As the Biden administration reportedly nears a decision on providing cluster munitions to Ukraine, the Pentagon said Thursday any such weapons under consideration would be newer variants with dud rates below 2.35 percent.
Providing such dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) with a dud rate above one percent, which accounts for the average percentage of bomblets in the weapon that fail to explode, would require a waiver to bypass existing congressional restrictions.
“I will say that we have multiple variants of DPICMs in our stocks. And the ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with dud rates that are higher than 2.35 percent,” Air Force Brig. Gen Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said during a briefing on Thursday. “We are aware of reports out there from several decades ago that indicate that certain 155mm DPICMs have higher dud rates, so we would be carefully selecting rounds with lower dud rates for which we have recent testing data.”
Ryder was asked how potentially providing such cluster munitions in a weapons aid package for Ukraine could assist in the country’s ongoing counteroffensive operation.
“What DPICMs bring to a battlefield is anti-armor and anti-personnel capability. So, essentially, it can be loaded with shaped charges, which are armor penetrating, or they can be loaded with fragmentary munitions, which are anti-personnel. So, clearly, [it’s] a capability that would be useful in any type of offensive operations,” Ryder said. “I would note that the Russians have already been employing cluster munitions on the battlefield, many which include a very high dud rate, reportedly.”
DPICMs and other cluster munitions are banned by more than 100 countries, not including the U.S., with groups such as Human Rights Watch citing concerns the weapons pose to civilians.
“Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are killing civilians now and will continue to do so for many years,” Mary Wareham, Human Rights Watch’s acting arms director, said in a report the group released on Thursday. “Both sides should immediately stop using them and not try to get more of these indiscriminate weapons.”
Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairs of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, respectively, and Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to President Biden on March 21 urging the White House to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions (Defense Daily, March 24).
“We remain deeply disappointed in your administration’s reluctance to provide Ukraine with the right type and amount of long-range fires and maneuver capability to create and exploit operational breakthroughs against the Russians,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.