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A cluster weapon is a munitions container that breaks open in mid-air and disperses smaller munitions or submunitions. These munitions are usually designed to explode on impact, just before impact or a short time after impact. Cluster weapons are carried by a variety of delivery systems, including bombs dropped from aircraft, rocket launchers and artillery projectiles.7
Cluster weapon delivery systems often carry hundreds of submunitions, saturating an area with flying shards of steel. ...
Despite these differences in technology and design, cluster weapons are very similar to landmines in their actual effect. The failure rate for cluster munitions has been placed between 5 percent and 30 percent, insuring that any use of these weapons will result in the reckless and unregulated creation of minefields. The fact that these weapons have "failed," does not mean that they are harmless. They may explode with the slightest touch, when picked up by a child, or when stepped on or kicked by an unsuspecting passerby. Bomb disposal experts in Laos have noted repeatedly that cluster munitions become less stable and therefore more dangerous with each passing year.
Given the quantity of submunitions involved in most cluster weapons, even a low dud rate can result in large amounts of unexploded ordnance (UXO) after a battle is over. According to the U.S. Office of Munitions, some 30 million submunitions were dropped over Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War.9 An optimistically low dud rate of 5 percent would still leave 1.5 million unexploded submunitions strewn across these two countries after the war, all of them dangerous.
A Government Accounting Office report on Operation Desert Storm10 states that at the time of the Gulf War, over half of the Army's MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system) cluster weapon lots exceeded the 5 percent dud rate goal, with some reaching a high of 23 pecent duds. These figures are based on lot acceptance tests. Dud rates on the battlefield were likely even higher.
The cluster submunitions that fail to explode may rest on top of the soil in clear view. In many cases, their very size and shape make them almost mystically attractive not only to children and civilians but also to souvenir-hungry soldiers, even when warnings and orders have been issued to leave them untouched. In some cases, markers or streamers attached to submunitions to warn people away actually attract the unsuspecting child or farmer to pick them up.
Submunitions may also hide themselves if they land in weeds, soft soil, sand or a body of water. Alternately, those on top of the ground may become buried over time when they are covered by vegetation or soil erosion. In this way, they become "hidden killers" blending into their surroundings like landmines. One of the more "typical" cluster bomb accidents in Laos occurs in the fields and gardens, when Lao villagers use hoes and diggers to prepare the soil for planting. The hidden submunitions have in effect created a minefield.
Military experts recognize that unexploded cluster bombs transform themselves into landmines. A South African army officer at the Certain Conventional Weapons conference in Vienna in October 1995 completed the sentence of a nongovernmental representative in revealing fashion. The NGO representative was speaking about unexploded "bombies" in Laos. "When they don't explode on contact," began the NGO representative, ". . .they become mines," finished the officer.
A U.S. military service procedures report on unexploded ordnance corroborates the S.A. officer's statement, noting: "Although UXO is not a mine, UXO hazards pose problems similar to mines concerning both personnel safety and the movement and maneuver of forces on the battlefield."11 Reports from the Gulf War underscore this claim. For example, "When US Marine Corps forces attempted a night assault against Iraqi-occupied Kuwait International Airport, they reportedly were held up, not by fierce resistance, but by unexploded coalition cluster-bomb submunitions and mines."12
The similarity of cluster weapons to landmines is also apparent in their violation of international humanitarian law. Cluster weapons are, by their very nature, indiscriminate. Their basic form of delivery, which discharges hundreds of bomblets over large areas, prevents individual targeting of each bomblet. It is impossible to know the precise "footprint" made by the submunitions in each cluster weapon attack. During the Gulf war, "locations of UXO footprints [areas of possible UXO concentration] were not tracked, and never passed to mobility planners."13 According to the U.S. military service procedures report cited above, "Currently no system exists to accurately track unexploded submunitions to facilitate surface movement and maneuver."14
The indiscriminate nature of cluster weapons is not only present in their method of delivery but, like landmines, in their continued threat over time. The year 1998 marks the 25th anniversary of the end of the U.S. air war over Laos. During these 25 years of relative peace, a high percentage of injuries and deaths have occurred among children not yet born at the end of the war. Weapons that lurk in the soil, waiting for the unborn to live so that they may be killed, are indiscriminate in the extreme.
In summary, while cluster weapons are different in design from landmines, experience demonstrates that their effects are nearly identical. Cluster weapons kill and maim civilian populations, and continue to do so long after hostilities cease. The rationale that led the international community to stand with the survivors of landmine injuries and enact a ban on anti-personnel landmines, also applies to cluster weapons.
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