Clusterbombs

[CBR]

Anyone care to tell me how many civilian lives this will save?

Yes but it's not American civilians so who cares...

Stocked weapons would be disposed of after a few decades anyway. Unless a new war can be found as that is a great way of getting rid of old stocks.

From the numbers I have seen there are most likely at least a couple of million unexploded submunitions in Iraq. Cluster bombs are a good military asset, but with the current dud rates they are turning the former battlefield into an unmarked minefield that hurts way too many civilians for it to be considered acceptable.

Also this treaty does not seem to ban future weapons so if the dud rate can be considerably lowered it's not a weapon that will go away anyway.

The trend is also going towards precision weapons that are much more suitable for builtup areas or for close support of ground troops.

I know the Brits stopped using the JP233 anti-runway clusterbomb but AFAIK the US does not have similar weapons, although Im sure regular clusterbombs can be used to limited suppression of airfields. The US have the specialized anti-runway bomb Durandal and the other BLU series of penetrators and all it takes are a few precision strikes with such weapons to smash up a runway.


CBR

[PanzerJaeger]

Once again the United States exempts itself from what can only be described as a humanitarian issue...

Yes but it's not American civilians so who cares...

Such antipathy is definitely not unnecessary, because these treaties have worked so well in the past. Battlefields are so much safer for soldiers and civilians. Americans just enjoy killing children, foreign children.

[CBR]

Who said anything about enjoying? I think I used the word "care". Just go two posts above your own post...

But ok I guess I was too specific with that statement so I'll rephrase it to "But they are foreign civilians so who cares"

Now I have really no idea if the statistics are right or not but if the 98% figure is right then clusterbombs would be by far the worst (conventional) weapon for civilians.

When it comes to how safe it is in modern wars. We have had some modern short limited wars but what to compare with? Weapons are more lethal now than ever before. The soldier's response is more dispersion and body armour. The civilians? Population density is going up and neither clothes nor walls are more bullet proof than earlier.

Civilian losses (combat related) compared to military losses have gone up, if I was to take a quick guess. But ok civilians dont have to fear mercenaries raping and pillaging through their province as in the really good old days...yeah ok we forget about Sudan and ex-Yugoslavia etc but cant win them all right.


CBR