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I don't understand this whole cluster munitions move. It doesn't look good for anyone involved. We should have just destroyed them and be done with it.
America has a stockpile of weapons they cannot sell to anyone and can't really use anywhere, this is an opportunity to dispose of them in a relatively cheap manner.
Yeah, but the part I don't get is Ukraine choosing to litter it's country side and eastern cities with un-exploded submunitions. It will be massive and nasty clean up operation after wards. everyone time cluster munitions have been used anywhere it leads to both friendly fire and civilian casualties from lingering UXO submunitions.
Like I absolutely get why USA is offering, what I don't get is Ukraine accepting instead of demanding different kind of munitions. Hopefully they stuck them in "last resort reserve, if all else runs out" and then after war they just blow them up in big pile in some artillery range.
Each bomblet inside the shells can be dropped by a drone. Ukrain is low on that type of munition as well.
Russia's mined the fuck out of the whole east and south of the country. Not just land mines, but little petal mines and crap all over the place. UXO/mine disposal is already going to take decades. Western Europe still explodes a handful of people with UXO leftover from WW1 and 2, but it was still worth supporting them with weapons to win those wars.
Ukraine likely intends to crack open the cluster bombs and use the 80 or so individual munitions inside for dropping from drones. These weapons are basically an 80-for-1 deal the US has no use for, and the west can't produce mutions fast enough to give or sell to Ukraine.
Because
- Better a mined countryside than losing the war and
- The countryside is already full of mines and stuff anyway.
As to other munitions: First of all those aren't exactly plentiful, secondly you'd also have to have the necessary hardware to have a similar effect on the battlefield. You can hook up a couple of PzH 2000, say, seven, put ordinary rounds in their barrels and tell them to all shoot say 10 rounds a particular area all 70 impacting at the same time (so that noone can take cover), or you can use one cluster round with a couple of duds in it. Ukraine doesn't just have a couple of PzH 2000s standing idly around just waiting for an opportunity to imitate a much cheaper cluster round.
I'm not saying I agree with using these either but I heard on TV that the reason cluster munitions were being provided is because those are readily available and the weapons needed by Ukraine can't be met without them at this time.
Why the fuck not? Is 800 billion dollars somehow not enough money to fight off an army that's funded with less than a tenth of that?
Money is one thing. The speed of production is another
China can pop up hospitals in days, apartments and factories in weeks, and entire cities in months. 800 billion is a shocking amount of money. You could literally buy out a mid-sized country (or, say, Ford) and tell them to dedicate their entire manufacturing capacity to ammunition.
They're going to open a lot of the shells and use the armour piercing shapped bomblets as drone munitions.
US cluster bombs have 88 bomblets inside each shell. They also have a 1% to 3% dud rate on the bomblets, so that's 2 to 3 duds per shell. Duds that turn into landmines. Use 10 shells on an area and you've suddenly laid 30 mines in that area. Mines that you have no idea where they're placed.
So Ukrain can't use the cluster bombs on any area they intend to occupy or traverse. They can't use them on trench lines, they can't use them on fields they would need to drive over.
I believe they will be used, but a lot of them will used for drone ammunition.
So Ukrain can’t use the cluster bombs on any area they intend to occupy or traverse. They can’t use them on trench lines, they can’t use them on fields they would need to drive over.
Combat demining equipment exists^1^, and that equipment doesn't care whether it's Russian cluster munitions, Ukrainian cluster munitions, Russian mines, or Ukrainian mines -- both sides have used all of that, and with "mines" I mostly mean artillery-deployed stuff.
Those areas will have to be gone over with a fine-toothed comb anyway to demine them. A couple bomblets more or less don't make a difference in that regard and meanwhile those munitions can help Ukraine break Russian defensive lines much faster and bring this clusterfuck to a reasonable conclusion quicker (i.e. Ukrainian victory).
The drone ammunition stuff is true, too, but I guess the priority will go to using them as intended as you can drop a lot of stuff from drones.
^1^ Among other things Ukraine has at least 20 GCS-200, the Swiss are shy when it comes to sending weapons but have no issue with that kind of stuff.
Ukraine can use whatever they like in Ukraine. If Russians don't like it, they can go back to Russia.
I'm pretty sure it will be random civilians for the next few centuries after the war has ended that will be disliking it.
yeah sure, i'll believe that.
Gotta maintain the element of surprise 😉
"we wont use cluster bombs anymore....we wont use them any less either"