President Biden's decision to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine sparked concern from human rights groups and some congressional lawmakers.
But the Pentagon asserts the munitions, to be fired from 155 millimeter Howitzer artillery guns, are vital to keeping Ukraine in the fight against dug-in Russian forces.
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl described Ukraine's ongoing counter-offensive as "hard-sledding."
“We want to make sure that the Ukrainians have sufficient artillery to keep them in the fight in the context of the current counteroffensive, and because things are going a little slower than some had hoped," he told reporters on Friday.
Cluster munitions are dropped by aircraft or fired by ground-based weapons systems, spreading out a few dozen to hundreds of submunitions over a target area.
The weapons are valued due to their ability to strike multiple targets at once — but the bombs are imprecise, often fail to detonate and can linger for decades after, at which point they can harm civilians, including children.
Russia and Ukraine have already used cluster munitions in the war effort, with extremely high dud, or failure, rates. The dud rates from the U.S. munitions are not expected to exceed 2.35 percent, but human right groups say the U.S. lacks transparency and accuracy on data.
Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said there will be a $73 billion cleanup effort with the munitions already deployed and the U.S. should not be escalating the situation.
"Legislators, policymakers and the Biden administration will probably think twice when the pictures start coming back of children who have been harmed by American-made cluster munitions," she told The Hill.
Cluster munitions are banned by 123 countries through a 2008 treaty, including 18 members of the western security alliance NATO.
Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. are not party to that treaty.
Congress passed a law in 2009 that prohibits the deployment or transfer of cluster munitions, but the president can sign a waiver to bypass the restriction.
U.S. officials on Friday said the decision was hard to make but noted they won assurances from Ukraine to keep track of the cluster munitions and minimize harm to civilians.
The decision was welcomed by Kyiv. Ukrainian presidential office adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said “the number of weapons matters” in the “great bloody war” with Russia.
“So, weapons, more weapons, and more weapons, including cluster munitions,” Podolyak tweeted.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
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