It’s about time they used these. It’s their land anyway and they should be able to defend it effectively.
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Yeah, but I can understand their hesitancy. Unexploded bomblets could be a hazard for their own advancing troops and a hazard for citizens that eventually use the land.
I wouldn't be surprised if they had to log every one of these shot - source, target, altitude of actual explosion, number of explosions (is witnessed by drones), etc. I imagine they'll want to do a sweep through there when things settle down.
That first mortar (?) hit was fucking dead-on.
Looked like an air-burst munition of sorts? I thought that hit was the hit labelled as use of cluster munition and was readying my downvote, but then the next two was shown and yeah... clusters alright.
The Brothers Grimm could see the future:
I dunno, it just seems like the delay on the bomblets was too long. And also that a fragmentation round could have gotten them all without leaving unexploded ordinance all over the place.
Just to provide clarity, the dud rate is approximately 2.5%, so about 1-2 per shell.
Times how many hundreds of shells? With bomblets sitting around for decades after.
And how many survived that hit, as opposed to a similar fragmentation strike? A few survivors aren't actually a bad thing in a lot of cases too. They require resources to care for, draining man power that's already stretched thin.
It just strikes me as a less than efficient weapon choice. I'd be curious to see it compared to air burst flechette rounds in effectiveness.
I agree with your points. Demining and EOD in eastern and southern Ukraine could take decades. Cluster munitions will hopefully be a stop-gap, and not the new norm.
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