Cluster Munition

A cluster munition is an air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon that releases or ejects a number of smaller submunitions, sometimes numbering more than two thousand in a single weapon, over a wide area to kill personnel, destroy vehicles, or damage infrastructure such as runways and power lines. Submunitions may be slowed by parachutes or streamers so a delivering aircraft can clear the blast area before they detonate, and modern payloads may be built for anti-armor, anti-personnel, or anti-material effect. The first operationally significant cluster bomb was Nazi Germany's SD-2 Butterfly Bomb, used against both civilian and military targets in the Second World War, including in raids on Tokyo and Kyushu. After the war the technology was developed independently by other nations, and from the 1970s onward cluster munitions became a standard air-dropped weapon of at least thirty-four countries.