US Approves Cluster Bombs for Ukraine

[gipper]

I'll add my two cents...

I am not a fan of arming the Ukraine, and I am not a fan of this admin, but Jake Sullivan did a great job explaining why the Biden Admin is providing weapons they said a year ago would amount to "war crimes."

He answered so many questions articulately (even though I don't like all of this answers). This was in great contrast to the typical KJP performance....

He explained that the US is committed to arming Ukraine (duh), and that the reason for supplying clusterbombs include:

• Admin considered this long
• Russia is using these clusterbombs (CBs)
• Russia has dropped an estimated >10M bomblets already
• Russia's CBs have poor reliability - 20-30% of bomblets are duds and pose a mine threat.
• Our bombs are more reliable - duds are less than 2.5% - thus more humane, LOL.
• Ukraine is only using these on their own soil, for defense.

Very interesting.

Timestamped to Jake...


This is turning into an escalating war that is never going to end. Who could have predicted that?

Easily predicted. The USG is run by neocons, and has been for over two decades.

 

[skye]

Cluster bombs? This Biden's Administration is full of war criminals.

There is no limit for their immorality.

What are they going to send Ukraine next? Nukes?

Biden and company makes me sick!

 

[skye]

Yayyy more civilian deaths!

Exactly.

 

[JGalt]

You really are a moron aren't you. Reading comprehension appears beyond your limited MAGA CAPACITY. Bless your heart!

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

 

[easyt65]

So now Biden has elevated himself from head of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate ... and US President ... to International Criminal and Illegal Weapons Dealer the same week his family's cocaine is found in the WH.

How much more criminal, how much more destructive to this nation, our heritage, our identity, and all that we are / have been as a nation can this criminal President and his family become...how much more damage to this nation can they do?

Sending internationally Banned Cluster Munition Weapons to Ukraine?

We can only hope he is declared to be an International War Criminal.

 

[JGalt]

I have mo problem with dead Russians. I know you and Putin are a thing, but thats a you problem.

Nor do you have any problems with dead children, apparently. Just as long as you get to see a few Russians in process, right Private Neocon?

 

[Ringo]

Cluster bombs are banned by a convention signed by more than 100 countries, including many NATO allies. Because of their huge civilian toll, their use has long been seen as a war crime (including by the US when used by Bad Countries™), Biden is now sending them to Ukraine

 

[JGalt]

Here is former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki just last year saying that cluster bombs are a war crime. The disingenuousness of this administration is astounding. They don't even try to hide their lies anymore...

 

[luiza]

So now Biden has elevated himself from head of the Biden Family Crime Syndicate ... and US President ... to International Criminal and Illegal Weapons Dealer the same week his family's cocaine is found in the WH.

How much more criminal, how much more destructive to this nation, our heritage, our identity, and all that we are / have been as a nation can this criminal President and his family become...how much more damage to this nation can they do?

Sending internationally Banned Cluster Munition Weapons to Ukraine?

We can only hope he is declared to be an International War Criminal.

Pres Piss Pants is in this position below , by courtesy of Bernard at MoA--and it is well worth reading.
QUOTE :Cluster munitions are banned by most countries because they often fail to explode on impact and thereby leave a lot of unexploded mines on the ground:

The principal weapon under consideration, an M864 artillery shell first produced in 1987, is fired from the 155mm howitzers the United States and other Western countries have provided Ukraine. In its last publicly available estimate, more than 20 years ago, the Pentagon assessed that artillery shell to have a “dud” rate of 6 percent, meaning that at least four of each of the 72 submunitions each shell carries would remain unexploded across an area of approximately 22,500 square meters — roughly the size of 4½ football fields.

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.

 

[Ringo]

The US is getting desperate as it sees its proxy failing miserably in its counteroffensive.
The US will do anything at this point, including providing its proxy with banned ammunition.
There is no limit to how evil the US politicians can become, when they get desperate.

 

[gipper]

The US is getting desperate as it sees its proxy failing miserably in its counteroffensive.
The US will do anything at this point, including providing its proxy with banned ammunition.
There is no limit to how evil the US politicians can become, when they get desperate.

We can only hope saner heads prevail in DC, but I see no evidence this is likely. Neocons and Neolibs run the government. Any politician or media figure who opposes the war is immediately labeled a Putin lover or worse.

The power of the MIC that Ike warned about 63 years ago, can’t be underestimated. The enormous profits earned by war profiteer corporations has garnered them near complete control of government and the MSM.

