The Washington Post says that the
U.S. will now give cluster munition to Ukraine.
Biden approves cluster munition supply to
Ukraine
President Biden has approved the provision
of U.S. cluster munitions for Ukraine, with
drawdown of the weapons from Defense
Department stocks due to be announced
Friday.
The munition will be 155mm grenades, Dual
Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM),
that can be fired by 'western' provided
artillery.
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The decision, likely illegal, was made
because the U.S. and its allies have run out of
other 155mm munitions:
The move, which will bypass U.S. law
prohibiting the production, use or transfer
of cluster munitions with a failure rate of
more than 1 percent, comes amid concerns
about Kyiv’s lagging counteroffensive
against entrenched Russian troops and
dwindling Western stocks of
conventional artillery.
It is accompanied by false statements that
Russia has used such ammunition in Ukraine:
It follows months of internal administration
debate over whether to supply the
controversial munitions, which are banned by
most countries in the world.
Cluster weapons explode in the air over a
target, releasing dozens to hundreds of
smaller submunitions across a wide area.
More than 120 countries have joined a
convention banning their use as inhumane and
indiscriminate, in large part because of
high failure rates that litter the landscape
with unexploded submunitions that endanger
both friendly troops and civilians, often
for decades after the end of a conflict. The
United States, Ukraine and Russia — which is
alleged to have used them extensively in
Ukraine — are not parties to the convention.
Eight of NATO’s 31 members, including the
United States, have not ratified the
convention.
It is well documented,
by Human Rights Watch and
others, that the Ukrainian military has used
cluster munitions. There is nothing to support a
claim that Russia has done so. The Pentagon has
rejected claimed evidence of Russian cluster
munition attacks:
Commenting on videos depicting alleged
Russian cluster munition use, DOD officials
stated during a March 1, 2022 press
conference that “we’ve seen the same video
that you have but we have not assessed that
it is definitive with respect to the use of
cluster munitions. So we are not in a
position to confirm the use of cluster
munitions at this time.” In a similar
manner, a DOD official stated during March
3, 2022, press conference that DOD was still
unable to confirm Russia’s use of cluster
munitions.
Cluster munition are banned by most countries
because they often fails to explode on impact
and thereby leave a lot of
unexploded mines on the ground:
The principal weapon under consideration, an
M864 artillery shell first produced in 1987,
is fired from the 155mm howitzers the United
States and other Western countries have
provided Ukraine. In its last publicly
available estimate, more than 20 years ago,
the Pentagon assessed that artillery shell
to have a “dud” rate of 6 percent, meaning
that at least four of each of the 72
submunitions each shell carries would remain
unexploded across an area of approximately
22,500 square meters — roughly the size of
4½ football fields.
Last year the Congressional Research Service
found that the real dud rate is higher than
what the Pentagon claims:
There appear to be significant discrepancies
among failure rate estimates. Some
manufacturers claim a submunition failure
rate of 2% to 5%, whereas mine clearance
specialists have frequently reported failure
rates of 10% to 30%. A number of factors
influence submunition reliability. These
include delivery technique, age of the
submunition, air temperature, landing in
soft or muddy ground, getting caught in
trees and vegetation, and submunitions being
damaged after dispersal, or landing in such
a manner that their impact fuzes fail to
initiate.
The Pentagon claims that the ammunition it
will provide has a lower dud rate. But it never
produced data from tests that would support its
claims.
By agreeing to provide the munition Biden is
circumventing or breaking the law:
There is no waiver provision in the 1
percent limit Congress has placed on cluster
munition dud rates, written into Defense
Department appropriations for the last seven
years. Biden would bypass it and Congress,
according to a White House official, drawing
down the munitions from existing defense
stocks under a rarely used provision of the
Foreign Assistance Act, which allows the
president to provide aid, regardless of
appropriations or arms export restrictions,
as long as he determines that it is in the
vital U.S. national security interest.
Unfortunately neither Congress nor the courts
are likely to intervene.
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The cluster ammunition, like the Uranium tank
ammunition the U.S. and Britain have sent to
Ukraine, will make large parts of the country
inhabitable and unusable for agricultural
purposes. It will also make attacks and retreats
through affected areas difficult for military
forces on both sides.
Cluster ammunition was made during the cold
war for defending against large scale armored
attacks. They are imprecise area attack weapons.
Their usefulness against the small unit attacks
with a handful of tanks which we have often seen
during this war is doubtful.
As the U.S. has run out of other ammunition
what will it provide to Ukraine after the DPICM
fail to turn around the fate of the Ukrainian
army?
Chemical weapons? Nukes?