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Why Is Biden Sending Banned Cluster Munitions to Ukraine?
Maybe that’s all they have left in the way of readily available ordnance!
They are only banned by Australia because Australia is run by idiots.
David (7.55am) Clusters scatter small explosive charges / fragments about the ploace: many of which do not immediately explode as intended. Thus you get the same after-battle / post-war problem many places already have experienced with ordinary single-explosion ordinance that explode years later when some farmer is plowing a field etc., except that there are a lot more clusters unexploded….and they are much harder to find with detectors.
it’s not really that idiotic to take them out of the arsenal.
BTW: Can you reply please?
Hahahahaha! Exactly. We also have banned land mines which is one of, if not the primary weapon that stopped the Ukranian offensive. Sure, Australia has nothing to stop Chicom tanks but at least Princess Di will be happy.
Too stupid to survive.
Jupes
Are all land mines banned, or only anti-personnel ones? Look to the words of the treaty, not the media reports.
jupes (8.14am) No reply from David Archibald to my post at 8.11am. Maybe you can answer it?
Mantaray, with all due respect but answer what?
OK. Let’s use this thread to discuss who CL’s readers think / believe / posit / suggest etc actually makes the decisions in the US Govt. Not vague fluff, but actual names, be they persons or companies or whoever, and why.
I’m kinda baffled. Is it Milley? Is it Austin? Is it Blinken, Nuland? Kacklin’ Kamala? Professor Moriarty? WhoTF is it?
C’mon. Help us all out.
NFA. Is my 8.11am post shadow-banned?
I pointed out why clusters are different to all other single-explosion devices, and asked for David Archibald’s take on my post.
What about you. Do you agree with Jupes that clusters are the same as Land-mines?
Repeat: clusters throw hundreds of explodable fragments all over the place. When the war is over they are devilishly difficult to remove, and remain explodable. thus they were / are considered much worse than other munitions for civil society.
If I told you Moriarty the hounds would get you.
Good point BJ. The treaty is an anti-personnel mine treaty, however there is something in there about anti-tank mines with “sensitive fuzes”.
Treaty aside, I don’t believe the Australian Army has anti-tank mines. If they do, they are pretty quiet about it. Here’s something I found from a couple of decades ago.
A nation much more interested in pleasing foreigners than winning wars.
Your final ‘a’ must have stepped on a mine.
Of course they are shit, so is a bullet, so is nuclear ordnance, so is whatever deployment of killing ordinance previously, currently and proposed to be deployed by NATO and Russia.
International arms limitation agreements aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. When the crunch comes they go straight out the window.
The Ukies for example signed up to the anti landmine agreement…that didn’t stop them using the things when they had a battlefield demand for them.
The Swiss approach is the only one that works: be a porcupine. You can’t use arms limitation agreements to get out of defence spending.
Mantaray, I believe war is a serious business and should be fought to win. Banning weapons to ingratiate yourself with foreigners is immoral and stupid.
I don’t really know much about cluster bombs, I assume they would have limited use on the Ukranian battlefield, as I suspect they are best used against troops in the open. I think they are being sent because the US is running out of standard artillery shells. Whatever, the unexploded bombs should be relatively easy to clean up afterward as they would be sitting on top of the ground.
Jupes (9.10am). No way are the clusters easier to detect than standard unexploded bombs mines….which are BIG. Cluster-bombs can have up to 1000 individual bomblets. The unexploded ones lodge everywhere….and many get covered over by flying dirt and debris…..fall down rabbit holes….whatever, and they are very small.
When the fighting is over bomb and mine detection teams have it extremely easy compared to tiny-fragment detection teams. THEN it’s the civilians who suffer: maybe for decades. Farmers get killed plowing: kids on the way to school, people digging any kind of trench etc etc: farm animals and other animals.
This problem also affects the “winner”. If Ukraine somehow miraculously drove the Russians out, they would be left with millions of hard-to-find bomblets in Ukraine! A really stupid idea which the yanks should not encourage!
Russia is said to use them, so it’s all OK and will be said to be so by the freeloaders at the NATO summit, the said freeloaders perhaps even claiming that the cluster bombs will be a game changer. Fools.
Yes, well it apparently was ok for afghans to breach he rules of war but not BRS, however, when it comes to Ukraine, it’s ok to do the same as the Russians.
I wonder what all those lefties (and even some on the right) who fulminated about BRS and his “war crimes” will have to say about this?
Express outrage?
Not likely.
Cluster munitions are not the same as land mines by any means … the intention of the cluster munition is to launch large numbers of grenades quickly, which then detonate on the ground after a short time. These are only useful when launched at an enemy in the field, they compensate for the innacuracy of artillery fire by producing a bigger area effect.
