A new kind of bomb made its combat debut in Wednesday's attack on Republican Guard forces, according to the Air Force.
A B-52 Stratofortress dropped six sensor-fused CBU-105 cluster bombs on a column of Iraqi tanks headed south out of Baghdad, destroying the armor. The Air Force calls the bombs "smart-guided" cluster munitions. Defense Tech first discussed them six weeks ago.
A CBU-105 disperses ten smaller, hockey-puck shaped bomblets that sense the engine heat from armored vehicles, and then fire downward to destroy them. As they descend, the bomblets open up minature parachutes to compensate for wind, launch conditions, and bad weather.
Then, "as they approach the ground, those units split as well, each one ejecting four armor-piercing explosives," ABC News reports. "The result, say sources: one bomb drop causes 40 explosions, spread out over 15 acres or more."
THERE'S MORE: The cluster bomblets are wrapped in the same yellow packaging as the humanitarian rations that coalition forces are handing out to civilians in Iraq, UNICEF warns. "These are the same rations," the agency notes, "that were air dropped in Afghanistan, where the military eventually changed the wrapping to blue."
© Copyright 2024 Military.com. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rebroadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Military.com, please submit your request here.
