After months of deliberations on the issue, the administration of US President Joe Biden is reportedly expected to announce that the Pentagon will send cluster munitions to Ukraine. Thousands of the lethal weapons that contains multiple explosive submunitions, or bomblets that can injure or kill civilians, are to be part of the new military aid package to Ukraine worth up to $800 million, according to sources cited by US media reports.
The drawdown of the controversial weapons from existing Defense Department stocks under a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act is to be allegedly announced on Friday, according to a referenced White House official. The move would bypass US law prohibiting the production, use or transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate of more than 1 percent. However, a drawing down allows POTUS to provide military aid in defiance of existing appropriations or arms export restrictions, as long as the decision is deemed to be in the vital US national security interests.
The principal type of cluster munitions reportedly considered to be delivered to the Kiev regime is the M864 artillery shell. First produced in 1987, it is fired from 155mm howitzers that the US and its allies in the West have already pumped Ukraine with. The artillery shell in question has a “dud” or "failure" rate of 6 percent, according to the Pentagon’s last publicly available estimate, dated over 20 years ago, cited by the reports.
This signifies that a minimum of four of each of the 72 submunitions such a shell carries would potentially remain unexploded, scattered across an area of approximately 22,500 square meters.
"We are aware of reports... that indicate certain 155mm DPICMs have higher dud rates,” an unnamed defense official, was cited as saying.
The Pentagon official was using the anacronym of the so-called Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM), a family of cluster munitions.
Earlier, the Pentagon was cited as saying that updated assessments after testing the DPICMs in 2020 revealed a failure rate no higher than 2.35 percent, which exceeds the limit of 1 percent. Congressional mandates dating to 2017 block the US from exporting cluster munitions that have a failure rate of more than 1 percent.
Officials are “selecting” munitions with the 2.35 percent dud rate or below for transfer to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder was cited as saying on Thursday. However, lack of any transparency on how this revised percentage standard for unexploded ordnance for the lethal cluster munitions was achieved, in itself, gives rise to grave concerns since the weapon remains extremely dangerous.
Previously, Biden repeatedly rejected Kiev's requests to provide cluster shells to the Ukrainian military even though the widely prohibited munitions are not banned by the US. However, now that the Kiev regime's military has failed to achieve any tangible results at the beginning of its much-heralded counteroffensive, there have been widespread reports that the discussion about sending the lethal weapons to Ukraine, also a non-signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, had caught its second wind.
After Washington's plans were revealed by the media, Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was cited as speaking out against the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine. The Oslo Convention on cluster munitions applies to the federal government, said Baerbock, pointing out that Germany and many other countries have signed the ban on the controversial weapons.
"It’s dismaying to see the long-established 1 percent unexploded ordnance standard for cluster munitions rolled back as this will result in more duds, which means an even greater threat to civilians, including de-miners," Mary Wareham, advocacy director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, was quoted as saying.
Experts have warned that sending cluster munitions to Kiev's forces would be escalatory, counterproductive, and heighten the dangers to civilians caught in combat zones.
The United States supplying cluster munitions to the Kiev regime is another step to heightening the crisis, Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said on Thursday.
"That’s another step toward escalating the conflict," Nebenzia said during a press briefing.