Calls for the US to supply "devastating" cluster bombs to Ukraine could have terrible and long-lasting repercussions, a former defense analyst has said.
Former Pentagon analyst Michael Maloof told Sputnik that there had been attempts to ban cluster munitions internationally because they are "so devastating."
"Their little pellets can explode above a concentration of troops and kill so many. It is very, very lethal in a very limited area," Maloof said. "Sometimes the clusters themselves can be spread out over a battlefield, and on contact later on they can blow up and injure injure innocents, like we've seen so many times in Vietnam."
The weapons expert said previous international efforts to agree a worldwide ban on the pruduction, stockpiling and use of cluster munitions — leading to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) — was "because they linger long after the battle is over, and long after the war is over, and we see so many children especially maimed by them, or killed."
However, neither the US, Ukraine nor Russia is a party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the US and other NATO members have repeatedly broken pledges not to send certain classes of weapons to their ally the Kiev regime.
Since January this year they have escalated to tanks, jet fighters and cruise missiles capable of striking deep into Russia — raising fears that cluster munitions would be next.
"I think because of their controversy they will not be," Maloof said. "I would hope they will not be."
"We saw the hue and cry when the brits sent depleted uranium shells for their tanks to Ukraine and the United States said it would not," he recalled. "So there is some hope that the the US will not send cluster bombs, given their devastating ability."