Phase 5

Groves, S., Bromund, T. Ph.D. (2011) the United States should not join the convention on cluster munitions. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/04/the-united-states-should-not-join-the-convention-on-cluster-munitions

This article discusses the reasons the United States should not join the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).  They provide U.S. policy on cluster muntions and direct quotes from people in office and their stance on why the U.S. should not disarm there cluster bombs. A specific instance is given from former State Department official Richard Kidd.  Kidd states that the most vocal orgaizations of a ban on cluster munitions do not consider the consequences that will follow such a ban.  Consequences such as, a decrease in U.S. military effectiveness, strains within alliance structures, impediments to forming peacekeeping operations, and that weapons used instead of cluster munitions will cause more damage to the civilian populace.  The article also states that cluster munitions are easily and quickly deployed, a characteristic that is vital when striking time sensitive targets.  If weapons with a single warhead (unitary weapons) were used, more of them would be required and would cause more calateral damage.  They bring to light that the biggest problem that anticluster munitions groups have is that all the bomblets inside a cluster bomb do not always explode on impact and go off later when disturbed by civilians after the conflict is over.  This argument could be applied to any weapon because no weapon used in war works with 100% efficency, so cluster bombs are not the only bombs that lay unexploded on a battlefield or pose a threat to the civilian populace.  They go on to say that cluster bombs actually cause very few civilian casualties.  In the year 2009 only 100 confirmed civilian casualties worldwide were from cluster munitons.  The total casualties caused from all unexploded ordinances, including landmines, from that year in Afganistan alone, was 508.  So by comparison the number of causualties caused by cluster munitions in Afganistan was very few.  Overall, this article totally ripped apart CCM's arguments as to why cluster munitions should be banned by providing real statistics backed up by people who deal with this "problem" on a regular basis and showed the advantage of using cluster munitions and the consequences that will follow a ban on cluster munitions.

I previously could not know what the specific advantages of cluster munitions were or the consequences that would result should they be banned from the U.S. arsenal.  This article provided that information through the U.S. Department of Defense, stating that these weapons were designed to effectively strike time sensitive targets with a primary objective of maximum destruction to personel and vehicles, giving friendly troops engaged with this enemy a definate advantage over their adversary, and with a secondary objective to reduce moral in enemy troops, overload medical teams, and take enemy personnel from the front lines to help with the wounded.  This also allows a smaller force of friendly troops to engage a larger force of enemy troops.  Should cluster bombs be banned, unitary weapons would have to be used resulting in more bombs being used, more calateral damage and should these unitary bombs fail to detonate, they would pose a more dangerous hazard to the civilian populous when the conflict is over.

The article argues that cluster munitions are becoming "safer" for civilians and provides an example of SFW's Skeet warhead.  If a Skeet warhead does not detect a valid target on its tragectory, it has three safety modes that will render in useless.  The first two will cause it to selfdestruct while in flight and the third will disable the warhead minutes after it has hit the ground.  If cluster munitions continue to improve in their safety features, then CCM does not have a valid argument calling for a ban on cluster munitions.

http://www.stopclustermunitions.org/the-problem/what-is/
This article disagrees with the article above.  They seem to imply that cluster bombs rarely ever work properly and they cause the most damage to civilian populous than any other unexploded ordinance.  The article above completely contradicts this belief and so do other articles I have looked at while researching this topic.  This shows that the two sides of the cluster munitions debate are utterly at odds with each other and the opposite information provided by both side shows that one side is stretching the truth a little because they cannot both be right.