Why are cluster munitions so notorious for leaving unexploded bomblets around?

Question

Is it poor build quality or are they not designed to explode on impact?

In: 1717

Answer 1

Statistics.

Let’s say for every bomb you drop, there is a 1% chance due to conditions that it won’t go off. You can drop 459 regular bombs before having a near 99% chance to see one be unexploded.

Now cluster bombs have tens to hundreds of mini-bombs in them. Let’s say 200.

So now you only need to drop 3 cluster bombs to have that same near 99% chance for one of the mini-bombs to not explode.

And if you drop 459 cluster bombs (same as it took for the normal bombs to reach the 99% chance for one to fail), you will on average have 153 failures.