Typical British tatic tbh, and I say that as a Brit. In a few days we’ll learn that some essential components are made in the UK.
Yeah, everyone discourages them, even us. Just only use them for that one thing that only they can really do to save Ukrainian lives.
When a cluster munition bursts over a trench system, (or any other really rugged terrain for that matter) some of the smaller submunitions inevitably fall into the trench, significantly reducing its effectiveness as cover from the bombardment. This capability of sudden, wide-area impact cannot be easily replicated.
There aren’t many good “counters” for dug-in infantry. This is one of them, that’s all. It saves Ukrainian lives today. Though if any accidentally unexploded submunitions are not cleaned up with great care, it can come at the cost of innocent Ukrainian lives tomorrow. That’s the only issue.
I’m a little confused by the news of US supplying cluster munitions to UA.
I admittedly haven’t yet had much of a chance to look too deeply into it, but I’m sure one spokes person specifically mentioned that the previous concerns about dud rates aren’t a worry anymore as they’re able to reduce it down to 2%.
But the US has recently passed the bill to ban their usage by their own forces unless they were less than 1%. Which has effectively banned the use of them because arms companies admitted that they would be unable to guarantee that with current technologies.
In the meantime the US are destroying their stockpiles as they’re anywhere from 5 - 15%.
So where are they getting these 2% dud rate munitions from?
I know there has been talks of supplying some of the current stockpile that has been flagged for destruction for use to drop from drones. Basically taking the individual clusters and putting them into a little aero bomblet sleeve thing.
I have mixed feeling about the usage of them, purely due to the dud rates, but honestly as far as Ukraine are concerned, they’re in a total war for survival and they should be able to use any tool available to them (excluding NBC). And I trust them to be used only in the appropriate places, and that areas will be sufficiently cleared prior to civilian access.
The areas they’ll use these clusters in are already full of mines and UXO so they’ll need to be cleared with or without the use of cluster munitions.
You can hope, but try and convince the guy in my discord who never fails to bring up Ukrainian war crimes and is outraged that more cluster munitions should be supplied to them.
But he’s totally not a Russian sympathiser, bro. Sorry, need to vent somewhere about his stupid takes. They’re flat out impossible to discuss anything with if you have a different perspective or opinion.
