The U.S. will send Ukraine an undisclosed number of medium-range cluster bombs and an array of rockets, artillery and armored vehicles in a military aid package totaling about $375 million, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Officials expect an announcement on Wednesday, as global leaders meet at the U.N. General Assembly, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy uses his appearance there to shore up support and persuade the U.S. to allow his troops to use long-range weapon s to strike deeper into Russia. The following day, Zelenskyy meets with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington.
I thought we weren’t allowed to use cluster munitions?
The US didn’t sign that treaty AFAIK. Not sure about Ukraine though.
Also, can’t commit war crimes if there’s no war. And Russia says this isn’t a war.
I know you’re being facetious, but they’re considered war crimes even if it’s not a full declared war.
Russia did declare it a war a while ago. They dropped the stupid military operation pretense.
Special military operation crimes then!
Ukraine didn’t, and neither did Russia.
It’s like with incendiary weapons: Not war crimes as such, but for fuck’s sake don’t use them near civilians. Ultimately they’re not doing anything that an artillery barrage couldn’t do, including leaving unexploded ordinance around: When there’s lots of soft targets you don’t need all those explosions but only shrapnel so you can send a single shot and cause that shrapnel instead of twenty causing shrapnel and pointless explosions.
Cluster munitions are bad when you’re an invading army bc some of the explosives fail to fire, endangering civilians who come across them later. Ukraine, however, is using them on its own territory to combat russia who 1) is already using cluster munitions with a greater fail rate than the ones the US is providing Ukraine, and 2) deliberately mines the areas they invade in a way to kill civilians (e.g. setting up a mine to explode if you try to move the corpse of a beloved family dog). So in this case, using the US’s cluster munitions to get russia out is a net positive.
Whereby there also videos from the first weeks where Russians left grenades as booby traps in kitchen cabinets and dishwashers?
Pretty sure the US is one of the few nations that never said they wouldn’t use them.
the US is one of few nations that didn’t sign that treaty, along with landmines.
We pretend it’s ok by saying that we have high accuracy high precision cluster bombs. Though the ones getting to ukraine aren’t, that entire place is also littered with minefields, so it makes no difference lmao.
We pretend it’s ok by saying that we have high accuracy high precision cluster bombs.
Why would you want precise cluster bombs? The whole point of a cluster munition is to spread the effect over a broad area.
enemy troop trenches.
You can blast it shortly above the trench, accurate enough that a small amount of cluster munitions can explode killing the most people most effectively.
in some cases, this isn’t advantageous, in the one atacms that ukraine sent over an airfield for example, having more clusters is obviously most important there.
Also i take it you know nothing about them so i’ll expound upon my previous comment as i left out a few details. Modern US cluster munitions have individually targetting clusters. This means they can only detonate the actually important munitions, while leaving the rest as dead munitions, or even detonating in air to self destruct (still dangerous, but not as much) so you can kill a group of vehicles, without carpet bombing the rest of the area.
TL;DR more precise cluster bombs allow for using less cluster munitions, which means less collateral, and more damage for the given explosives. I.E. more effective weapon.
good.
Now if only i could get IP people to realize that ukraine existed, maybe they could get the government to send those bombs to ukraine instead…
8 billion for Israel, $375 million for Ukraine
Since the start of the conflict it looks like we’ve given ukraine more than $100b in funding. (not all of it is direct) (since 2022)
Israel has received $300b, which is more, but only 3x more, and this is since 1946, the literal founding of israel. Covering spending for the last two fiscal years, it seems to only be about $20b since the october 7th attack, though that’s a pretty rough figure.
in fact if we average these figures, $100b over 2 years is $50b a year, where as if we average the $300b over 78 years it’s only about $3.8b a year. Though in the most recent funding package we have given israel $12b or so in marked funding, which is considerably higher. Still not $50b though.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/past-present-and-future-us-assistance-ukraine-deep-dive-data https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-israel-four-charts
Thanks for doing the legwork on this.
nothing motivates more than disproving stupid things people say lol.
That’s the internet and the broader scientific community at large for you.
good.
Cluster bombs dropped across the country will be killing people decades after the war is over.
Dud rates vary from 2 percent to 40 percent, with U.S. submunitions on the lower end and Russian submunitions on the higher end. Duds act like landmines and can injure civilians
While everything to do with war is a varying amount of horrifying,
- Ukrainians are desperate enough to choose to use them in their own country
- they’re being given far more reliable munitions than what they’re already being attacked with
yeah, and so will russian landmines? Like, vastly more amounts of them will be vastly more problematic.
Cluster bombs are built to explode, in US cluster bombs, up to about 1% of them fail to detonate iirc. It’s higher for russian bombs, upwards of 5% i think. Even if we’re generous to cluster bombs, it’s still just a tiny, tiny fraction of the probably hundreds of thousands of russian landmines that have been planted.
Associated Press - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Associated Press:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceSearch topics on Ground.News
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-long-range-missiles-6bd6af3d74ebbf6225330e476173575f
https://apnews.com/hub/volodymyr-zelenskyy
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-weapons-missiles-a4a109e2eb4581e59d5d1455deb92b09
https://apnews.com/article/biden-un-general-assembly-ukraine-israel-gaza-4e4e839c3cdd4edd7543aea84af2346fUkraine can’t win without Western troops.
It’s that simple.
They are doing very well even without them right now (especially against the supposedly second army in the world). What they need is more weapons.
They are doing very well
Its crazy to see people double down on this line two years into the conflict.
Nobody is doing well. This is a war of attrition that’s ruining Ukraine’s interior, devastating its population, and obliterating its economy. The absolute best thing you can say about the conflict is that Russians are also losing lots of blood. But that puts the terms of “victory” entirely within the scope of “How many dead Russians have we produced?” rather than “How much of Ukraine is there left to save?”
What they need is more weapons.
Who is going to be using them?
Who is going to use them?
You think himars and long range missiles are needing to use up hundreds of Ukrainians to be fired?
But whatever, you’re arguing for a “peace plan” I guess. Where Ukraine cannot enter NATO nor get back the invaded land, right?
This is a war of attrition that’s ruining Ukraine’s interior, devastating its population, and obliterating its economy
And yet they choose to continue. As is their right.
I hope everyone here will continue to support aid to Ukraine long after they drive the Russians out. While nothing can correct the horrors of war, we can help rebuild at least some of what they’ve lost
That marks the start of World War 3 tho
