In 2008, more than 100 nations signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty that “prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions.”
The United States did not accede to the convention. Neither did Ukraine nor Russia, both of whom are using these weapons in their seemingly forever war.
A cluster munition is a weapon that keeps on killing long after its 72 submunitions, or bomblets, are shot in a shell from a 155 mm artillery weapon. Upon explosion in the air, they can litter an area the size of several football fields. If that wasn’t horrible enough, these submunitions have, according to various government estimates, a “dud,” or unexploded rate, of 2.35% to 6%. That means that every time a cluster bomb is employed, two to four of those 72 bomblets do not explode upon impact.
But “dud” doesn’t mean these submunitions stay inactive. They can have the same dangerous lingering effect as a land mine. They stay active for decades. Children are often attracted to the colorful objects with disastrous outcomes.
The estimated dud rate is disputable. According to the Congressional Research Service, “There appear to be significant discrepancies among failure rate estimates. Some manufacturers claim a submunition failure rate of 2% to 5%, whereas mine clearance specialists have frequently reported failure rates of 10% to 30%. A number of factors influence submunition reliability. These include delivery technique, age of the submunition, air temperature, landing in soft or muddy ground, getting caught in trees and vegetation, and submunitions being damaged after dispersal, or landing in such a manner that their impact fuzes fail to initiate.”
The United States has a huge stockpile of cluster munitions — 4.7 million containing hundreds of millions of bomblets — that it is dusting off to deliver to Ukraine after a “difficult decision” by President Joe Biden.
The U.S. last used these munitions in its military excursion in Afghanistan. Trouble was that the little bombs resembled in color and shape the humanitarian aid packets that the U.S. dropped from planes. This confusion, which obviously left many civilians maimed or dead, led to the curtailment of cluster bombs for our next military adventure.
This did not stop Israel from using cluster bombs in its 2006 campaign against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. According to a March 2022 Congressional Research Service report, Israel used them in the “last 3 days of the 34-day war after a U.N. cease-fire deal had been agreed to — resulting in almost 1 million unexploded cluster bomblets to which the U.N. attributed 14 deaths during the conflict.” Israel’s use of the bombs “supposedly affected 26% of southern Lebanon’s arable land and contaminated about 13 square miles with unexploded submunitions. One report states that there was a failure rate of upward of 70% of Israel’s cluster weapons,” the agency said.
Recently, the international nongovernmental organization Human Rights Watch released a report from Kyiv that found that “Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that caused numerous deaths and serious injuries to civilians.” The report also noted that Russians have used cluster munitions, “killing many civilians and causing other serious civilian harm.”
Human Rights Watch also “found that Ukrainian cluster munition rocket attacks on Russian-controlled areas in and around the city of Izium in eastern Ukraine during 2022 caused many casualties among Ukrainian civilians.”
Yes, Ukrainian civilians. Friendly fire. Price of war. Collateral damage.
In announcing the U.S.’ decision to send these horrific weapons of war to Ukraine, Biden’s national security mouthpiece, Jake Sullivan, admitted, “We recognize that cluster munitions create a risk of civilian harm from unexploded ordnance. This is why we deferred the decision for as long as we could.”
So there it is, an admission at the highest level of our government that more innocents will die because of the use of these evil weapons of war. Additionally, large areas of arable land will no longer be able to be farmed because of these de facto mine fields.
In September 2016, Textron Systems, the last U.S. company to manufacture cluster bombs, ceased production of those munitions. For humanitarian reasons? Nope.
“Historically, sensor-fuzed weapon sales have relied on foreign military and direct commercial international customers for which both executive branch and congressional approval is required. The current political environment has made it difficult to obtain these approvals,” the company complained.
The company was most upset that its proposed sale of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia to use in that country’s scorched earth campaign in Yemen was blocked by the White House.
But that was about seven years ago, an eternity for a country that routinely ignores history’s lessons. With Biden’s decision to supply these long-lasting instruments of destruction to Ukraine, that political environment has now changed for the worse.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of five books of essays and journalism. His new book “Searching for Home, Adventures with Misanthropes” will be published in July.
