Reply #20: There's a lot of unexploded ordnance in war

[krispos42]

It's one of the reasons to 1) avoiding war, and lacking 1, 2) fighting war on the enemy's land.


In addition to the big stuff (unexploded bombs of the 500+ pound variety), there are artillery shells (30-95 pounds), Hydra unguided rocket warheads (10 pounds), 40mm grenades, and god knows what else.

It's pretty messy out there. However, cluster bombs have a definite military use, so if there's a problem with the bomblets, then it should be easy enough to fix it.

The Spanish, for example, developed a bomblet with an electrical fuze. The fuze was powered by a capacitor, which was charged by a tiny windmill on each bomblet.

Basically, the cluster bomb is dropped, the case splits open and the bomblets are strewn into the air. The windmills charge the capacitors until the bomblet hits the ground. Either the bomblet goes off on impact, or it's a dud. But if it's a dud, the capacitor loses its charge in about 5 minutes, rendering it safe to handle because there is no longer any juice to ignite the explosive.

*shrug*

A large part of the problem seems to be that the cluster bombs are often very cold when they're dropped. Fighters fly at high, cold altitudes, which apparently inhibits the chemical reactions in the fuzes somewhat. The temperature at 30,000 is something like -50ºF, so a fighter at that altitude that swoops in low to attack something will be dropping freezing-cold bombs.

I absolutely agree that this is something that needs fixing.