Pentagon: US may provide advanced variants of cluster bombs to Ukraine

The Pentagon has announced that advanced cluster munitions could be sent to Ukraine to help Kiev in its war against Russian forces, despite a global ban on such weapons.

The Pentagon's Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a regular press briefing on Thursday that while he had nothing to announce yet regarding deliveries of cluster munitions to Ukraine, he noted that the US has different types of DPICMs in its arsenal. The air-to-surface variety of this kind of munition is better known as a cluster bomb. 

“The ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with dud rates that are higher than 2.35 percent,” he claimed, adding, the US military “would be carefully selecting rounds with lower dud rates” to replace the older weapons.

Ryder refused to say whether the US military had discussed concerns among NATO states about the use of advanced or older variants of the banned cluster munitions in Ukraine, saying only that the bloc’s member states are united in their desire to provide Kiev “with the capabilities that they need to be effective on the battlefield.”

Cluster bombs are banned under the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), an international treaty that addresses the humanitarian consequences and unacceptable harm caused to civilians by cluster munitions through a categorical prohibition and a framework for action.

The weapons can contain dozens of smaller bomblets, dispersing over vast areas, often killing and maiming civilians. The CCMs are banned because unexploded bomblets can pose a risk to civilians for years after the fighting is over.

US to send Ukraine banned cluster munitions: Officials

The United States has planned to send globally banned cluster munitions to Ukraine to help it battle Russian forces, American officials have said.

Meanwhile, Kiev leaders have announced that Ukraine is a great "testing ground" where the United States and other Western countries can try out all their weapons.

Kiev called on the US military industry -- which has been flooding the ex-Soviet republic with older and newer variants of weapons, munitions and military equipment -- to test all its weapons on the Russian forces in Donbas.

"For the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said, claiming that American officials became very happy when Ukraine’s military reported that a US Patriot missile system managed to down a Kinzhal, a Russian hypersonic missile.

An American official called the news "fantastic," Reznikov said.

In the meantime, the massive flow of weapons into Ukraine continues despite repeated warnings by Russia that such a flow of arms will only prolong the war and increase the scope of death and destruction.

US arms industry the sole winner of the war in Ukraine

Despite conditions in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen by 10% for the year as a whole, the share prices of US defense contractors have surged.

Moscow launched a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 to defend the pro-Russia population in Donbas against Kiev's persecution and in response to the eastward expansion of the US-led NATO forces.

Since then, Ukraine's attempts to gain victory in several counteroffensives against Russian forces have been unsuccessful.

Russian military sources said Ukraine's forces launched attacks in the south of Donetsk and in Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as in the area of the eastern city of Bakhmut, but their attempts failed to recapture any territory.  

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