The intention of land mines is to hang around waiting for an enemy to attempt to attack. The unexploded cluster munitions are an unwanted side effect and not useful as actual mines. This is made more confusing because some small mines are spread by air in a similar manner to cluster munitions … for example Kyiv was able to spread tiny “butterfly mines” into the civillian areas of Donetsk as punishment for the population voting (twice) for independence.
Jupes never claimed these are all the “same” but perhaps the question is whether they should be categorized as similar from a moral perspective. I guess that depends very much on how they are used. All weapons result in unexploded munitions … European farmers still run into old explosives from WWI which are more than 100 years old.
The only morally justified violence is self defence and minefields do make excellent defensive fortifications … especially if you want to blunt a big “blitzkreig” style armoured charge. Spreading mines by air is a very quick and efficient way to do it, although not the only way. The actual cluster munitions that Biden is providing will probably be used for artillery duels and counter-battery fire, they will likely end up spreading unexploded munitions into farmland.
If you want to get into the very interesting history of the School of Salamanca and “Just War Theory” … they pointed out that war in defence of land is only justified when there is a possibility of winning. They did not support rulers who sent out soldiers on quixotic missions resulting in certain death. The current situation is that Kyiv has no hope of recapturing the Donbas … the Russian speaking populations have demonstrated both the will and ability to fight hard against Kyiv, and the military support from Moscow is way too strong, and frankly getting stronger. Therefore morally, and further attempts to recapture this land by whatever means are all unacceptable, regardless of the weapon used.
I will also say that these specific artillery shells that Biden is sending are largely obsolete anyhow. The future will be missiles, drones, and “loitering munitions” not the heavy big-barrel artillery guns. Russians use TOS-2 rockets with thermobaric warheads to achieve the same purpose and these are extremely destructive. The USA uses hellfire missiles.
Biden is simply emptying out the back of the cupboard … and doing a few demented photo ops. No one in Washington gives a toss about some dopey farmers in Eastern Europe. They see those people as not much different to sheep or cattle and the main intent is to keep the war going by whatever means … because it’s a way of laundering US tax money out of the public purse and into private hands.
what Tel says at 8 July, 2023 at 1:13 pm
what Buccaneer and Lee are saying re BRS
Lee (12.32pm) wrote “I wonder what all those lefties (and even some on the right) who fulminated about BRS and his “war crimes” will have to say about this?”
Even better comparison is what leftists who blather on about the bombing of Dresden will say….and I’m guessing that would be something like “Well the Russkies started it by invading Ukraine, and then by using clusters. Therefore the gloves are allowed to come off!” With the air of “Besides: the Ukies are the good guys”……direct echoes of what wartime Allied military and political leaders said about Dresden.
They are about the size of a grenade. Still, as NFA, setting aside the change of tune compared with 2022, this simply indicates that the cupboard is extremely bare of ordnance.
Tel
“Jupes never claimed these are all the “same” but perhaps the question is whether they should be categorized as similar from a moral perspective. I guess that depends very much on how they are used. All weapons result in unexploded munitions … European farmers still run into old explosives from WWI which are more than 100 years old.”
There are still two or three unexploded mines under Messines Ridge, left there after the 1917 attack. One went off around 1955, after a lightning strike. Each has several tons of HE in it.
Just as NATO countries are rummaging in the back sheds for munitions to send to the actor playing the starring role as Liberator of Europe and Protector of the Free World the US will have to adopt the zelensky’s recruitment methods…
WSJ blames abysmal recruitment numbers on military veterans
You realise of course that the USA was not mentally deficient enough to sign up to the ICC.
America understood quite well it would be a diplomatic tool vigorously used against it by its enemies who would have no intention of complying with the ICC themselves.
Thank you very much Alexander Downer. You foppish fool.
You fat foppish fool.
Something I just read indicates there’s a US law banning the sale of weaponry (by the US) which has a “known failure rate” of more than 1%…..The Guardian: “A 2009 law bans exports of US cluster munitions with bomblet failure rates higher than 1%, which applies to virtually all of the US military stockpile.”…..
So, to summarize all this. Using cluster bombs is morally repugnant since it condemns the surviving civilian population of the cluster-bombed areas to decades of harm during “peace” time following conflicts where they are used. They are NOT like most other ordnance in this regard (Nuclear weapons?). Banning them, or simply refraining from using them is the way to go. They have no similarity to Land Mines aimed at vehicles. The End.
But at least we can rest assured that the US has destroyed there chemical weapons stockpile!
United States Destroys Last Remaining Chemical Weapons Stockpile as They Sent Cluster Bombs to Ukraine
Who’s the War Criminal? Lindsey Graham Supports Sending Cluster Bombs to Ukraine Which Is a War Crime