President Joe Biden has agreed to send cluster munitions to Ukraine, fulfilling a request from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy despite concern from arms control groups and human rights activists about the potential harm to civilians.
The Biden administration will announce that it’s providing Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICMs) as part of a new military assistance package set to be announced on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.
Biden’s decision will be a controversial one because more than 100 countries — including France, Germany, the U.K. and many other NATO allies — are parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a 2010 agreement that bans the use and transfer of such weapons. The U.S., Russia and Ukraine didn’t sign the agreement, although the U.S. has in the past condemned other countries, including Russia, for using them.
In line with those concerns, congressional mandates block the U.S. from exporting cluster munitions that have a failure rate of more than 1%. DPICMs have a failure rate of about 5%, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the U.S. would send Ukraine newer munitions with “lower dud rates” — as low as 2.35% based on recent testing — Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. He stopped short of confirming the weapons will be provided to Ukraine.
The White House and State Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the decision, which was reported earlier by National Public Radio. Asked earlier about the possible decision, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the idea was under “active consideration.”
Biden would send the munitions under Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows him to transfer existing U.S. stocks of weapons to Ukraine. U.S. officials had suggested for weeks that such a decision was coming. Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, testified before Congress last month that the munitions would be useful against “dug-in Russian positions.”
“The reason why you have not seen a move forward in providing this capability relates both to the existing congressional restrictions on the provision of DPICMs and concerns about allied unity,” Cooper said.
Fired from aircraft or from ground-based artillery, missile or rocket launchers, cluster munitions open in flight, dispersing bomblets that can strike numerous targets within range. Ryder said Russia already employs cluster bombs in Ukraine that have high dud rates. He said the bombs can be used anti-armor or anti-personnel.
The U.S. rationale for the weapons has been widely condemned by human rights groups including the U.S. Cluster Munition Coalition, which said in a June 14 letter that the weapons cause “devastating harm to civilians, and especially children, years after a conflict ends.”
“Any claims of potential tactical benefits of the transfer and subsequent use of cluster munitions by Ukraine in the defense of its territory, dismisses both the substantial danger that cluster munitions pose to civilians, and the international consensus on their prohibition,” the group said.
Criticisms center on the wide dispersal area for cluster bombs and the fact that unexploded ordnance can remain hazardous for decades after landing. Some bomblets have a self-destruct capability, but those that don’t — known as “dumb” munitions — pose the greatest risk to civilians, as they could explode without warning long after the end of a conflict.
Ukraine has included cluster munitions in the weapons wish lists sent to Western partners. The requests have faced pushback inside and outside government.
Some U.S. government officials have condemned use of the weapons. In March, 2022, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said weapons such as cluster munitions and vacuum bombs have “no place on the battlefield.” The administration later walked back those remarks.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, who has urged the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with increasingly powerful weapons, expressed support for the pending decision.
“If these reports are true, this is great news - although long overdue,” McCaul, a Texas Republican, said in a statement. “Now is the time for the U.S. and its allies to provide Ukraine with the systems it needs, from cluster munitions to F-16s to ATACMS in order to aid their critical counteroffensive. Any further delay will cost the lives of countless Ukrainians and prolong this brutal war.”
The decision on cluster bombs is only the latest example of the Biden administration agreeing to provide weapons to Ukraine that it once deemed off-limits for fear of escalating the conflict or provoking a response from Russian President Vladimir Putin outside Ukraine’s borders.
In the months since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, the U.S. has provided increasingly powerful systems, from shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to drones to Abrams battle tanks and Patriot missiles. Biden has also cleared the way for allies to provide Ukraine with U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets, and is considering whether to give the country the ATACMs missile system, which would allow Ukraine to fire deep into Russian territory if it rejected US admonitions against doing so.
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—With assistance from Roxana Tiron and Tony Capaccio.
