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CNN Sunday Morning

The Efficacy of Cluster Bombs

Aired October 28, 2001 - 09:03   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: There are only the size of a soda can, but they can do a lot of damage, some say maybe too much. The Pentagon confirms it's now using cluster bombs in the war in Afghanistan.

But critics, including Princess Diana's Memorial Fund, are calling on the U.S. and Great Britain to stop using cluster bombs, saying they pose a deadly threat to Afghan civilians.

This morning, Miles O'Brien shows us how cluster bombs work.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's worth pointing out that these cluster bombs are also in play. And if you're talking about smart weapons, well these are the dumb bombs. And there are still many of them in use by the U.S. military. As a matter of fact, tens of thousands of them were used over the Persian Gulf, even though many people remember the Persian Gulf for much of its laser-guided weaponry.

Let's take a look at some of the video that we can show you about smart weaponry as we bring in our general and military expert, General Don Shepperd.

General Shepperd, the dumb bombs still have a role to play, don't they?

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: They do, Miles.

And these are area weapons that you drop in an area where you don't know the exact coordinates or exact location, such as troops spread over a large area or vehicles strung out along roads, and this type of thing. If you don't know exactly where they are, you can drop these cluster bombs. Some of them and the sub-munitions are actually smart. In the weapons such as JSOW, they can go against signatures and IR, infrared, signatures of vehicles.

O'BRIEN: Looking at this video, it looks like it's raining down havoc, quite literally. It also seems like it wouldn't be that accurate.

SHEPPERD: it's not that accurate. Again, it's an area weapon -- area denial and area targeting designed to cover targets of some length. And these -- think of them as large hand grenades that explode. And sometimes they explode above the ground, sometimes when they hit the ground. It's a formidable weapon, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's look a look at an animation, give you a sense of how they work. We have depicted a CBU-87. That stands for Cluster Bomb Unit-87. Now, this particular one is launched from an aircraft and -- in this animation. Take a look at it. It seems like a regular kind of weapon, but as it is launched -- hangs from the wing like any other bomb would -- as it is launched it gets to a predetermined altitude and things change dramatically.

General Shepperd, typically where does the cluster bomb aspect come into play? At what altitude? Does it change depending on the mission?

SHEPPERD: It does change. The fusing changes and the delivery altitude and mechanism changes to get the pattern that you want on the ground for the particular target. Now this weapon is used by U.S. and coalition forces. It's a standard weapon in all arsenals for the military as an air weapon these days, Miles.

O'BRIEN: It's also a weapon that comes under quite a degree of criticism. Folks who crusade against land mines, the group linked to the late Princess Diana, for example, offering some criticism for the U.S. using these particular weapons in this engagement. How does the military respond to that?

SHEPPERD: It's a nasty weapon and a nasty war. We are going to use any weapon in our inventory against the target if we feel it's appropriate. We will be very careful -- when I say "we," I mean both the U.S. and coalition forces -- the militaries will be very careful about using this weapon. And they'll put it through computers. But if it is decided that it is the weapon to take out the target that they are interested in, all of the militaries, the coalition forces, will employ it, Miles.

O'BRIEN: One of the issues, however, is when have you 202 little bomblets coming out of one weapon and, say, 5 percent of them don't explode, you have some -- a lingering problem that maybe a child could pick up. It's the size of something that might look like a toy, for example. What's the military thinking on how to solve that problem, long-run?

SHEPPERD: Well, there's a dud rate, and it's in any bomb. It doesn't matter whether it's a cluster bomb or any bomb, there is a dud rate that you have to cope with. Basically, they're very dangerous, sometimes for years. We had these weapons, the duds, turned around and used against us as booby traps in Vietnam. Vietnam is -- and Laos are still littered with hundreds of thousands of these things out there, as is many areas of Afghanistan.

So they're very dangerous. After the war we send in clean-up crews to do it. We provide civilian contractors to do it. But it's dangerous and, again, a nasty weapon in a nasty war used by all the coalition militaries, Miles. (END VIDEOTAPE)

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