Human Rights Watch Briefing Paper Cluster Munitions a Foreseeable Hazard in IraqMarch 2003
The use of cluster munitions in Iraq will result in grave dangers to civilians and friendly combatants. Based on experiences in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Yugoslavia/Kosovo in 1999, and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, these dangers are both foreseeable and preventable. Cluster munitions cannot be targeted with precision. They cause damage over a very large and imprecise area, and, due to the numbers used and high failure rate, leave behind a great many unexploded “dud” submunitions that become de facto antipersonnel landmines. Human Rights Watch has called for a global moratorium on use of cluster munitions until these humanitarian problems are addressed. Environmental factors in parts of Iraq such as sand, wind, and marshes would likely contribute to producing even higher dud rates for submunitions. This briefing paper identifies four types of U.S. cluster munitions in particular that have produced large numbers of hazardous duds during previous combat operations and during testing. These four cluster munitions are currently in the inventory of the United States, United Kingdom, and other nations. This paper also provides details about the use of cluster munitions in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, including the threat to U.S. forces from their own weapons, and the ongoing impact of the resulting explosive dud submunitions. Human Rights Watch has recently obtained startling information showing that eleven years after the end of the war, about 200 hazardous cluster munition duds are still found and destroyed each month in Kuwait.
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Cluster Munition Type | Countries that Stockpile |
MLRS with M26 warhead | Bahrain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States |
155mm DPICM projectiles (M483A1 & M864) | Canada, Jordan, Netherlands, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, United States |
Combined Effects Munition (CBU-87) | Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States |
Rockeye | Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Israel, Norway, Oman, Turkey |
Human Rights Watch has reported previously on the use of cluster bombs during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.11 Aerial-delivered cluster munitions accounted for about one-quarter of the bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait. Between January 17 and February 28, 1991, the United States and its allied coalition used a total of 61,000 air-dropped cluster munitions, releasing twenty million submunitions. About fifteen percent of those were CBU-87s, then new to the U.S. arsenal. Other, less reliable Vietnam-era cluster munitions were used in surprising large numbers, including CBU-52, CBU-58, CBU-71, and early versions of the Rockeye.12 The number of cluster munitions delivered by surface-launched artillery and rocket systems during the Gulf War is not known, but one source estimates that over thirty million DPICM submunitions were used in the conflict.13
From the end of the conflict in 1991 through December 2002, 108 metric tons of cluster munitions were discovered and destroyed by mine clearance and explosive ordnance disposal teams in Kuwait.14 In the year 2002, more than a decade after the fighting stopped, 2,400 explosive dud cluster munitions were detected and destroyed. These included: M42/M46/M77 (DPICM), Mk-118 (Rockeye), BLU-61A/B, BLU-77B, BLU-91B (Gator antivehicle mine), BLU-92B (Gator antipersonnel mine), BLU-97 (CBU-87), and Belouga (a French air-dropped cluster munition). Almost one in five of the dud cluster munitions found in 2002 were from Rockeye air-dropped bombs.15
This average of nearly seven per day is all the more stunning in that one of the most extensive and expensive clearance operations in history was carried out immediately after the war.16 Hazardous dud cluster munitions continue to be uncovered in Kuwait. In February 2003, soldiers with the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division discovered a dud BLU-63 cluster munition on one of their urban combat training ranges in the Kuwaiti desert.17
While less information is available on the problem in Iraq, Iraq is still severely affected by landmines, cluster munition duds, and other types of unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the 1991 Gulf War, as well as the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran War, two decades of internal conflict, and World War Two. Landmines and UXO pose a problem in the north, along the Iran-Iraq border, and throughout the central and southern regions of the country.18 The International Committee of the Red Cross in 2001 identified unexploded cluster bombs and other UXO as the main threat to communities living in southern Iraq.19
During combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. forces experienced the danger of casualties caused by their own weapons as well as impediments to mobility when operating in areas contaminated by hazardous duds produced by U.S. cluster munitions.20 Numerous references to this are found in official U.S. military documents. One report states, “Battlefield experience has demonstrated that weapon systems containing submunitions present the greatest potential for creating UXO, since a significant percentage of these submunitions may not detonate reliably.”21 The U.S. Armed Services recorded 177 “explosion casualties” in the conflict, constituting 13 percent of the total U.S. military casualties.22 At least eighty of the U.S. casualties were attributed to cluster munition duds.
