When the White House announced Friday that it would agree to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions, it came after assurances from Pentagon officials that the weapons had been improved to minimize the danger to civilians.
The weapons, which have been shunned by many countries, drop small grenades that are built to destroy armored vehicles and troops in the open, but also often fail to immediately explode. Years or even decades later, they can kill adults and children who stumble on them.
The Pentagon said the weapons they would send to Ukraine had a failure rate of 2.35% or less, far better than the usual rate that is common for cluster weapons.
But the Pentagon’s own statements indicate that the cluster munitions in question contain older grenades known to have a failure rate of 14% or more.
They are 155-mm artillery shells that each can fly about 20 miles before breaking open midair and releasing 72 small grenades that typically explode on impact along the perimeter of an oval-shaped area larger than a football field.
Pentagon officials have said the shells they will send to Ukraine are an improved version of a type used in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. But the reality is slightly more complicated. The shells being sent to Kyiv can fly farther than the earlier versions, but they contain the same grenades, which had dud rates the Pentagon has characterized as unacceptably high.
Al Vosburgh, a retired Army colonel trained in bomb disposal, said that once the shooting stops in Ukraine, it will take a massive educational campaign to warn civilians of the risks of unexploded grenades before they can safely return home.
The biggest operational concern for Ukrainian soldiers, he said, is that dud grenades left on the ground by these shells cannot safely be moved by hand.
“You have to take great pains to clear those because you’re not supposed to move them,” said Vosburgh, who now runs the mine-clearance nonprofit group Golden West. “In an area that’s been saturated with them, you’re going to find a lot of duds, so it’s a slow and methodical process to dispose of them.”
But Biden administration officials said they had little choice but to provide cluster munitions despite their lasting danger as Ukraine burns through artillery rounds and tries to make gains in a grueling counteroffensive against Russian troops.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defended the use of the weapons and said that Russia had been using them since the beginning of the war. Ukraine has also used Russian-made cluster munitions, and had repeatedly asked for American-made ones, knowing the United States maintains large reserves.
“Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land,” Sullivan said. “This is their country they’re defending. These are their citizens they’re protecting and they are motivated to use any weapon system they have in a way that minimizes risks to those citizens.”
Weapons of this type are banned by more than 100 countries, in part because more than half of those killed or injured by them are civilians. Neither the United States nor Russia or Ukraine has signed the treaty prohibiting their stockpiling or use.
Analysts say that as many as 40% of the bomblets from Russia’s cluster munitions have resulted in duds.
Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department does comprehensive testing of cluster munitions in its stocks, and “the ones that we are providing to Ukraine are tested at under a 2.35% dud rate.”
Such a rate would mean that for every two shells fired, about three unexploded grenades would be left scattered on the target area. But the dud rate for these grenades has been observed at rates seven times higher in combat.
In a briefing to reporters on Friday, Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, said the shells being sent to Ukraine had been tested five times between 1998 and 2020.
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