C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

Today, At War journeys into crowd-sourcing to ask for readers’ help identifying a weapon found on the battlefields of Libya last year. Followers of this blog know that we have spent considerable time identifying and sometimes tracing the tools of war in several recent conflicts back to their sources. But this time, we are stumped.

The items in question are what ordnance professionals call submunitions, but are more widely known among lay readers as cluster bombs. The photograph above shows one found in November at the ruins of an arms depot a few miles outside of Mizdah, in the desert south of Tripoli.

We post it here to bring into public view an ordinary and often frustrating process that has been happening, quietly and by fits and starts for several months, among nongovernmental organizations and arms specialists working in Libya.

Here is the background: This submunition was in the arsenal of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s military, and was fired at anti-Qaddafi rebels in the summer and perhaps again in the fall, part of the pro-Qaddafi forces’ last gasps. After the conflict ended, many more were found scattered near shattered bunkers in the depot near Mizdah. These apparently had been kicked out of storage when bunkers were struck by bombs from NATO or allied warplanes. (More on that here.) You can see the disposition of some of them at the depot, below.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

This is where you come in. Last year we saw a few examples of crowd-sourcing working out identifications on munitions. We did not participate in those efforts, though we applaud them. So, after talking with David McIvor, chief of operations at the United Nations’ Joint Mine Action Coordination Team in Libya, we decided to submit some of what we know of this unidentified weapon to public view, and see if the public might help.

Our decision to go public had a simple root: almost six months after first being spotted, no one, as far as we know, has managed to identify the precise model and origins of these submunitions. That is not for lack of trying. In the summer, nongovernmental organizations circulated images of the cluster bomb to specialists, and specialists in several countries could not pin down a solid identification. After a few weeks, people stopped trying, at least actively, as other business diverted attention. Then, in the fall, contractors working for the State Department and journalists working for The New York Times found the bomblets again, and doctors and scrap collectors in Mizdah reported people being wounded by them. The pursuit resumed.

Since then, this blog has put images of these submunitions in front of roughly two dozen specialists from the explosive ordnance disposal business, including people in and out of uniform. So far there is no definitive identification. Can you help?

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

In case you come to this cold, let’s talk ordnance and explain a few basic things. What you are looking at is known as a Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition, or DPICM. It is a member of the cluster munitions family — one of the so-called submunitions carried inside a larger canister that opens in flight, releases bomblets and distributes them to the ground below. Look closely and you will notice familiar features of the class, including the ribbon that helps prevent tumbling in flight and thereby stabilizes the weapon and orients its explosive charge. (The ribbon might also play a role, via in-flight vibration, in arming the weapon’s fuze.) You can also see that the weapon is configured to hold a small shaped charge. This is designed so that if it lands on a vehicle, its explosion might penetrate light armor.

As for a dimensions, each of these submunitions is a roughly the size of a D-cell battery. For a more precise sense of dimension, look at the image below, showing one of the submunitions, rendered safe, and many of its components, against a measuring tape.

Why has this been so hard to identify?

First, no canister that held these munitions has yet been found, at least not by any of the specialists, so it has not been clear if the submunitions had been scattered via rocket, mortar or artillery tube. (The canisters or packaging probably could have been found readily in Mizdah, but scrap collectors had picked much of the place clean, and, for safety reasons, in November, after a Times team made photographs of the submunitions on the ground, we backed out.)

Second, the markings on unexploded submunitions did not point clearly at a particular model.

Third, many countries have developed and manufactured DPICMs, and several nations have knocked off others’ designs. The line’s manufacturing history, coupled with the fact that open-source materials on which country made which models are limited, can make DPICM identification a bear.

Last, there was the question of the risks in handling these items. DPICM’s, because they are lightweight and do not strike the earth with the same energy as other conventional ground-to-ground arms, can have extremely sensitive fuzes. We did not touch the bomblets we found. We did not handle or manipulate them in any way. This meant we could not take precise measurements or thoroughly examine them for markings, factory stampings, etc.

There have been tentative identifications. A retired American military explosive ordnance disposal technician working as a contractor in Libya suggested that they might be Type 81 DPICMs from China, shown below.

U.S. Government

The submunitions certainly resembled the Type 81. But they did not quite seem a match. (There are several differences. An obvious one is the presence in the unidentified munition of holes in the body, a feature that one specialist said was likely designed to impart spin on the weapon as it moves through the air.) After we concluded that Type 81s might not be the answer, we circulated a fresh set of images to other ordnance disposal sources, including several who have helped At War in the past. They, too, were stumped.

At that point we broadened the discussion, asking for help from Mines Advisory Group, IHS Janes, the Cluster Munition Coalition, and the United Nations mine-abatement office in Tripoli, led by Mr. McIvor. Mark Hiznay, at Human Right Watch, had said the initial finds had been reported in the mountains of Libya’s west. Mr. McIvor had more information — he believed they had been found at Bani Walid, too, and perhaps Surt — but said he, too, had been able to run down an exact identification.

That was in the late fall. And so months after the initial discovery, we were only a little further along. At War then went about things backward, beginning a process of elimination. If we don’t know what they there, can we say what they are not? Here the blog found some help.

So what aren’t they? We already covered Type 81s (though one source said they might be an updated version of the Type 81, which has not been seen before.) They do not appear to be American-made M42s/M46s or M77s. And they seem not to be anything seen before from the former Yugoslavia.

Colin King, an analyst at IHS Janes, was emphatic on this point. “I’m intimately familiar with the Yugoslav submunitions (having disassembled them), and these are completely unlike any of the types I know of (KB-1, KB-2 and ‘locally manufactured’ DPICM for the M93 mortar), also the markings wouldn’t make sense for a Yugoslav munition,” he wrote in e-mails. “I can be pretty confident these are not from there.”

There have been suggestions that they might be Italian or German, but these have been suggestions only. No one yet has presented evidence supporting such claims.

So today the blog asks for your help, and we will sweeten the pot. We have a small prize for the person who provides solid identification with reference materials backing up the answer. I will mail the prize the person who makes the first clear and substantiated identification. And even greater satisfaction should come from knowing that you helped — and that you beat the experts.

For those who decide to pitch in, we would also like to see photographs or descriptions (the more technical the better) of the cargo canister that delivers these rounds. And lastly, any knowing interpretation of the stenciling visible on the submunitions would be similarly welcome. Take a look at the images below.

This first one bears stenciling that appears to read: 4A-09

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

And this one also end in 09.

C. J. Chivers/The New York Times

If these are batch markings indicating that these submunitions were manufactured in 2009, it would mean that the weapons were manufactured after many of the world’s nations signed the cluster-munitions convention.

How to proceed? The rules of this effort will have to be loose, balancing the openness of the Internet with the need to protect some of your identities. So we will accept input from multiple streams. You can post your suggestions or answers in the comments section. If you have a sound reason not to show your name or your hand publicly, you are welcome to skip the comments section and contact me directly on e-mail at chivers@nytimes.com or thegun.book@gmail.com. I will recast your answer and update the At War blog with a distillation of your e-mail, while protecting your name, position and all that.

As for competition from any other news organizations or Web sites, well, in this case there is none. This is about trying to get it right, so that the world will know more about who provided the Qaddafi government its arms, and when, and so that those who have to clear these DPICM’s will know more of their technical characteristics. At War is collegial. If another site takes on this job and figures this out, that is a very good thing. Let us know, and we will follow you and credit you here.