U.S. Military “Explosion Casualties” During 1991 Gulf War
Type of Munition | Number of Casualties |
Cluster Munition UXO-CBU | 64 |
Unidentified Landmine | 46 |
Iraqi Landmines | 35 |
Cluster Munition UXO-DPICM | 16 |
Other UXO | 16 |
The United States military has recognized that the high failure rate of its existing stockpile of cluster munitions poses unacceptable risks to both U.S. forces and civilian populations. Efforts are underway to improve the reliability of newly produced cluster munitions. As a result of a new policy decision in 2001, weapons with submunitions produced after 2005 are required to be 99 percent reliable.23 A contract was awarded in February 2003 to manufacture 500,000 self-destruct fuzes for M915 105mm DPICM artillery projectiles.24 Funds to remanufacture and retrofit 24,345 M864 155mm DPICM projectiles with self-destruct fuzes were requested in the fiscal year 2004-2005 ammunition procurement budget request.25 Plans to produce a new generation of MLRS rockets with self-destruct fuzes for submunitions are also being developed.26
However, the 2001 policy permits continued use of existing cluster munitions that do not meet the new standard: “The services may retain ‘legacy’ submunitions until employed or superceded by replacement systems….” The U.S. stockpiles more than one billion of these “legacy” submunitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent. There is a fundamental inconsistency in acknowledging the dangers of these submunitions and the need to replace them, while still permitting their use.
As noted above, Human Rights Watch has called for a global moratorium on use of cluster munitions until the humanitarian problems are addressed. Short of that commitment, Human Rights Watch urges that the United States, United Kingdom, and others that may deploy cluster munitions in Iraq take the following steps:
1 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, “Unexploded Ordnance Report,” table 2-3, p. 5. No date, but transmitted to the U.S. Congress on February 29, 2000.
2 U.S. General Accounting Office, “GAO/NSIAD-92-212: OPERATION DESERT STORM: Casualties Caused by Improper Handling of Unexploded U.S. Submunitions,” August 1993, pp. 5-6.
3 U.S. Army Material Systems Analysis Activity, “Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Study,” April 1996, p. 7.
4 U.S. Army Defense Ammunition Center, Technical Center for Explosives Safety, “Study of Ammunition Dud and Low Order Detonation Rates,” July 2000, p. 9.
5 U.S. Army Material Systems Analysis Activity, “Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) Study,” April 1996, p. 7.
6 Colin King, “Explosive Remnants of War: A Study on Submunitions and other Unexploded Ordnance,” commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross, August 2000, p. 16 and p. E-2; U.S. General Accounting Office, “GAO-02-1003: MILITARY OPERATIONS: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War,” September 2002, p. 27. The Department of Defense UXO report to Congress in 2000 cites a 98 percent submunition reliability rate for the Rockeye submunition—a claim not supported by the Kuwait evidence.
7 U.S. Army Armament, Munitions, and Chemical Command, “Contract DAAA21-92-M-0300 Report by CMS, Inc.,” Undated; data cited by GAO 1993, GAO 2002, King 2000, and U.S. Army Material Systems Analysis Activity, 1996.
8 Complied from December 2001 to December 2002 editions of Kuwait Ministry of Defense, “Monthly Ammunition and Explosive Destroyed/Recovery Report,” Annex A.
