Sad that it has come to this. Unfortunately there is no "nice" way to kill people in a war. Russia launched an unprovoked invasion, has kidnapped 1000's of Ukrainian children and deliberately targeted civilians. The Ukrainians are in a fight for their very existence.
War creates the most desperate rationalizations. Because of Russia's profound inhumanity to the Ukranians, we are now rationalizing the use of a deeply inhumane weapon. The A-bomb was the most inhumane of weapons, but it ended the war. I don't see this weapon ending the war. At the same time I appreciate being brought up close and personal to the kinds of decisions that need to be made in the face of urelenting criminal brutality from Putin. What must it be like to be a soldier on the ground in this war? Unimaginable.
My opinion is this: The Bomb ended it, even though the Russians declared war on Japan. It worked this way: Japan was defeated, period. Except for a few, ALL the Japanese primary cities had been bombed into oblivion. But the Militarists wouldn't accept an unconditional surrender. Hirohito had no logical way to end it, but when the Bomb was used coupled with Russia's declaration, then Hirohito had a perfect reason to accept defeat because even the Militarists, as crazy as they were, understood the implications of the Bomb. FYI: It was not an unconditional surrender. Hirohito was retained, and even though he seemed to be a "Pacifist," in reality he wasn't in terms of leadership, any different than Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin in terms of influence. But on the ground, the reality was significantly different since most Japanese actually believed that Hirohito was a deity. There was no way MacArthur was going to hang the man...even though it would have been justified.
Totally agree. Short of nukes, I’m for giving the Ukrainians whatever it takes to get the Russians out of the Ukraine. Are these any worse than the mines laid? Not really. The .Ukrainians didn’t ask for this war. And war sucks! Yes it does. But prolonging it will only make it worse and increase the probability that Putler will use his nukes. Just my $0.02…
Very well reasoned opinion piece on a decision that some will persist in believing to be more a moral question vs. a practical application of a weapon, albeit grim, to deal with a numerical imbalance in war. Because a moral code is without a doubt important. Particularly when the calculus includes residual effect on a population.
Because the calculus encompasses defense of a sovereign homeland and acting in the greater interest of keeping allies in Europe free of the brutal throwback policies of aggressive invasion for natural resources, there was only one decision to be made. And President Biden made it. I find no fault with it.
It's a hard call, but war is full of hard calls. Given the multiple defensive lines the Russians have established, reminiscent of Kursk in 1943, with thick belts of mines, this might be necessary if the Ukrainians are going to break through. The Russians have been using CMs against Ukraine for quite some time. Ultimately, as you noted, it's up to the Ukrainians to decide. Using CMs may also be simply part of what the Institute for the Study of War noted that Ukrainian military is currently engaged in: creating an "asymmetrical attrition gradient," causing the Russians to lose far more soldiers than Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's targeting of Russian ammo dumps and logistical centers continues, and I think will have a huge impact on the success of this counteroffensive.
There have been some very interesting methods over the last few years for locating mines. Rats, dogs, and I saw recently drones. Not that they will get them all and this goes back a very very long time.
This will not be widely accepted, however there is another way that has been used by all sides in wars including before explosives. Depending on the era, march livestock or captured horses into the field of obstacles.
With the advent of so-called land mines, POWs other combatants and yes, civs, were also marched through mine fields and other areas where different sort of traps were suspected.
Repeating, there is nothing moral about war. Mil Ethicists, philosophers, pacifists, the religious have all tried their hand at trying to frame war in some moral order. Is impossible. Is the Reason can only shake me-noggin when a (ret) FO/GO with combat experience goes off on cluster munitions while getting a chubby on the teevee when the US dropped a MOAB on a Af compound or beat off watching gun camera vids of The Highway of Death while omitting it is the US who is responsible for the most UXOs in history (4eg SEA, specifically Laos). To them, spare me the moral lecture on anti-personnel munitions including on one's own dirt to expel an invader/occupier.
In Vietnam I met the late famous Australian photographer Tim Page. He had a little motorcycle and, with his then girlfriend, was trying to fix his bike---in the middle of nowhere, 1968. We became good friends, and I'd stay at his Tu Do Street apartment in Saigon, which he shared with Errol Flynn's son, Sean (soon killed in Cambodia). Tim was severely wounded up North, right after I left SVN in 1969. We met again once in the States in the late 1990's.
