Air Weapons: Little Robots Over India

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October 6,2008:  India is buying 510 CBU-105 sensor fuzed weapons. Average cost is $735,000 each (including spares, maintenance gear, some training equipment and technical support.) First used during the 2003 Iraq war, the CBU-105 Sensor Fuzed Weapon is a cluster type bomb that releases computer controlled and radar equipped submunitions that hunt for tanks below and destroy them. Little robots, in effect. The CBU-105 can be used to attack formations of tanks, giving most of the submunitions an opportunity to destroy a vehicle.

CBU-105 is a half ton, GPS guided bomb carrying ten submunitions. Each of which uses a parachute to slowly descend. The submunition radar seeks out armored vehicles. If it spots one, the guidance system maneuvers the submunition towards the vehicle and fires a shaped charge that generates a self-forging warhead that is basically a bolt of molten metal travelling at high speed. This penetrates the thinner top armor of the vehicle and messes up the insides (this is similar to the Iranian shaped charge IEDs being used in Iraq). If the submunition radar does not spot (via it internal computer and library of vehicle types) a tank or other armored vehicle, it attacks any vehicle within a hundred meters or so, and attacks it. If there are no vehicles, the submunition detonates on the ground so that it does not lay around the battlefield causing a hazard.

 

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