With a bill of 37 billion for demining Ukraine, and 98% of that due to Russia, time to stop the hysteria. Cluster bombs are RF main weapons already

The world bank has openly discussed a 37 BILLION USD clean up bill as to demining Ukraine. Meanwhile

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Cluster munitions, like the 155 millimeter artillery shells called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) that the US is giving Ukraine, are highly effective weapons. After being fired from a howitzer, they break apart and scatter dozens of small bomblets over a large area.

The range is key here, allowing clusters to quickly overwhelm multiple enemy positions at once with as many as 72 submunitions. For Ukraine, they'll be most effective at hitting uncovered trenches along Russia's extensive defenses or damaging heavy artillery and armored vehicles on the front lines. They also increase the value of each artillery round as Ukraine continues to find itself outgunned by Russian artillery.

While they're not necessarily a game-changer, if they're used in tandem with other assets such as drones and Storm Shadow missiles, they could break the mold on Ukraine's slow-moving counteroffensive. 

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While again, in the abstract reprehensible, it is nothing like the white Phosphorus scandals which have been accrued as to the Russian Federation, and say even in Iraq at 2007 during the "Sunni uprising" , in the US Iraq invasion ( Fallujah) and it is a bit well hysterical to worry about collateral damage after we have war bloggers in the Russian Federation openly discuss genocidal thoughts as to resisting Ukraine citizens

Ukraine is already a hell of explosives littering its landscape already

Try, please to get your attributions straight !

Cluster munitions are used every DAY in the RF attacks on Ukraine in this horror of an invasion!

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The US isn't too concerned about creating a lasting nightmare for Ukrainian civilians with mines and bomblets because Russia already did it

Chris Panella Jul 11, 2023, 3:09 PM EDT

• US officials have broadly dismissed concerns around the indiscriminate risk of cluster bombs to civilians.
• Russia has laid extensive networks of landmines and explosives in Ukraine since the war began.
• Ukraine will use US-provided cluster munitions in specific situations, US officials said. 

On Friday, the US announced the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine, a move marred with controversy. The artillery-laid bombs are banned in over 100 countries — including dozens of the US' NATO allies — for their indiscriminate risk to civilians.

But US officials have defended the decision, noting these weapons boost Ukraine's effectiveness against hardened defenses and that they're not too worried about long-term consequences considering much of Ukraine is already covered in fields of Russian-laid landmines and bomblets that will require extensive cleanup when the war's over. 

While attending this week's critical NATO summit in Lithuania, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told MSNBC that providing Ukraine with cluster bombs was a stop gap given current munition shortages.

"It [Ukraine] was running low — and indeed, running the risk of running out — of the munitions that it has in its inventories, and inventories around the world are low. We're working to build up the production of the munitions that it's been using," Blinken said, adding that US President Joe Biden made "the hard but necessary decision" to send cluster munitions as a temporary solution.

He also dismissed concerns over the lasting effects of cluster bombs, saying: "The Russians have already saturated Ukraine with cluster munitions, and there's a big difference between what the Russians have done in Ukraine using these cluster munitions against the Ukrainian people" as opposed to how Ukraine will employ the weapons.

In other words, what's a few more explosives to a land already riddled with them?

Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups have previously accused both Russia and Ukraine of using cluster munitions since the war began over 500 days ago, with Russia's usage greatly exceeding Ukraine's, and both countries' targets being vastly different. While Ukraine hit areas occupied by Russian troops around Izium, Russia targeted population centers and even destroyed schools, hospitals and shelters.

In a press briefing last Friday, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Ukraine had assured it would minimize the use of the bombs in areas where civilians could be located nearby.

Sullivan called the deployment of the weapon an "ongoing" conversation, meaning there will be plenty of US oversight into when, where, how, and why Ukraine uses them.

Cluster munitions, like the 155 millimeter artillery shells called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICMs) that the US is giving Ukraine, are highly effective weapons. After being fired from a howitzer, they break apart and scatter dozens of small bomblets over a large area.

The range is key here, allowing clusters to quickly overwhelm multiple enemy positions at once with as many as 72 submunitions. For Ukraine, they'll be most effective at hitting uncovered trenches along Russia's extensive defenses or damaging heavy artillery and armored vehicles on the front lines. They also increase the value of each artillery round as Ukraine continues to find itself outgunned by Russian artillery.

While they're not necessarily a game-changer, if they're used in tandem with other assets such as drones and Storm Shadow missiles, they could break the mold on Ukraine's slow-moving counteroffensive. 

But cluster munitions are controversial for the same reason they're powerful. After being released from canisters, some of those small bomblets don't explode — they're known as "duds," effectively becoming landmines.

They pose a major risk for long after a war or conflict has ended, as the duds become ticking time bombs for unsuspecting civilians.

That threat — along with a capacity for indiscriminate destruction across a large area — is the reason 108 nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008, preventing the use, transfer, or development of cluster bombs.

The move was mostly in response to accusations of Israeli forces using millions of cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon War, flooding civilian areas with the deadly explosives. 

The US, Ukraine, and Russia are notably not signatories on the convention.

On Friday, Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, assured that the munitions being given to Ukraine had a failure rate of only 2.35%, but experience suggests the actual failure rate of the US' bombs is much higher. It could be near the soaring failure rate for Russia's cluster munitions, alleged to be as high as 40%.

"I'm as concerned about the humanitarian circumstance as anybody. But the worst thing for civilians in Ukraine is for Russia to win the war," Kahl said. "And so it's important that they don't."

That humanitarian circumstance has to do with civilians currently residing in Ukraine, but there are also fears about the mines and unexploded bombs that will persist in towns and cities after the war's over. Human Rights Watch classified Ukraine as "severely contaminated with landmines and explosive remnants of war" dating back to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. 

These include Russian antipersonnel mines, but also a variety of cluster munitions. 

Blinken told MSNBC on Friday the US and NATO allies have already committed to cleaning up Ukraine when the war ends. That'll include extensive demining campaigns, which can be incredibly dangerous and time-consuming. 

Earlier this year, the World Bank estimated that de-mining Ukraine would cost more than $37 billion. 

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Andrew Beckwith, PhD