Ukraine Could Repurpose U.S. Cluster Weapons As Anti-Tank Drone Bombs

While it has supplied plenty of other military hardware to Ukraine, the U.S. has so far ignored repeated Ukrainian requests for cluster munitions. But maybe they should think again, because Ukraine has found an unexpected use for the weapons which sidesteps the problems they cause.

These controversial weapons, which scatter many small bomblets over a wide area, are banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, also known as the Oslo Convention. This is because they tend to leave many unexploded submunitions, which can be deadly to civilians years afterwards. The U.S. is not a signatory to the Oslo Convention, and neither is Ukraine. Nor is Russia, which has been using cluster weapons without restraint in Ukraine, targeting civilian areas and causing hundreds of casualties.

However, Ukraine can de-cluster these bombs and turn them into precision weapons which do not cause indiscriminate harm .

Specifically, Ukraine has requested American Mk.20 Rockeye II anti-tank cluster bombs. One 500-pound Rockeye contains 247 small bomblets, each capable of destroying a tank. The weapon was designed so U.S. attack aircraft could take on formations of Russian armor. But Reuters cites two members of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee stating that the Ukrainians plan to dismantle the Rockeyes and use the submunitions individually as drone bombs. Rather than being spread over an area the size of a football field en masse, each bomb will be dropped individually and aimed at a specific vehicle.

Both sides have made extensive use of consumer quadcopters as improvised bombers in this conflict. The most common payload is a modified Vog-17 fragmentation grenade which is effective against personnel but useless against armored vehicles. Ukraine’s Aerorozvidka units use bigger R18 drones to drop 3-pound Soviet RTG-3 antitank grenades or RPG
RPG
warheads. These are highly effective even against tanks, but these are too heavy for consumer drones. Instead, quadcopter operators use a mix of home-made shaped charge bombs, modified American M433 40mm grenades, known as ‘golden eggs’ for their yellow noses, and other makeshift solutions to attack vehicles.

Improvised drone bombs are fitted with a new impact fuse and 3D-printed tailfins so they fall straight. But improvised fusing can be unreliable, and the bombs frequently lack power to damage a tank; the most reliable method it to drop a drone bomb into an open hatch, a technique which the Ukrainians seem to have perfected.

The Rockeye’s 1.2-pound submunitions are just the right size for a small drone. The bomblets are designed to be dropped from the air, with aerodynamic vanes, an impact fuse, and a warhead able to penetrate ten inches of steel armor, tailor-made to destroy exactly the sort of tanks that Ukraine now faces. (In fact, given the age of many of Russia’s current tank fleet , these may be the literal vehicles the Rockeye designers had in mind in the 1960s).

The Rockeye bomblets dropped in the Iraq war had a high failure rate, with as many as 30% failing to explode, leaving thousands of dangerous munitions on the ground. This was attributed to their being dropped in soft sand where the impact was hard enough to trigger the fuse. The terrain in Ukraine is different, and because the bomblets will be dropped individually at known locations, operators can flag the exact location of duds for clean-up afterwards.

The Ukrainian forces have already repurposed Soviet-era cluster-bombs as drone munitions. In particular the PTAB 2,5, a six-pound submunition has shown up both as a weapon dropped by heavy drone bombers, and as a payload for FPV kamikaze drones. But what they really need is something small and effective to improve the lethality of their drones against Russian armor.

The U.S. has literally hundreds of millions of cluster bomblets in storage, and disposing of these as they reach the end of their effective life is going to be a costly challenge. Giving some to Ukraine, with the specific proviso that they be used as individual weapons, would provide real help, without depleting stocks of current U.S. weapons. Giving Rockeyes to Ukraine could kill two birds – and a lot of Russian tanks – with one stone.