CBU 87 used for light armour?

[joebloggs]

Can someone tell me what the CBU 87 is used for? I just watch a video and some guy said it was used for Light armour & soft targets, but I thought the CBU 97 was used for light armour & soft targets. I thought the CBU 87 was used for heavy armour, so which is it? Thanks!

[Nooch]

The CBU-87 is good against unarmored vehicles. It is not effective against armor.

The CBU-97 is good against anything, from unarmored to heavy armored vehicles like tanks.

[Zabuzard]

The CBU-97 uses "smart-bomblets". They are very interesting. The weapon, at some height over the target area, lets the bomblets go free. They then search for IR-targets by themself and "land/explode" on them.

 

This video shows the effect pretty good:

 

 

As you see, the bomblets of the CBU-97 won't be very effective against infantry, because they search for bigger IR targets and then try to penetrate them before exploding.

 

The CBU-87 is good for infantry as it primarly is a bomblet carpet consisting of shrapnel explosives.

 

It's something like comparing bombs with guns. You wouldn't use one single bunker penetrating bomb on a big crowd of people, you would use it against a single heavy target. But the gun would be very effective against a big target area of small armored targets (infantry) and not so good against the single heavy target.

 

PS: Shrapnel currently is not modded in DCS very well. In-game experience may differ from RL^^

Edited May 21, 2016 by Zabuza

[WHOGX5]

IRL CBU-87s are used against both armored and soft targets. In DCS however, they are close to worthless so I never use them.

[FalconPlot16]

cbu 87 and 103 warheads like incendiary i saw video cbu 87 heavy damaged and killed BTR 80