ABOUT MAT-120

CLUSTER AMMUNITION BANNED BY THE DECISION OF THE SPANISH COUNCIL OF MINISTERS ON 11 JULY 2.008, AND LATER SIGNATURE OF THE OSLO CONVENTION AGREEMENT ON 3 DECEMBER 2.008.

 

 

The MAT-120 ammunition of INSTALAZA was designed with the aim of PREVENTING the hazard of accidental explosion, in case any submunition had failed to detonate upon impact.

 

For that aim, INSTALAZA developed the technology registered as [sD]2 (meaning self-destruction + self-deactivation). It consists of several redundant safety devices, so that if the submunition does not detonate upon impact, it self-destroys after a few seconds, and, even if this self-destruction device fails, it self-deactivates infallibly within 10 minutes, therefore preventing the hazard of causing an accident after its use. The infallibility of the self-deactivation design is based on the action of a Physical Law, which, as such, applies absolutely always.

 

For its evaluation, the Armed Forces from Spain and from another European country fired close to 300 MAT-120 munitions, that is, over 6.000 submunitions, on a fenced firing range which was combed after each series of firings, verifying 0.0% hazardous duds.

 

In order to demonstrate this total absence of hazardous duds to non-technical people, INSTALAZA carried out series of tests which were presented to the Spanish Congress and Senate Defence Committees, to NATO, and to the Certain Conventional Weapons Group of Governmental Experts (CCW GGE) of United Nations in Geneva. These tests consisted in submitting fired submunitions to tough aggressions, such as free fall from great height, impacts of all kinds including, for example, the impact of a 9 Kg steel mass dropped from 4.3 metres high, hits with pickaxes and hoes, and even to a stubble field fire, with not any submunition explosion.

 

This level of safety and reliability had never been achieved by any other ammunition of its kind.

 

INSTALAZA S.A. obeys and complies thoroughly with the decisions of the Spanish Government, as we have done during our more than 60 years of history.