 

[Ringo]

The U.S. says Kiev assured them via written “guarantees” that they’d use cluster munitions "with caution" to avoid risks to civilians. Don’t we all take full trust in written assurances from Nazis, serial killers and psychopaths when they say they don’t kill people?

 

[JGalt]

Pres Piss Pants is in this position below , by courtesy of Bernard at MoA--and it is well worth reading.
QUOTE :Cluster munitions are banned by most countries because they often fail to explode on impact and thereby leave a lot of unexploded mines on the ground:


Last year the Congressional Research Service found that the real dud rate is higher than what the Pentagon claims:


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:


Unfortunately neither Congress nor the courts are likely to intervene.

The ones we're sending to Ukraine are most likely the M864 dual-purpose improved conventional munition (DPICM) 155mm artillery rounds that ceased production in 1996.

M864 Base Burn DPICM

The rounds now in the U.S. stockpile do not meet the Office of the Secretary of Defense's goal of less than 1 percent unexploded ordnance (UXO). Their use leaves large amounts of UXO, resulting in hazards to friendly troops later passing through the targeted area and to noncombatants who come across an unexploded grenade on the ground.

The dud rate numbers offered by Pentagon officials vary greatly from what bomb disposal technicians and civilian deminers find in the field in post-conflict areas, including from the M864 projectile.

U.S. military bomb-disposal specialists are trained to exercise extreme caution in places where cluster weapons have been used, and to expect that about 20 percent of all submunitions, regardless of the country of origin, will fail to explode.

 

[Burgermeister]

Here a Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman reminds us that the Biden administration considered cluster bombs a war crime back in 2022.

 

[Ringo]

I read the ukrainian sector of the Internet
All the couch potatoes are orgasming about cluster bombs.
I googled it.
What can I tell you?
You ukrainians are fucked...
1. The Russian Federation has 27 times more cluster bombs than the US.
2. The Russian Federation now has its hands free with regard to all treaties.

 

[August West]

They need to approve them for crowd control during rioting and looting.

How about the Capitol on J6?

 

[SavannahMann]

I’m an old Soldier and a former Combat Engineer. Cluster Munitions are very effective. They can destroy equipment and personnel in a wide area. Much larger than a single round can effect.

There was a time when MLRS was called the Commanders Shotgun. Only the Commander could order them fired. And the effect was not unlike a shotgun. Multiple pellets in the case of a shotgun.

As an Engineer they worry me. Not all the submunitions will detonate. And the Engineers are responsible for taking care of them. They call unexploded bomblets from Cluster Munitions Engineer Killers. Often they are sensitized. In other words they could go off for any reason or no reason. The slightest vibration or jarring motion could set them off. Mates of mine died from the damned things.

That by the way is where most of the civilian deaths happen. The unexploded munitions in an area after the battle. When Civilians move in to see what can be salvaged or scrounged.

It is a weapon. And all weapons kill. Nobody designs weapons that don’t kill or destroy. It doesn’t do any good to fire stuffed animals, plush unicorns at the enemy.

So where would Cluster Munitions do a good job? Anywhere that things are gathered together. A truck park. A SAM battery. An airfield. Scattering cluster munitions over an airfield will probably damage or destroy several aircraft. Even if they are parked in berm protected slots.

The same target that would need dozens of artillery shells can be serviced using a few cluster munitions.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Peace is off the table because they can't get rich off of peace.

Same way pharma can’t get rich if people are healthy

 

[SavannahMann]

I read the ukrainian sector of the Internet
All the couch potatoes are orgasming about cluster bombs.
I googled it.
What can I tell you?
You ukrainians are fucked...
1. The Russian Federation has 27 times more cluster bombs than the US.
2. The Russian Federation now has its hands free with regard to all treaties.

You do know Russia was already using them don’t you? They aren’t a magic wand that wipes the board clear of enemies.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Only because we involved ourselves.

It had nothing to do with us. Just like Afghanistan, just like iraq, just like Vietnam. We stuck our nose in where in didn't belong and we killed and helped people kill each other that nothing to do with us.

Not once did our administration try and foster peace, or anything. Soon as shit started between them we helped promote war by fueling it.

As a Christian, a conservative and a republican I am not opposed to war at all when it is absolutely necessary and vital to the protection of our country. But I also am fully opposed to being involved when it is not.

And your lazy and hacky derp comment further proves you only are worried about really trying to get under the skin of a internet stranger at all costs.

I'll consider this conversation at an end since you seem incapable of having one.

It’s why the Military Industrial Complex and the politicians they own hate Trump