The weapon involved is the CBU-97 Sensor-Fused Weapon, which was designed to stop invading Soviet tank columns and was used a handful of times in the invasion of Iraq. It is a winged, unpowered canister that is designed to attack enemy vehicles by flying low over them and ejecting ten sub-munitions.
The sub-munitions each have small parachutes and infrared sensors that detect enemy vehicles and launch four small hockey puck shaped charges that explode immediately above the top of their targets. In effect, with a single CBU-97, a large area can be attacked so as to destroy most or all of enemy vehicle targets in an area of about fifteen acres.
So, what is so bad about the CBU-97? Cluster bombs are controversial because the Soviets used to drop them on Afghan civilians, often with the small bomblets made to look like toys so as to attack children. Otherwise, made to be hard to detect, the Soviet bomblets acted like small mines and could linger for years so as to make Afghan trails and agricultural fields too dangerous to use.
The CBU-97 is not such a weapon, but in reputation it suffers from the controversy over cluster bombs. And yes, I see little reason not to supply it to Ukraine. In effect, the Ukrainians could use them to clear large swaths of the battle space of Russian tanks and other fighting vehicles.
This is the good stuff, two devices like this can stop entire eastern armored division. Also it’s a air dropped bomb, which means it requires air superiority. It’s also massive a overkill against 1 or 2 tanks, or an APC - there are few massive concentrations of armor that would warrant use of CBU-97, except for Kyiv convoy and such, but it’s unlikely to repeat. The thing you need for this is either 155mm DPICM, or 155mm BONUS, which has two elements like in CBU-97 per round
I’m guessing the cluster weapons discussed are mostly tube artillery projectiles, like 155mm and maybe M30/M26 rockets, because ZSU is artillery-heavy
Source? I was under the impression that our cluster munitions came with a timed fuse where they would self destruct if they didn’t find a target after a certain amount of time.
I think if you check the wikipedia page or just google for CBU-97 you’ll find a wealth of info. More than I can summarize here, but it’s far from being a dumb bomb on a timer.
Found this in another forum, seems relevant.
This is the good stuff, two devices like this can stop entire eastern armored division. Also it’s a air dropped bomb, which means it requires air superiority. It’s also massive a overkill against 1 or 2 tanks, or an APC - there are few massive concentrations of armor that would warrant use of CBU-97, except for Kyiv convoy and such, but it’s unlikely to repeat. The thing you need for this is either 155mm DPICM, or 155mm BONUS, which has two elements like in CBU-97 per round
I’m guessing the cluster weapons discussed are mostly tube artillery projectiles, like 155mm and maybe M30/M26 rockets, because ZSU is artillery-heavy
@Uniquitous
@Brunbrun6766 @EvilCartyen
Source? I was under the impression that our cluster munitions came with a timed fuse where they would self destruct if they didn’t find a target after a certain amount of time.
I think if you check the wikipedia page or just google for CBU-97 you’ll find a wealth of info. More than I can summarize here, but it’s far from being a dumb bomb on a timer.