9 In Kosovo, on the basis of the clearance rate by March 2001 of unexploded submunitions, the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center estimated that 7 percent of the BLU-97 submunitions failed to explode on impact. See International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), Landmine Monitor Report 2001, (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 952. For Afghanistan, data provided on coalition air strikes to the United Nations mine action program by the U.S. Department of Defense used a 5 percent figure. See Human Rights Watch, “Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan,” A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 14, no. 7 (G), December 2002, p. 37. The Department of Defense UXO report to Congress in 2000 cites a 98 percent submunition reliability rate for the BLU-97 submunition.
10 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, “Unexploded Ordnance Report, ” p. 3. No date but transmitted to the U.S. Congress on February 29, 2000.
11 Most recently, see Human Rights Watch, “Fatally Flawed: Cluster Bombs and Their Use by the United States in Afghanistan,” A Human Rights Watch Report, vol. 14, no. 7 (G), December 2002, pp. 40-41.
12 Ibid.
13 Colin King, “Explosive Remnants of War: A Study on Submunitions and other Unexploded Ordnance,” commissioned by the International Committee of the Red Cross, August 2000, p. 16, citing Donald Kennedy and William Kincheloe, “Steel Rain: Submunitions,” U.S. Army Journal, January 1993.
14 Kuwait Ministry of Defense, Headquarters Land Forces Command, “Monthly Ammunition and Explosive Destroyed/Recovery Report,” Annex A, December 21, 2002.
15 Ibid. According to the same document, a similar number of cluster munitions were cleared in 2001.
16 See, for example, ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 1999, p. 891.
17 Juan Tamayo, “10 Million Land Mines Lie in Wait Inside Iraq, Troops also face ’91 War Leftovers,” Miami Herald, February 20, 2003.
18 Human Rights Watch, “Landmines in Iraq, Questions and Answers,” December 2002; for further details on Iraq see ICBL, Landmine Monitor Report 2002, September 2002, pp. 671-673.
19 Laurence Desvignes, “Red Cross/Red Crescent Mine Action Involvement in the Middle East,” Journal of Mine Action, Issue 5.3, Fall 2001, p. 13.
20 U.S. General Accounting Office, “GAO-02-1003: MILITARY OPERATIONS: Information on U.S. Use of Land Mines in the Persian Gulf War,” September 2002, pp. 29-33; U.S. General Accounting Office, “GAO/NSIAD-92-212: OPERATION DESERT STORM: Casualties Caused by Improper Handling of Unexploded U.S. Submunitions,” August 1993, p. 9.
21 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, “Unexploded Ordnance Report,” p. 2. No date but transmitted to the U.S. Congress on February 29, 2000.
22 U.S. General Accounting Office, “GAO-02-1003,” p. 15, p. 17, figure 2. All casualty figures provided to GAO by U.S. Armed Services and are treated separately from casualties resulting from direct enemy action.
23 Secretary of Defense William Cohen, “Memorandum for the Secretaries of the Military Departments, Subject: Department of Defense Policy on Submunition Reliability (U),” January 10, 2001. It states, “It is the policy of the DoD [Department of Defense] to reduce overall UXO through a process of improvement in submunition system reliability – the desire is to field future submunitions with a 99% or higher functioning rate…. The Services shall evaluate ‘legacy’ submunition weapons undergoing reprocurement, product improvement, or block upgrades to determine whether modifications should be made to bring them into compliance with the above policy.”
24 U.S. Army Armaments Research and Development Engineering Center, Contract Award Notice DAAE30-03-R-0800, “M234 Self-Destruct Fuze Low Rate Initial Production-Sole Source,” February 6, 2003.
25 U.S. Department of the Army, “Committee Staff Procurement Backup Book, FY2004/FY2005 Biennial Budget Submission, Procure of Ammunition, Army,” February 2003, p. 323.
26 Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, “Unexploded Ordnance Report” no date but transmitted to the U.S. Congress on February 29, 2000, p. A-3.