rods begins to rotate and the "arrows" are flung out in rapid succession by the centrifugal force, attacking the target within a "footprint" of less than 200 feet.
"Instead of an explosive effect these penetrators punch holes in targets," Knox told United Press International Monday.
Explosives cause unintended damage and leave dangerous "duds" behind, he explained. Anything attacked with the Passive Attack Weapon could be easily targeted with a 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound explosive Joint Direct Attack Munition, or even a cement-filled version of the weapon -- but not without unwanted consequences.
"When it came about we were looking for destructive effects to specific aspects of a target without doing a lot of damage to neighboring infrastructure. Avoiding collateral damage was a specific objective of the weapon," Knox said.
"If you had an antenna on top of a building, if you dropped one of these, you could bring some destructive effect to that antenna without risk to the structure," Knox said. "A concrete JDAM would destroy the building too."
The Sensor Fuzed Weapon, a non-explosive tank and armor-killing weapon, also made its combat debut in Iraq. About 88 were used in the war, according to the Air Force.
The U.S. military used 19,948 precision munitions in the war and 9,251 unguided weapons. Most of the precision weapons were laser-guided bombs (8,716) and JDAMs of various sizes (6,542), according to a report on the conduct of the air war prepared April 30 for Lt. Gen. Michael Moseley, who commanded that portion of the effort.
The report, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: By the Numbers," covers the war between March 19 to April 18.
Although the Army force hovered around 240,000, plus some 43,000 British and Australian troops, the total number of U.S. personnel deployed for the war was 466,985. More than 1,800 aircraft flew more than 41,000 missions. Iraqi forces responded with anti-aircraft artillery 1,224 times; with 1,660 surface-to-air missiles and rockets, and 19 surface-to-surface missiles.
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