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The American administration of Joe Biden announced on Friday that for the first time it will send the Ukrainian army supplies of cluster bombs, i.e. weapons considered extremely effective from a military point of view but highly controversial due to the possible collateral damage they cause on the civilian population. and which have been prohibited by a UN convention signed by more than 100 countries, which however do not include the United States, Russia and Ukraine.
Cluster bombs are already widely used in the war in Ukraine: both the Ukrainian army and, to a much larger and indiscriminate extent, the Russian army use them. In an interview with CNN Biden he said that the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine was “difficult” but necessary because “Ukrainians are running out of ammunition”, and Western arsenals are running out of conventional ammunition. The US administration has also announced that it will send cluster bombs to Ukraine that are more efficient than those currently used in warfare and potentially less dangerous to civilians, but this has not, however, allayed the controversy.
The cluster bombs (in English call cluster bombs) have been used since the Second World War and are containers that carry tens or hundreds of smaller bombs, also known as “submunitions”. They can be dropped from an aircraft or launched from land or sea. When they reach a predetermined height, depending on the affected area which can be as wide as several football fields, they open and the bombs inside are distributed, “clustered” on the area below. There are various types of submunitions but almost all are designed to detonate on impact.
The main problem with cluster bombs, and the reason they are so controversial, is that often a good number of the submunitions dropped do not explode, for example when dropped on vegetation or grassy ground, which does not create enough impact to cause explosion. Once the conflict is over, any remaining submunitions can be accidentally detonated by civilians or passing vehicles, or they can be picked up by children and detonated. For this reason, the use, storage and transfer of cluster bombs are prohibited by the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions of 2008, which has been signed by over 100 countries.
It is not entirely clear how many people are killed or injured by cluster bombs: in some countries such as Laos, people are still dying from cluster bomb submunitions dropped by the United States during the Vietnam War nearly fifty years ago. There are estimates that more than 90 per cent of those recorded as killed or injured by cluster bombs are civilians, many of them minors. These estimates, however, are likely skewed by the fact that militaries do not provide accurate data on soldiers injured or killed by certain weapons.
An important data to understand how dangerous cluster bombs are for civilians is the so-called “dud rate”, i.e. the rate at which cluster bomb submunitions remain unexploded. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, between 10 percent and 40 percent of submunitions fail to explode once they hit the ground, and remain dangerous years later. Particularly in the war in Ukraine, both armies used very often Soviet-era cluster bombs, which are estimated to have a dud rate of around 30 percent.
According to the US Department of Defense, the cluster bombs that will be supplied by the United States to Ukraine have a “dud rate” of just 2.35 percent. If these numbers are confirmed, it would mean that future damage to the civilian population would be extremely limited (and that, moreover, the bombs used by the Ukrainian army would be much more efficient on the battlefield than those used by the Russian army).
The cluster bombs that will be supplied by the United States to Ukraine are actually “cluster munitions”, in the sense that they are not air-dropped bombs but 155mm artillery ammunition that must be dropped from the ground with howitzers. According to New York Times, the United States has two types of cluster munitions in its arsenal: the M483, which contains 88 submunitions, and the M864, which has a longer range and contains 72 submunitions. It is unclear which of these two will be sent to Ukraine.
It is still not even entirely clear how the United States came to optimize its cluster munitions to the point of obtaining a dud rate of only 2.35 percent. Both M483 ammunition and M864 ammunition were first developed decades ago, and tests showed that both had a much higher dud rate. The US Department of Defense claims instead that more recent tests have been carried out, dating back to 2020, which instead show that the “dud rate” is much lower. However, these tests cannot be made public.
Some experts heard from Washington Post they speculate that this result was obtained by updating the old cluster bombs with devices that increase their possibility of self-destruct.
This “dud rate” of 2.35 percent, although very low, is nonetheless deemed unacceptable even by US legislation, which prohibits the government from exporting weapons with a failure rate higher than 1 percent. In order to export cluster munitions to Ukraine, Biden had to sign an exception to this law.
The US administration also said it had received “written assurances” from Ukraine that the bombs received will be used “with extreme caution,” that densely populated civilian areas will be avoided, and that clearing operations will begin after the war. any unexploded submunitions.
The Ukrainian government has been asking the United States for cluster bombs for some time, despite being perfectly aware of the damage they can cause on its territory and the collateral effects on the civilian population. The fact is that Russia has already been using cluster bombs massively for months now, and in addition it is using anti-personnel mines and other extremely dangerous devices that will have quite serious long-term consequences on the territory of eastern Ukraine after the war. According to some analyses, even now there are areas of the country which are effectively inaccessible due to the large number of mines and submunitions lying on the ground.
Some military experts argue that US cluster bombs, especially if effectively as effective as the Department of Defense claims, could provide Ukraine with numerous military advantages, especially in an attempt to target trenches where Russian soldiers are defending their positions.