For many years after the war Tim Page worked in SVN on the Unexploded Ordnance removal project. Thousands of Vietnamese have been killed or lost limbs since 1975.
It still happens. It can be mines, booby traps, cluster bomblets, artillery shells, mortar shells; not everything explodes on time or impact. Ukraine will suffer for decades.
"Unexploded Ordnance removal project. Thousands of Vietnamese have been killed or lost limbs since 1975."
(Note: Even in the 21st-C most of the armchair generals focus on jus ad bellum and jus in bello to the exclusion of the much larger jus post bellum. Makes me wonder if when they go stay at a friend's house for an extended stay, they leave it as they found it or leave it to the owners to pick up after them.)
Many felt the duty and obligation to return and clean up the mess not of their own making. As you wrote, covers all ord as well as an array of traps. 4eg dud rate for gravity bombs during that war was in the range of 20%, if not higher.
Bomblets are particularly insidious due to their size resulting in little ones picking them up and all sorts of animals setting them off. Some may brush off the animal reference however Asian culture doesn't. One or two head of buffalo is crucial for sustaining life of the extended family.
Rural life is tough there. Many villagers saw larger UXOs as $$$ for their [metal] scrap value and take the chance of moving it. Others saw mortar shells as trophies or decorative items. Some here might say wtf however deep in the backcountry the locals have no idea what they found until it finds them, KABOOM.
Agree, Uk civs will be dealing with the same issue for decades. Hard to order a farmer not to plow his fields until a sweep is completed when farm income is all s/he has and was interrupted for XX planting/harvesting seasons.
Still support US emptying its inventory of cluster munitions in order for Uk to empty its land of Ru mil. Frees the US mil from the temptation to use them in the future. Any GO who can rationalize dropping a MOAB on compound they "suspect" has bad guys in and under it, can and will rationalize dropping cluster munitions. Am grateful US is NOT giving any to Bibi's IDF.
Edit: That MOAB in Af still irks me. US thinks others think they we do. They don't. US for the most part tunnels vertically under a compound, whether the Pentagon or WH. In the east, they tunnel and build horizontally away from the primary building for both additional ingress and egress escape. Is how so many mofos in Af came and went unseen by drones focused on a target. Ain't new war thinking. Is ancient. Exactly the reason the US dismissed it and of course due to "not invented here SIN-drome". The other thing that irks me abt a MOAB in Af is US assumed the soil was similar or the same used in MOAB tests here in the US. All the open source vids and pics did show quite a lot of above surface devastation (although nowhere near what was advertised) but did not show any depression of sunken/collapsed ground. None. All blast damage was above ground and any tunnel complex located away from ground zero. We never learn or unlearn.
It seems pretty simple to me. Since Ukrainians are the ones who are going to live and die with these bombs I believe that as much as possible they should make the decisions about their use.
I don't know if anyone here has friends or family in Ukraine. I don't. But central to the way I use my android phone—my only online device—is a clipboard manager I also use as a text editor. Constantly. Right now. The developer lives in Lviv. He has never discussed Ukraine in his app store profile.But before the war it showed a google maps street shot of his relatable apartment bldg. He has replaced that with a google map of Lviv, presumably his nabe, featuring a post office and hospital. Seeing that with a few clicks adds a strange, false intimacy to this abstract, distant war.
Once again Lucian you’ve written a lucid column about military hardware that illuminates the nuances without bogging us down. I’ve been following the harrowing developments of the last few weeks, just despairing at the dastardly Russian mining and trenches, and the resulting slow and grueling progress to retake Ukrainian territory. Given what you’ve written here, a balanced report if ever there was one, I come down on the side of giving the CMs to Ukraine, mainly because the CMs have a real chance of giving Ukraine a decisive advantage.
Lucian, I realize I am just rewording your narrative, but if this were a war we or a proxy nation like Ukraine was waging against an enemy in their territory I might have a problem with it. Ukraine, however, is trying to repel an invader of their own land. It's really up to them to decide what risks they want to subject their civilians to.
