[maratc]

Cluster munitions are great against infantry in open field; less so against population centres equipped with advance warning systems. As it stands, they fail to even cause the damage worth offsetting by firing interceptors. The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Given a choice of conventional 500-800 kg warhead or cluster munitions warhead, I think that the nations in the current conflict would prefer being on the receiving end of cluster munitions (as a less bad option) every time.

[mamonster]

>The damage these inflict on Israel is not unsustainable, and they don't do much to create deterrence.

Has there been a study on this? What is the GDP loss of having however many Israelis go to bunkers due to incoming ballistics instead of working ?

If a trash cluster missile that costs 100k USD to build causes 1mio USD worth of GDP to not be produced (numbers completely made up) then it's very worth it.

[maratc]

No idea about studies or GDP; just observing that the losses inflicted by Iran on Israel in June 2025 did nothing to deter Israel from going on offence again eight months later.

[mrguyorama]

Ballistic missiles do not cost only 100k USD to build. They are very unlikely to ever be that cheap. Rocketry requires enough precision to not explode on the launcher. Ballistic missiles with conventional munitions are only useful for point targets. Cluster munitions like Iran uses are an admission that they aren't targeting specific systems, aren't expecting to penetrate defenses, or other reasons why they would waste a ballistic missile on the modern equivalent of the Paris Gun.

Harassment weapons don't do much. None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

Modern Shaheds can be possibly built at a scale to affect that, but we really haven't seen it happen yet. That would be something like thousands launched in a single wave against a single city or installation. But they still lack the precision and warhead to be targeted meaningfully.

You need WW2 industrial scale manufacturing lines worth of Shaheds to get beyond harassment. You need to be producing hundreds a day or more. That kind of industry is nearly impossible to protect from your adversary so unlikely to take shape.

[WalterBright]

> None of the harassment campaigns done by the Nazis for example really amounted to anything.

I hate to say it, but the aerial bombing campaign against Germany in WW2 was not terribly effective. The Germans were quick to decentralize the factories, and burning down houses did not impair the war effort much.

What did work was bombing the oil infrastructure. Germany ran out of gas.

What also worked was using the B-17 fleet as bait for the Luftwaffe. The Luftwaffe could not help but rise to defend the country, and then they were shot down by P-51s and P-47s and Spits. The goal was to erase the Luftwaffe, and it worked. (Even though German warplane production increased, the pilots were dead and irreplaceable.)

[don_esteban]

Depends, blanketing Ben Gurion (or any airbase) with parked aircraft on the tarmac with carpet munition is a really bad day.

But yes, against protected targets cluster munitions do not achieve much.

If you have relatively few low-precision missiles, using single warheads means you are risking achieving NO damage (easier to intercept, a good chance that it will hit nothing), with a cluster munition you are guaranteeing at least some damage.

I think Iranians are mixing both types of warheads.

[maratc]

Tarmacs are really hard to hit exactly, especially so when you fire from 1500 miles away. Each angular second turns into a big miss. Also, the launch goes towards the area where GPS denial is assumed. This denial can come in many forms.

There were reports about three small aircraft being damaged in Ben Gurion, one of them caught a fire. I guess three millionaires will have nothing to fly until they collect their insurance money.

[don_esteban]

There is no point in trying to argue that such an attack is extremely difficult, it already happened, and an attack on Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh damaged/destroyed E-3 Awacs and several tankers (see e.g. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-war-middle-east-news-u...).

It is not 1500miles away from Iran, but neither is Ben Gurion (Ben Gurion is cca 200-300km further away from the closest point in Iran that Prince Sultan).

[varjag]

Russia regularly uses cluster warheads on their ballistic missiles to a devastating effect. It all depends on the type of the target.