Submunition Dispensing Mechanisms .

Abstract

The effectiveness of a weapon system is enhanced manifold when it is incorporated with submunitions instead of being a unitary one. A large unitary warhead produces effects that are too concentrated and localised for many target types, resulting in a very high probability of either causing no damage or an over-kill. The submunition warhead incorporating a single-stage ejection process has the drawbacks of lesser area coverage and non-uniform distribution of submunitions. To overcome the above drawbacks, dispensing mechanisms with multistage ejection of submunitions are being employed worldwide by the warhead designers. Extensive work has been carried out by the authors to achieve wide area coverage by using multistage ejection instead of single-stage ejection.