Great point, maybe its a different decision if Ukraine were sending these to Moscow, but on their own territory I think they're entitled to do what they think will help win. As I recall the Redcoats were outraged when the Americans hid behind trees and picked them off rather than forming lines and fighting in formation as was standard at the time.
If we don't give them what they need, all we've given them will be for naught and that's not why we stepped up in the first place. Everything about war is terrible.
Thank you, Lucian, for the background behind the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine and the description of how they are deployed. It's horrible but understandable that the Ukrainians have requested these bombs to evict the (thousands? tens of thousands? of) Russian soldiers who are dug in on their land. Question: These days, shouldn't it be possible to include in each bomblet a cheap tracking device that could be used later to find and detonate all the unexploded ones by robot? If the goal is to clear out Russian soldiers at the time the missile is fired, rather than to use a different way to mine the land they're on with the unexploded bomblets, why not do this?
I am not someone who cheers on war or the armaments devised and supplied for killing. But, in this instance I feel this is a benefits vs risk situation. Russia has flattened Ukrainian cities, mined agricultural areas, bombed energy installations, destroyed national treasures, killed, maimed and kidnapped Ukrainian citizens and Ukraine has held their own - maybe more than that. They need to decisively gain the upper hand against a country whose armies have tortured civilians and dumped the bodies in mass graves. This is slaughter of innocents and we should not hold back in supplying Ukraine whatever will allow them to drive the invaders out of their country. Russia deserves no quarter.
I have a dog in this hunt..... I used to be the EOD guy for ATACMS when I worked for Lockheed-Martin, and I had to deal with disposal of the ATACMS missile and the 900 bomblets in each warhead of the model I worked on in the late 1990s-early 2000s. There are no existing ATACMS missiles with the submunition warheads - they were all replaced or converted to the unitary explosive warhead, using the warhead design of the Harpoon anti-shipping missile. As you mentioned, there are artillery rounds with submunitions, and the newer Guided MLRS rounds have the AW warhead, which sprays 182,000 tungsten fragments from an air burst over the area the size of a football field, chopping up everything in that area, perfect for what the Ukrainians need to clear those trenches. There is a vast moral distance between using cluster munitions against civilian residences in cities (as the Russians have already done) and against military targets in open farmland, as the Ukrainians want to do. Have you seen pictures of the fields in Ukraine? In eastern Ukraine, they are pockmarked with literally millions of craters from artillery shells, each crater full of shrapnel that will hinder farming in the future. The alternative is that Russia WILL take all of Ukraine if it can, because Ukraine is not the goal - blocking the Bessarabian Gap in Romania and the Polish plain in Poland, points from which Russia was invaded in the past, that is the goal. If we do not stop the Russians in Ukraine now, they will be back. How many times do we want to do this..... In 20 years, Russia will not have enough young men to conduct such military operations - we just have to hold them off until that point.....
Thanks, Lucian, for a clear explanation of cluster munitions and how they work, as well as looking squarely at the moral question of unexploded devices. The answer to two crucial questions --- will these devices help clear minefields so Ukrainian forces can advance faster, and, will they kill more Russians in trenches --- appear to be yes, hastening a day when Ukraine can be free to be nothing more, but nothing less, than Ukraine. To quote your grandfather, "When you strike the enemy, aim to kill and destroy. Give the enemy no pause. Destroy him." How many trenches will have to be filled with how much Russian blood before this latest in humanity's awful history of bestial dictators is stopped?
Sad that it has come to this. Unfortunately there is no "nice" way to kill people in a war. Russia launched an unprovoked invasion, has kidnapped 1000's of Ukrainian children and deliberately targeted civilians. The Ukrainians are in a fight for their very existence.
Let’s remember Bucha atrocities. War is hell. And we need to fight hell appropriately
War creates the most desperate rationalizations. Because of Russia's profound inhumanity to the Ukranians, we are now rationalizing the use of a deeply inhumane weapon. The A-bomb was the most inhumane of weapons, but it ended the war. I don't see this weapon ending the war. At the same time I appreciate being brought up close and personal to the kinds of decisions that need to be made in the face of urelenting criminal brutality from Putin. What must it be like to be a soldier on the ground in this war? Unimaginable.
Not everyone would agree the bomb ended the war.
Only 99.999999%.
