"Cluster Munitions No More: What This Means for the U.S. Military"

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I wrote a few times about the cluster munitions ban and its consequences for battlefield artillery, examples:.

2008-11 Cluster munitions ban

2015-03 Battlefield missile artillery from the blackpowder age to the 21st century - Part III

Here's a recent take by a U.S.Army officer on the subject:

"Cluster Munitions No More: What This Means for the U.S. Military"

by LTC Mike Jacobson, Armor Journal

It begins with

The end of American cluster munitions is arriving and the Department of Defense (DoD) has no plans to replace them. In 2008, when the U.S. government committed itself to disposing of cluster munitions by January 2019, this milestone seemed distant. Unfortunately, when DoD implements the final phase of this policy, it will deprive itself of a critical capability without a replacement.

and his proposal is about

*sarcasm* Surprise! */sarcasm*

expensive gold-plated ammunitions:

Thankfully, there may be a means for closing the gap against imprecisely located hardened and armored targets that does not involve a one-for-one replacement of the stockpile of cluster munitions currently in the inventory. The answer may be sensor-fuzed munitions. This is a family of munitions employed by firing them in an area where enemy vehicles are thought to be located; the munition fuze will then seek out objects on the ground for which its sensors are designed. Having located a target, moving or stationary, the munition then guides to and detonates precisely on the target using its own sensors and without reliance on GPS. The United States fielded such a munition to great effect during Operation Desert Storm in the form of Sense and Destroy Armor (SADARM).

He ends with a misinformation: The SADARM program was stopped as a disappointment AND it wasn't even available by the time of OP Desert Storm. The munition was used in the war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, though.

To be fair; I wrote about something similar many years ago, but it wasn't meant as a medium term procurement proposal.

The article was stereotypical, since the U.S.Army deserves its reputation as a lover of technological and big budget solutions to problems. This culture has infected many other military bureaucracies in the Western World, and it costs a lot. It may cost even more if the technophiliac approach leads into severe real war troubles again, as it already did in Korea and Vietnam.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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