While the Ukrainian counter-offensive has not yet managed to breach Russian defenses, despite some progress in certain sectors, the United States has announced new military aid worth $800 million to Kiev. And no long-range weapons like the MGM-140 ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles [Army Tactical Missile System]fired from the M142 HIMARS system [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System] does not appear in the list of devices that will soon be shipped to Ukraine.
On the other hand, Washington intends to hand over about 100,000 155mm DPICM cluster munitions to the Ukrainian army. [dual-purpose improved conventional munition / munition conventionnelle améliorée à double usage]. Congressmen had also spoken out in favor of such a decision.
cluster munitions [ASM] are generally used to “saturate” a specific area. In the case of Ukraine, armor-piercing DPICMs would save on 155mm shells, which are difficult to replenish in stocks. Moreover, Kyiv believes it has the right to have it as well, since it is used by the Russian armed forces. Which is already the case, as according to Foreign Policy, Ankara would have delivered quite a bit towards the end of 2022…
The problem with ASMs is that not all of the ammunition they scatter detonates on impact. This has the effect of ‘polluting’ the target area and causing civilian casualties once the fighting is over. In addition, the Oslo Convention, signed by a hundred countries since 2008, bans their use, manufacture, storage and export.
Of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, only France and the United Kingdom have signed this convention.
However, in the United States, a law passed in 2009 prohibits the export of ASM if the failure rate of the submunition fired is more than 1%. However, with DPICMs we are far from that: according to US Army tests, an average of four out of 72 M864 shells do not explode after firing. However, as Colin Kahl, the undersecretary for policy at the Defense Department, has pointed out, the White House has the right to waive it for “reasons of national security.” So what President Biden did.
“It was a very difficult decision for me” and “it took me a long time to be convinced of it,” the latter said in an interview broadcast by CNN on July 7. And to ensure that this issue was discussed with Congress and allied countries. “The Ukrainians are out of ammunition,” he said. In addition, Kiev has pledged not to use the ASMs supplied to it in “civilian-populated urban areas” and to clear the areas where they were fired.
In addition, US Presidential National Security Advisor Jack Sullivan stressed the “enormous risk to civilians when Russian troops and tanks attack Ukrainian positions and retake more territory because Ukraine does not have enough artillery” to defend itself.
However, this decision has left some NATO members feeling embarrassed. In Germany, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke out against the delivery of cluster munitions to Ukraine. However, that position was later changed by federal government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit, who said he was “certain that our American friends did not take the decision to supply the ammunition in question lightly”. France is on the same line.
“We understand the arbitration reached by the United States in its desire to help Ukraine exercise its self-defense against the illegal aggression unleashed by Russia,” the French Foreign Ministry actually commented.