Ok
The Bombs on Japan.
Interesting article in Common Dreams by Julia Conley
My opinion is this: The Bomb ended it, even though the Russians declared war on Japan. It worked this way: Japan was defeated, period. Except for a few, ALL the Japanese primary cities had been bombed into oblivion. But the Militarists wouldn't accept an unconditional surrender. Hirohito had no logical way to end it, but when the Bomb was used coupled with Russia's declaration, then Hirohito had a perfect reason to accept defeat because even the Militarists, as crazy as they were, understood the implications of the Bomb. FYI: It was not an unconditional surrender. Hirohito was retained, and even though he seemed to be a "Pacifist," in reality he wasn't in terms of leadership, any different than Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin in terms of influence. But on the ground, the reality was significantly different since most Japanese actually believed that Hirohito was a deity. There was no way MacArthur was going to hang the man...even though it would have been justified.
Thank you
Totally agree. Short of nukes, I’m for giving the Ukrainians whatever it takes to get the Russians out of the Ukraine. Are these any worse than the mines laid? Not really. The .Ukrainians didn’t ask for this war. And war sucks! Yes it does. But prolonging it will only make it worse and increase the probability that Putler will use his nukes. Just my $0.02…
And Russians have been busy laying mines around the trenches already.
Yup. And after the Ukrainians kick ‘em out, the Russian mines will still be there - hidden.
Yes, might as well have more of these. They are there already. It's the ultimate trigger pull. Nobody wants to do it but you run out of choices.
The trade offs of war truly suck. Once you’re forced into it, though, the only choice is winning, whatever that means. I stand with Ukraine.
Very well reasoned opinion piece on a decision that some will persist in believing to be more a moral question vs. a practical application of a weapon, albeit grim, to deal with a numerical imbalance in war. Because a moral code is without a doubt important. Particularly when the calculus includes residual effect on a population.
Because the calculus encompasses defense of a sovereign homeland and acting in the greater interest of keeping allies in Europe free of the brutal throwback policies of aggressive invasion for natural resources, there was only one decision to be made. And President Biden made it. I find no fault with it.
"... there was only one decision to be made"
~Brava~
A justification (nevah evah to be confused with a mere rationalization) which stands on its own.
Bon chance to any and all who attempt to deconstruct it.
It's a hard call, but war is full of hard calls. Given the multiple defensive lines the Russians have established, reminiscent of Kursk in 1943, with thick belts of mines, this might be necessary if the Ukrainians are going to break through. The Russians have been using CMs against Ukraine for quite some time. Ultimately, as you noted, it's up to the Ukrainians to decide. Using CMs may also be simply part of what the Institute for the Study of War noted that Ukrainian military is currently engaged in: creating an "asymmetrical attrition gradient," causing the Russians to lose far more soldiers than Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's targeting of Russian ammo dumps and logistical centers continues, and I think will have a huge impact on the success of this counteroffensive.
There have been some very interesting methods over the last few years for locating mines. Rats, dogs, and I saw recently drones. Not that they will get them all and this goes back a very very long time.
This will not be widely accepted, however there is another way that has been used by all sides in wars including before explosives. Depending on the era, march livestock or captured horses into the field of obstacles.
With the advent of so-called land mines, POWs other combatants and yes, civs, were also marched through mine fields and other areas where different sort of traps were suspected.
Repeating, there is nothing moral about war. Mil Ethicists, philosophers, pacifists, the religious have all tried their hand at trying to frame war in some moral order. Is impossible. Is the Reason can only shake me-noggin when a (ret) FO/GO with combat experience goes off on cluster munitions while getting a chubby on the teevee when the US dropped a MOAB on a Af compound or beat off watching gun camera vids of The Highway of Death while omitting it is the US who is responsible for the most UXOs in history (4eg SEA, specifically Laos). To them, spare me the moral lecture on anti-personnel munitions including on one's own dirt to expel an invader/occupier.
In Vietnam I met the late famous Australian photographer Tim Page. He had a little motorcycle and, with his then girlfriend, was trying to fix his bike---in the middle of nowhere, 1968. We became good friends, and I'd stay at his Tu Do Street apartment in Saigon, which he shared with Errol Flynn's son, Sean (soon killed in Cambodia). Tim was severely wounded up North, right after I left SVN in 1969. We met again once in the States in the late 1990's.
