The U.S. for the first time has pledged to Ukraine cluster munitions: 155-millimeter artillery shells that break open in mid-air and scatter 88 grenade-size bomblets across a wide area.
Dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICM, are “a highly effective and reliable artillery capability to engage area targets,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday, shortly after the Pentagon announced it would send the scatterable munitions to Ukraine as part of an $800 million arms package that also includes missiles, howitzers and scores of Stryker and M-2 fighting vehicles.
Cluster munitions are controversial, and many countries—but not the U.S. and certainly not Russia—ban their use. Cluster shells tend to leave behind unexploded bomblets that endanger civilians. The American DPICM shell has a dud rate of around 3%.
That’s why the U.S. rejected a Ukrainian request for cluster shells back in the fall—and why President Joe Biden described the belated decision to send the shells as “difficult.”
But the need is clear. “The Ukrainians are running out of ammunition,” Biden told CNN. Kyiv’s forces, currently counterattacking in southern and eastern Ukraine and slowly making progress, are firing thousands of artillery rounds every day.
U.S. forces have used DPICM shells since the 1970s. In 1983, a U.S. Army study concluded that cluster shells are four times as effective compared to unitary shells—with a single high-explosive warhead—when fired at a platoon of enemy fighting vehicles.
As a bonus, the study concluded, a howitzer battery firing cluster shells was more likely to avoid enemy “counterbattery” return fire because it could destroy an enemy target faster—and thus could pack and up and leave before the enemy could triangulate its location.
Conversely, if the counterbattery threat is low, “more targets can be engaged in the same total time” with DPICM shells versus unitary ones.
It’s not for no reason that Dan Rice, a former U.S. Army officer and advisor to the commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces, last fall urged the Biden Administration to approve DPICM for Ukraine. More targets can be engaged in the same total time. “We’ve sent [the CiC] the wrong ammo for this battlefield,” Rice wrote. “Let’s rectify that and start sending him the right ammo.”
Yes, there’s risk that sending cluster munitions will result in Ukrainian guns scattering dud bomblets that will require careful cleanup after the war—and in the meantime could maim or kill civilians. But it’s worth noting that that already was happening: the Russians have been firing cluster munitions all along.
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