French Cluster Munitions in Libya, and a Call for Help Early in the war last year that toppled Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, NATO aircraft attacked a government ammunition depot on the high desert plateau of the country's west. Libyans residing many miles away would later report feeling a series of earth-shaking blasts -- the results of bomb after bomb striking concrete bunkers and detonating ordnance stored inside. The depot, in Ga'a, then fell to anti-Qaddafi fighters, who overran the place and looted it of anything they might use or sell. Tons beyond counting of dangerous items remained behind, stacked in broken bunkers or scattered on the desert floor after being heaved out. Among the deadly refuse were weapons that we could not identify, one sample of which is shown at the top of the post, plainly labeled "DANGER EXPLOSIVE DO NOT TOUCH." If that warning were not enough, the bright yellow stripe -- a common paint scheme on munitions that typically signals that an item contains high explosives -- further indicated that this was a hazardous device that should not be handled or disturbed. When we spotted it, we made a quick set of photographs, moved on and later began showing the images around. We wondered: Is this a grenade fired from a vehicle mount, or perhaps something else? No explanation seemed to fit. At last, with help, we have an answer. So, what exactly was it? Don't be disappointed if you can't identify this weapon, either. When a friend from the explosive ordnance disposal world and I circulated photographs to 15 or so bomb disposal techs, they didn't recognize it as well. It seemed to be either a legacy item or a weapon that had received limited circulation and battlefield use, and thus was rarely encountered in the field. The answer finally came in recent months from Tony Belgrave, of the Mines Advisory Group, or MAG. Mr. Belgrave worked at Ga'a from April this year until early October, as part of the post-conflict clearance of unexploded ordnance. His identification delivered a complicating surprise: The item at shown at the top of this post is from France. That's right, France, a party to the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the nation that prodded the West into joining the war against Colonel Qaddafi. The photograph shows a submunition, known as a Type 314 A AV, that was formerly sold by Alkan SA, of Valenton, apparently with design or manufacturing assistance from Société E. Lacroix, (now part of the Etienne Lacroix Group), of Muret, whose coded marking - LXT - the weapon bears. A Banned Weapon and the Questions it Raises The New York Times and At War have documented the presence of former Soviet, Chinese and Spanish cluster munitions in the old Libyan stocks, along with an as yet one unidentified submunition whose provenance is uncertain. But this was the first find documenting that French cluster munitions were in circulation in Libya, too. The presence of Type 314s indicates that Colonel Qaddafi's military shopped more widely for scatterable munitions than was publicly known, and that yet another nation accommodated it. This adds to our understanding of the history of arms acquisitions in Libya, and of the shifting roles of Western governments that alternately court and scold other states, often while arranging arms deals about which little is known. But matters do not end there. This case takes another turn. These French weapons are not merely items that help out fill out the historical record. They have presented a new problem of their own, because no one involved in trying to clean up the Type 314s in Libya knows exactly how these weapons work, or how to render them safe. Scour the Internet or look at the available ordnance references, and you'll find what Mr. Belgrave discovered, too. There is little in the public domain about Type 314s. The weapons' former manufacturer has been bought and sold since the days when these submunitions were assembled and exported within the confines of French law. Unlike the United States, which has used cluster munitions in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past decade, and exported cluster munitions to Israel, which scattered them in Lebanon in 2006, France, by joining the international convention against cluster munitions, has been putting its relationship with cluster munitions into the past. And the manufacturer's current owners do not provide information about this now publicly unpalatable weapon on their Web site. In short, no one offers much in the way of technical data about how the weapon functions. This dearth of detail has made these old French weapons too dangerous to clear - at least not without risk of injury or death. So the Type 314s remain on the ground at Ga'a, almost a year and a half after NATO's airstrikes shattered their storage site and kicked them loose. Their enduring presence presents yet another set of questions. These are about Western military security classifications and the common practice of withholding officially (if arguably unnecessarily) classified knowledge from people who might use that knowledge to safeguard lives, including their own. What do we mean? France's military almost certainly knows how to handle the weapons' disposal. Its techs would have been expected to clear them from aviation-ordnance ranges used by the French air force, and to make informed decisions about how to dispose of Type 314s if they were on a disabled aircraft or involved in a training or storage-related mishap. And the United States government, which underwrites MAG's work at the depot where Mr. Belgrave and his crew work, has accumulated its own huge storehouse of knowledge on weapons systems worldwide. Its information is kept in classified ordnance-disposal databases and documents, like Aeodps, or Automated Explosive Ordnance Disposal Publication System. But there is no formal process for sharing this body of public-safety knowledge, even for clearance crews who are exposed to weapons like these only because the United States sent them there - like the many private E.O.D. techs working in Libya today. We'll get to all of