White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
The United States will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine to fulfill Kyiv's request to obtain the weapons for use only in defense of its territory, U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan said on July 7.
Sullivan told reporters at the White House that sending thousands of cluster munitions to Ukraine is the right decision for the United States as Kyiv seeks to push ahead with its counteroffensive against Russia's invasion.
President Joe Biden approved the proposal to send the munitions as part of the next package of military aid after unanimous recommendation from his advisers, Sullivan said.
Cluster munitions are bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets, many of which do not explode.They are controversial because the unexploded bomblets left on battlefields and in populated areas put civilians who encounter them at risk long after wars end.Kyiv has promised to use the munitions carefully, Sullivan said, adding that the U.S. will send a version of the munition that has a reduced "dud rate," meaning fewer of the bomblets fail to explode.
The Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty signed in 2008, prohibits all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions.
The agreement, which entered into force in 2010, has been implemented in 123 states, but not by the United States, Ukraine, or Russia.
Comment: More from
Moon of Alabama:
[The announcement, from the Washington Post] 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.
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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.
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?
See:
U.S. will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package: AP sources
Comment: More from Moon of Alabama:
See: U.S. will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package: AP sources