[Politico] U.S. to include controversial cluster munitions in new Ukraine weapons package
[Politico] U.S. to include controversial cluster munitions in new Ukraine weapons package
Officials say sending the weapons could give Kyiv an edge.
You know what's controversial? Bombing hospitals, schools and residential buildings.
You know what's controversial? Blowing up a dam that destroys an entire region of the country.
You know what's controversial? Keeping a nuclear power plant as hostage.
You know what's controversial? Abducting children and taking them against their will to another country.
You know what's controversial? Torture and mutilation of soldiers defending their home land.
Whoever says or implies at this late stage of russian atrocities that cluster bombs for Ukraine are "controversial" - fuck yourself gently with a rusted chainsaw.
EDIT: typo (half the time I try and type "of", it comes out as "if")
I would ve against using this weapon, if the Russians had not already used them extensively. Clearing out all of the unexploded ones is going to take decades...
Still, glad to see the political will to support Ukraine is still there!
Mine roller is gonna be a popular tractor attachment for Ukrainian farmers
I hate war but the Ukrainians deserve support defending themselves.
at last. these are very useful tool, with which Ukrainians are already familiar with and even had some limited domestic production of
While it may have its military use, this type of munition will main and kill Ukrainian children for decades after the war.
Found this in another forum, seems relevant.
The weapon involved is the CBU-97 Sensor-Fused Weapon, which was designed to stop invading Soviet tank columns and was used a handful of times in the invasion of Iraq. It is a winged, unpowered canister that is designed to attack enemy vehicles by flying low over them and ejecting ten sub-munitions.
The sub-munitions each have small parachutes and infrared sensors that detect enemy vehicles and launch four small hockey puck shaped charges that explode immediately above the top of their targets. In effect, with a single CBU-97, a large area can be attacked so as to destroy most or all of enemy vehicle targets in an area of about fifteen acres.
So, what is so bad about the CBU-97? Cluster bombs are controversial because the Soviets used to drop them on Afghan civilians, often with the small bomblets made to look like toys so as to attack children. Otherwise, made to be hard to detect, the Soviet bomblets acted like small mines and could linger for years so as to make Afghan trails and agricultural fields too dangerous to use.
The CBU-97 is not such a weapon, but in reputation it suffers from the controversy over cluster bombs. And yes, I see little reason not to supply it to Ukraine. In effect, the Ukrainians could use them to clear large swaths of the battle space of Russian tanks and other fighting vehicles.
This is the good stuff, two devices like this can stop entire eastern armored division. Also it's a air dropped bomb, which means it requires air superiority. It's also massive a overkill against 1 or 2 tanks, or an APC - there are few massive concentrations of armor that would warrant use of CBU-97, except for Kyiv convoy and such, but it's unlikely to repeat. The thing you need for this is either 155mm DPICM, or 155mm BONUS, which has two elements like in CBU-97 per round
I'm guessing the cluster weapons discussed are mostly tube artillery projectiles, like 155mm and maybe M30/M26 rockets, because ZSU is artillery-heavy
Source? I was under the impression that our cluster munitions came with a timed fuse where they would self destruct if they didn't find a target after a certain amount of time.
That goes for any unexploded ordnance, we are still cleaning up regular unexploded shells from World War 1 more than 100 years after the fact and every now and then it still claims a victim.
It sucks, but you have to offset that against the benefit. The longer the Russians occupy parts of Ukraine, the more atrocities they are able to commit against civilians (cf. Bucha, Irpin, Izium, Kherson,...). Also when people talk about the civilian casualties, they always forget that the bulk of the Ukrainian soldiers were civilians just over a year ago, and they would love nothing more than to return to a peaceful civilian life. Their lives are valuable as well and should be protected too.
If cluster munitions helps them to get rid of the Russians faster and with a lot less casualties, it is a trade off we should make.
So what's the exact advantage of a cluster munition in this circumstance?
cluster munitions cover way bigger area. this makes a difference in several ways:
- you don’t need to haul as many shells to the frontline in the first place, making entire logistics easier
- you don’t wear out barrels as much, which makes artillery work for longer time
- you cover entire area at once, taking enemy by surprise and denying them time needed to go for cover
- submunitions are DPICM, which means that if a vehicle is hit from above by it, it can be penetrated (yes, even tanks) unless covered in ERA or such. in contrast, you need direct hit or almost direct hit of unitary projectile to disable armoured vehicle
- it’s not one big boom, it’s lots of small booms, which means that some bomblets will fall into trenches. unitary airburst shells offer similar capability, but these are rather uncommon for some reason
disadvantage is price, but also small size of each bomblet. because of small size and need to manufacture them in vastly higher numbers there are some limitations of fuzing mechanism that make it fail more often than your everyday unitary artillery shell. this is known limitation that lead to withdrawal of cluster munitions in the first place, at least in some western countries, and also reason for development of M30A1 AW for GMLRS. this will be mitigated by humanitarian demining made easier to some degree by painting submuntions bright yellow.
one thing to note. cluster warheads are effective weapons, but have limitations. namely, western doctrine relies on rapid movement, and if you shell enemy positions with cluster artillery, you can’t safely advance before demining takes place, unless you are either advancing in armoured vehicles only or are willing to take these losses. this is the less shiny reason for putting cluster warheads out of production in the western militaries
Ukrainian drone operators are also using single submunitions, presumably from cluster bombs, as drone dropped ammunition (i've seen at least three separate videos of this). these things are well suited for this role and are used in vastly smaller numbers minimizing UXO issues in the future
replacements include things like M30A1 AW or airburst unitary artillery (esp M1130 and similar) against soft targets (like soldiers in the open and trucks) and SFW, BONUS and such smart weapons against armor. DPICM does both of these things at once
as usual shortcomings of DPICM can be solved by throwing money at the problem
Hey, thanks for writing this.
unitary airburst shells offer similar capability, but these are rather uncommon for some reason
Really? I thought that was the standard type of shell. Do the typical unitary shells detonate on impact with the ground, then?
Ukrainian drone operators are also using single submunitions, presumably from cluster bombs, as drone dropped ammunition (i’ve seen at least three separate videos of this). these things are well suited for this role and are used in vastly smaller numbers minimizing UXO issues in the future
Oh yeah, I hadn't considered that. And seeing as some of these were at end of life anyway it actually makes sense as an alternative to an ordinary infantry grenade.
Jeez this war is so deadly.
Good