Future Weapon Technology

Manufacturer: Textron Inc. [NYSE: TXT]

The CBU-97 sensor-fuzed weapon is an extremely potent anti-armor cluster bomb. It combines so many different technologies of lethality and has so many moving parts for a bomb that initial observes questioned whether it would even work. Basically, the CBU-97 is dropped over a column of enemy armor, the bomb “clusters” and releases it’s sub-munitions, which are like smaller little bombs themselves. Each sub-munition is slowed by a parachute, and then each sub-munition fires 4 hockey puck sized “skeets” over the target area. The skeets contain an infrared targeting system and a copper EFP (explosively formed penetrator, a type of shape charge). Once the skeet locks unto a vehicle it fires the EFP at the target, which essentially is a slug of molten copper that can deeply penetrate armor. One CBU-97 has the potential to destroy up to 40 armored vehicles. Please note that the CBU-97 is also referred to as the CBU-105.

See this Cluster Bomb Video