Last Sunday, Israel launched an attack on the Lebanese capital city of Beirut, hitting an apartment complex and killing Hezbollah figure Haitham Ali Tabatabai, along with several other people. It was one of the most high-profile attacks on Beirut in recent months.
In the course of the strike, Israel dropped multiple Boeing-made GBU-39B Small Diameter Bombs. The first reaction that the United States has had to this attack on a residential area in a major city in violation of a ceasefire is because one of those bombs didn’t explode.
According to Lebanese officials, the US has demanded that Lebanese return the unexploded bomb to them. Reportedly, this is about the bomb’s guidance system, viewing the possibility of it falling into another country’s hands as a “security risk.”
Boeing GBU-39B Bomb | Image is public domain
The GBU-29B is referred to as a “glide bomb,” a relatively low-cost guided bomb with a high explosive payload, and has been favored by the IDF for use against targets in densely populated areas, being spun as “precision” munitions despite the potential for enormous additional casualties. Israel began purchasing GBU-29Bs in 2012, and have used them heavily in recent years in the Gaza Strip as well as Lebanon.
Despite the GBU-29B being almost two decades old now, the concern is that China or Russia will manage to get ahold of the unexploded bomb from Lebanon and be able to reverse engineer the technology of the guidance system.
Lebanon has yet to issue an official response to the demands, but obviously is under no obligation to return a bomb that was dropped on their country by an attacking military or to the country that sold that bomb to them in the first place.
