CLUSTER BOMBS - How do they work

Category:Description:
A cluster munition, or cluster bomb, is a canister filled with smaller explosives that can be launched on the ground or dropped from a plane. The submunitions clustered inside, call them "bomblets", are each about the size of a soda can, and powerful enough to kill.
During Operation Desert Storm the US Air Force dropped more than 10,000 cluster bombs in Iraq. Cluster munitions were used again in Afghanistan more than a decade later, and then again in Iraq.
About 5 percent of the Desert Storm bomblets didn't detonate on impact, making them part of the deadly debris the US and other militaries have left behind in conflict zones around the world. In areas where the painstaking, expensive and risky business of demining hasn't yet been carried out, unsuspecting civilians often pay years later for the presence of this unexploded ordnance in the ground.