What does "submunition" mean?

Any part of a weapon (typically a bomb or missile) that separates from a parent munition before or during employment.

Submunition

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
Any part of a weapon (typically a bomb or missile) that separates from a parent munition before or during employment.
"Bellingcat[…] has reviewed some of the pictures collected by the Guardian, confirmed the presence of tail fins of RBK-500 cluster bombs with PTAB-1M submunitions and cluster rocket, launched by BM-30 Smerch."

Example

More examples

"Bellingcat[…] has reviewed some of the pictures collected by the Guardian, confirmed the presence of tail fins of RBK-500 cluster bombs with PTAB-1M submunitions and cluster rocket, launched by BM-30 Smerch."

Etymology

From sub- + munition.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.