So Broon's battalions are going to soldier on with cluster bombs... having earlier said they would stop using them. It's 'no change' in Britain's position at the Vienna conference, which is part of the Oslo peace process aimed at bringing about a treaty banning the use of cluster munitions.
Apparently the M85 cluster bombs now incorporate a self-destruct mechanism for their dozens of bomblets, but campaigners Landmine Action say it's ineffective. And guess where Britain buys these thoroughly nasty weapons... from that lovable rogue state Israel.
Following the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon last year the UN's unexploded ordnance clean-up operation in southern Lebanon has so far identified more than 960 strike sites, and cleared more than 137,000 unexploded cluster bombs, including almost 1,500 M85s. Dalya Farran, a clearance officer with the team, says 223 injuries and 39 deaths have been recorded from unexploded cluster bombs since the end of the war
Full story
So here's a great chance for David Cameron and his defence man Liam Fox to bomb arrogant Labour back to the stone age. Oh, but hang on.... aren't they both Friends of Israel? Mustn't damage trade.
Do you want the UK government to help them to improve the fusing so they have 100% detonation?
Or maybe you think we have some sort of influence over the Israeli military whereby we can tell them to stop using them?
I can imagine the guffahs when the phone goes down with the man from the ministry - "hey Hiram they say stop bombing vit dem nasty cluster things - they all in a fluster in the UK"
I'm surprised you need to ask that, Vespa. There are efforts afoot to get a treaty banning these evil weapons. Do we take it you're actually in favour of them?
Well the point is Vespa this government or WH should pressure Israel to hand over detailed maps of cluster bomb strikes.
Since the end of that war many children have been killed and injured by unexploded bomblets including two 12yrs old girls sterilized by having their stomachs blown out.
Latest on casualties in South Lebanon:
In the past six months, accidents involving unexploded cluster bombs have caused more than 200 casualties, including several children, in and around villages in south Lebanon. Thirty people, eight of them de-mining personnel, have been killed and more than 180 people have been injured, including 20 mine clearers. Many of the injured have been maimed for life. Israels failure to provide maps or other information showing where its troops used cluster bombs has made the task of clearing unexploded munitions more dangerous and slower than it would otherwise be, putting both civilians and mine clearance personnel at greater and unnecessary risk.
- good question! I think in all honesty the answer would be yes but.....and it would be a big BUT.
The deployment of these weapons in and around built up areas is a waste of time and I can understand the outcry against them. As a battlefield tool they are extremely useful against columns of vehicles for example or concentrations of troops but in the kind of scenarios that the Israelis use them, then no its pointless and in fact I agree with your sentiments in that it/they are really only probably looking for, well I guess vengence - if that's the right word?
So there's my BUT if you like; there is a time and a place for their deployment.
Frankly, I’m not really sure, if it’s important if Vespasian supports the use of these weapons or not.
To me the scandal lies not in the use of the weapons but in the hypocrisy of this government in trying to play both sides.
You see, for them to take the moral high ground of condemning them, but then continuing to use them nonetheless, is scandal if you support the use of these weapons or not.
It’s just tantamount to lying. Albeit that they’d call it, ‘having reviewed one’s position’, no doubt.
Don't get me wrong, Vespa.
Not trying to deem your opinion an irrelevance.
Just thought, demanding of someone if they supported it, seemed to miss the point that the government was being utterly hypocritical.
(Alternatively of course, I could have just posted a one-liner saying that this thread was icky and disgusting, no? Lol!)
I know this may seem a bit naive but if you think of the UK as an arms merchant - which we are - then it makes it difficult for the government to come out and say Ban the Bomb (so to speak). The UK thus Government (whichever colour) actively promotes the sales of arms and ammunition also we have cluster bombs in inventory. Alas I feel as far as Yorkie is concerned he will be dissapointed as frankly I can't see Cameron speaking out against these things - can you?
No, can’t see Cameron taking a stance on arms trade. Too many jobs tide up in it. Apart from that, he’s not really one for taking bold stances on anything that might prove controversial… (hint, hint!)
