For whatever reason i think cluster bombs may be a intresting addition to air to ground armanent. Now I know what you are thinking, aren’t use cluster bombs a war crime? But similarly we already have incendiary bombs and nuclear boms in game which are also a war crime.
Why and why not it should be in game
Why:
In game could be useful in air rb versus AI targets
Makes CAS easier
Adds more historical armanent on planes
Why not:
Even though we already have incendiary and nuclear bombs it is still a war crime
Imho you might look up the term “war crime” before you use this wording in the future.
It is correct that more than 100 countries have signed a declaration that they won’t produce cluster bombs or use them in combat. But some major players have not signed this declaration (and declared that they won’t do this in the future) - like the US, the RF, China or Israel.
The main reason for this self-declared ban is and was the high number of duds and the subsequent high number of civilian casualties (long after the respective battles - similar to land mines). As wt is a video game without civilian NPCs technically seen there is no problem to implement them.
A final word regarding nukes and “war crimes”: Technically seen a nuke is simply just a highly effective weapon to kill military key targets and enemy civilians. As area / fire bombing of civilians in WW 2 was declared as “ok” and nukes replaced conventional bombing of residential areas you are indirectly questioning historical narratives.
Despite that, i fully agree that warfare aimed to kill civilians is a barbaric act - unfortunately almost all conflicts after WW 2 were asymmetric so killing civilians became the norm and not the exception…
Seriously in this game few are interested in friendly fire, as soon as someone throws his Pe-8 or Lancaster mega bomb they often don’t care what they hit and quickly press the T button and laugh their heads off behind the monitor. Btw cluster bombs are only outlawed and not a war crime.
There are MANY thing people think are war crimes that really aren’t once you actually read the Geneva convention. napalm and flamethrowers is a perfect example, the only thing “war crime” about them is the use against civilian targets and/or military that are to close to civilian targets.
The use of incendiary munitions against e.g. trenches is still legal.
I’d wager that all conflicts starting with WW2. Just like the axis, the US and their allies relied heavily on bombing civilian targets - even in occupied France, technically an ally - to create psychological effects
During WW2, the allies did put in a notable amount of effort to avoid colleteral damage whereever possible. (iirc many raids were canceled at targets in france if there was poor weather) Especially against targets in france. But sometimes its just unavoidable. Targetting something like a port, and not hitting the connected town was very hard to do when dropping from 15-20k ft with unguided bombs. But you did have the firestorm campaign against dresden which wasnt needed at all.
War afterwards yes and no. I dont know much about Korea/Vietnam in that regard so wont comment, but in more modern conflicts civilian targets are avoided at all costs and most incidents are as a result of accidents/mistakes than willful intent.
CAS is already way too strong (depending on BR) so cluster bombs would not change that. They would at least require direct hits and better bomb drops. It would be great to see the PTAB bombs added to the IL-2/10 planes, as they would be my preferred choice over some quite average bombs. If cluster bombs end up too strong they can just be given an SP increase to match.
the community has been asking for these for a while, and i was surprised we haven’t gotten them before the GPS bombs. It could be a server issue due to the amount of small explosions at once that could cause heavy load on the servers ( just a guess ) but would really like to have them. Yes i would make all the anti-cas players very upset as well it would get used a lot, but would also make hitting ground targets easier in groups and maybe we wouldn’t have 70% of the AB flight teams running to bases. Or maybe they cant figure out how to model them in game.
