Powerful new secret weapon

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 8

Powerful new secret weapon

NZPA-Reuter Brussels

West Germany Is secretly perfecting a conventional weapon as deadly as a small nuclear bomb over a limited area, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation intelligence sources have said.

They said that the weapon, codenamed BD-1, and basically a huge rocket bomb dispenser, could completely destroy an area of 1.255 q. km (more than three quarters of a square mile). “The BD-1 could be used without moving from conventional warfare to nuclear warfare, which could happen with the use of a neutron or other nuclear device,” said one source.

The new weapon would differ in destructive force from the American-devel-oped neutron bomb, which is designed to kill by radiation while doing little damage to buildings. The West Germans have not yet been able to test the BD-1 fully because of the amount of damage it would do to their countryside. They hope to take it to a desert area, probably in the United States, to use it at full force.

The BD-1, which will not come into operational use until 1982, is known techni-

cally as an area fire weapon and is designed to be attached to the belly of an aircraft.

As the pilot flies over a target, he triggers rockets in the dispenser which spray out thousands of small spe-cially-designed “bomblets” over the ground below, destroying everything — including heavy tanks — in the pattern The pilot can vary the pattern to suit the target, the sources said. One pass could obliterate enemy forces such as massing tanks in an area 550 metres wide and 2.5 km long. The BD-1 is being designed for use by the N.A.T.O. Multi-Role Combat Aircraft, the Tornado. West Germany, Britain and Italy plan to buy 809 of the swing-wing fighters.

The sources said that the BD-1, which can be used by other aircraft and has been tested secretly in Gerihany on a Luftwaffe F 4 Phantom, is designed principally for use against tanks massing for an attack. But it can carry different kinds of “bomblets” for different targets. These include projectiles to destroy personnel, airbase runways, and concrete shelters protecting enemy aircraft.