As for this government, their tune simply changes according to whom their speaking to. If its peaceniks or Diana disciples, it’s ‘ooh, those bombs are nasty and ought to be banned’, meanwhile if it’s the arms industry it’s a case of ‘business as usual’.
One merely hopes at No.10 that no-one notices the glaring discrepancy. Oddly often nobody does. Or more to the point – nobody in the media wants to.
I don’t’ know why, but it seems sometimes one has caught one of these twerps red-handed, yet the media deems the story not ‘sexy’ enough.
So quite frequently I think politicians simply ride the waves, having lied through their teeth, been caught, but not been reported.
Anyway, I digress.
As for weaponry; it’s already been said. There’s various ways of using for weapons. Cluster bombing built up areas seems hideous. Meanwhile cluster bombing an airfield seems a different matter.
When push comes to shove, the military wants the best tools it can get. Are we really going to tell them that they should use only the weapon of second choice, when the chips are down? Especially as they’re the one’s whose necks are on the line, while we sit back at home, saving badgers…
So there you go, I don’t have a specific objection to the UK using cluster bombs. If they’re using them wrongly, then by all means get tough with those who’d deploy them over civilian targets.
If some people now hate me for being unwilling to condemn a nasty weapon, so be it.
Urrm, the problem is Phantom commanders use whatever weapons are necessary to defeat the enemy apart from 'going nuclear'.
Just as an example the Argentinian cruiser 'General Belgrano' was sunk by a number of MK8 torpedoes fired from the hunter killer sub HMS Conqueror in a classic arc of fire. She had previously fired a more modern MK24 homing torpedo a much safer option but it missed and went under.
Hi Scrubs - Heres a thought for you. Do you think the armourers in the IAF may have a sly play with the dispersal and fusing mechanisms causing these gizmos to play up a tad? As I asked earlier what is the reason for the use of cluster bombs being deployed against such soft targets?
You screw with us we'll screw with you - as I said just a thought.
Frankly, no Vespa armourers are never sly they just do their job hoping for a nice cup of tea and a fag after being out in the 'ing cold for four hours.
To be honest, Scrubs, I’m not sure what your point is.
You’re saying, they fired one torpedo at the Belgrano and it missed. So they used another instead. This seems a fairly logical thing to do, no?
‘We’ve tried one weapon, but it appears not to work in the conditions we currently find ourselves in. Hence, why don’t we try another model instead?’
It’s the approach I’d take. Though I suspect I’m misunderstanding you somehow…
Also, folks, I’m not someone who has a Sears weapons catalogue at home.
So forgive me if I go awry here. For I’m really not familiar with MK classifications.
But I do believe that UK forces did in the past use cluster bombs which were intentionally designed so that not all the bomblets would explode on impact.
Their intended use was precisely for enemy military infrastructure like airfields.
The unexploded bomblets would prevent the enemy from immediately putting the air strip back into use again, as there would still be some live munitions out there which would need to be painstakingly removed.
So hence, some of the talk of cluster bombs may actually not be there ‘unreliability’, but their inherent design. After all, it does seem to make some sort of sense.
If you use them on a column of vehicles, the explosions will take them out. But any survivors will not get very far if they manage to repair any vehicles as they’ll only get about ten yards, before they hit something explosive again.
As a more general point, I feel that most ethic restrictions on munitions are really a product of the luxury of living without any immediate predators about.
Sure, it’s a good thing not to supply third world nations with everlasting streams of mines which blight the lives of millions. I agree.
Yet, in the event of some fascists taking over Europe again, looking poised to attack us across the Channel, how much consideration would we give Diana’s efforts to rid the world of mines? None. We’d be mining the beaches, just as we did last time.
(And to think people call me a wishy-washy liberal! Lol.)
The MK24 torpedo like cluster-bombs was unreliable but another option was to fit a nuke war-head, ideal during the 'attack' phase because of the wider 'kill' area although dodgy if the torpedo veered off course and was lost.
A better option was the air-launched Sting-Ray, BAE's lightweight torpedo. This torpedo has complex search algorithms to hunt and kill a SSN, gas turbine for high speed and active sonar and EM systems to detect submarines.
The war-head is a 'shaped' charge which of course most people are familiar with.