this, below, and present Mr. Belgrave's request, which could lead to a short-term solution. But let's do it in order. The Type 314 A AV We'll start by examining the item in question. Type 314 A AV submunitions are air-dropped cylinders containing a high-explosive fill around a metal fragmentation coil, which ruptures into shrapnel when the fill explodes, via a time fuze. They were designed to be dropped in bunches from large beehive-like canisters, also once manufactured by Alkan SA, that were mounted on the wings or fuselage of aircraft. Crew members could fire the bomblets electrically, releasing sheets of grenades from the canister's honeycomb of slots as the aircraft approached a target, scattering the submunitions toward the ground, where they were intended to kill people and disable light vehicles. Below is an image of one of the dispensers, from the Ordata Web site maintained by James Madison University. According to Neil Gibson, an editor at IHS Jane's Defense Research, the bombs and their dispenser system worked as follows: The Type 314, he wrote, is reported to be free-falling, the 2.4 kg grenade fuzed to explode after a set period of time (5-8 seconds). If the run is undertaken at the correct height (125-325 m), the timing ensures the grenade detonates just (5 m) above the ground for maximum effect. Below is a photo of an ejection cartridge, which was found not far from the unexploded bomblet. Three images made by Mr. Belgrave provide a stronger sense of how the components fit together, can be ejected from an aircraft and kill. A Site Cleanup, Suspended in Time How these particular weapons came into Libya's possession is not entirely clear, though the consensus among arms analysts was that they likely were related to France's sale in the 1970s of Mirage F1s to Libya's air force, perhaps in a companion or later deal. For more about the Mirage sale, in which France stepped in to do business with Colonel Qaddafi after he severed military cooperation with the United States, go here. The lot numbers on the weapons, including 6_LXT_80 and 7_LXT_80, might indicate consecutive factory runs of submunitions assembled in 1980 and suggest a transfer decades back. But while Type 314s may once have been a viable French export, and fit France's foreign policy, by last year they were a dinosaur. At War is not aware of any evidence that they were used by the Libyan air force. Rather, the Type 314s we have seen were struck by NATO while in long-term storage. And many of the Type 314s scattered around Ga'a are still in their ejection cartridges, which indicates that they have not been fired. Many others remain bundled in groups of five in same the packing containers they were shipped in from the factory, along with packages of F130 smoke grenades designed for carriage within the same Alkan dispensers. Large numbers of these packages were found in the rubble of the bunker, as seen below, a strong sign that they had been stored nearby. The full quantities in that storage or other Libyan storage sites are not known. Surveys by Mr. Belgrave found these weapons were present in large numbers. "We've got several hundred of them, and they cover a rather large area," he said. But that is only what is visible in one of the scores of old ammunition supply points in Libya. There could be more elsewhere. How to Dispose of Type 314s All of this leads to the obvious question: What to do? For many types of ordnance, disposal techs rely on "render-safe procedures," or R.S.P.'s - a specific set of instructions and steps for preventing a specific piece of ordnance from detonating and for reducing it to harmless form. Sometimes these procedures are not necessary, or need not be applied. When the ordnance is of a well-known species and is located where the item is safe to approach, it can be exploded in place. A first solution for a tech with American military training, for example, might be to recommend destroying all of the Type 314s where they lie, one by one, with small explosives charges, and not engaging in the potentially dangerous handling or further study of the weapons. But that's not practical in Libya, where most foreign bomb disposal teams rely on the current (and barely functional) Libyan government to supply explosives for clearance work. And distributions from the government to date have been, in a word, miserly. This leaves disposal techs in a bind. They lack the access to explosives to destroy the submunitions item by item. And they do not have access to the publications and information that might tell them whether, or how, Type 314s can handled, to determine if they might be gathered and placed in a common bundle for a single controlled detonation. For these reasons, Mr. Belgrave wrote and asked At War to put out an open call for help. He wanted to know if anyone - the former manufacturer, the French military, the American government or NATO, whose bombs created the mess at hand - might retrieve and share the data and the R.S.P.'s on these weapons. At War has written the French companies formerly involved in the Type 314's development and manufacture. Neither has replied. It has also asked the State Department, which sponsored the clearance teams in Libya, why it does not have a process for sharing government data that might elevate the safety conditions for those who undertake for it the dangerous business of clearing ordnance from the ground. The State Department has not answered, although a spokesman said on Wednesday that the department is investigating the matter and could have an answer soon. And so, we return to a regular theme: Time and again, arms deals from yesteryear have lingering and dangerous effects today. But there is no clear and widely accepted practice for tackling many of the weapons-related problems that arms manufactures and military campaigns leave in their wakes. The dangers and the problems, like the Type 314s, remain. Do you have information about Type 314s and their R.S.P.s? Please send them to thegun.book@gmail.com or to chivers@nytimes.com. We will share the information with Mr. Belgrave and MAG, and if you want anonymity we can provide it.