For many years after the war Tim Page worked in SVN on the Unexploded Ordnance removal project. Thousands of Vietnamese have been killed or lost limbs since 1975.
It still happens. It can be mines, booby traps, cluster bomblets, artillery shells, mortar shells; not everything explodes on time or impact. Ukraine will suffer for decades.
"Unexploded Ordnance removal project. Thousands of Vietnamese have been killed or lost limbs since 1975."
(Note: Even in the 21st-C most of the armchair generals focus on jus ad bellum and jus in bello to the exclusion of the much larger jus post bellum. Makes me wonder if when they go stay at a friend's house for an extended stay, they leave it as they found it or leave it to the owners to pick up after them.)
Many felt the duty and obligation to return and clean up the mess not of their own making. As you wrote, covers all ord as well as an array of traps. 4eg dud rate for gravity bombs during that war was in the range of 20%, if not higher.
Bomblets are particularly insidious due to their size resulting in little ones picking them up and all sorts of animals setting them off. Some may brush off the animal reference however Asian culture doesn't. One or two head of buffalo is crucial for sustaining life of the extended family.
Rural life is tough there. Many villagers saw larger UXOs as $$$ for their [metal] scrap value and take the chance of moving it. Others saw mortar shells as trophies or decorative items. Some here might say wtf however deep in the backcountry the locals have no idea what they found until it finds them, KABOOM.
Agree, Uk civs will be dealing with the same issue for decades. Hard to order a farmer not to plow his fields until a sweep is completed when farm income is all s/he has and was interrupted for XX planting/harvesting seasons.
Still support US emptying its inventory of cluster munitions in order for Uk to empty its land of Ru mil. Frees the US mil from the temptation to use them in the future. Any GO who can rationalize dropping a MOAB on compound they "suspect" has bad guys in and under it, can and will rationalize dropping cluster munitions. Am grateful US is NOT giving any to Bibi's IDF.
Edit: That MOAB in Af still irks me. US thinks others think they we do. They don't. US for the most part tunnels vertically under a compound, whether the Pentagon or WH. In the east, they tunnel and build horizontally away from the primary building for both additional ingress and egress escape. Is how so many mofos in Af came and went unseen by drones focused on a target. Ain't new war thinking. Is ancient. Exactly the reason the US dismissed it and of course due to "not invented here SIN-drome". The other thing that irks me abt a MOAB in Af is US assumed the soil was similar or the same used in MOAB tests here in the US. All the open source vids and pics did show quite a lot of above surface devastation (although nowhere near what was advertised) but did not show any depression of sunken/collapsed ground. None. All blast damage was above ground and any tunnel complex located away from ground zero. We never learn or unlearn.
It seems pretty simple to me. Since Ukrainians are the ones who are going to live and die with these bombs I believe that as much as possible they should make the decisions about their use.
I don't know if anyone here has friends or family in Ukraine. I don't. But central to the way I use my android phone—my only online device—is a clipboard manager I also use as a text editor. Constantly. Right now. The developer lives in Lviv. He has never discussed Ukraine in his app store profile.But before the war it showed a google maps street shot of his relatable apartment bldg. He has replaced that with a google map of Lviv, presumably his nabe, featuring a post office and hospital. Seeing that with a few clicks adds a strange, false intimacy to this abstract, distant war.
I do have friends in Odessa who when this began thought they were “far from the madding crowd.” They have fled to Albania.
Once again Lucian you’ve written a lucid column about military hardware that illuminates the nuances without bogging us down. I’ve been following the harrowing developments of the last few weeks, just despairing at the dastardly Russian mining and trenches, and the resulting slow and grueling progress to retake Ukrainian territory. Given what you’ve written here, a balanced report if ever there was one, I come down on the side of giving the CMs to Ukraine, mainly because the CMs have a real chance of giving Ukraine a decisive advantage.
Thanks, Lorraine. Say hi to Richard for me.
Sure will!
Lucian, I realize I am just rewording your narrative, but if this were a war we or a proxy nation like Ukraine was waging against an enemy in their territory I might have a problem with it. Ukraine, however, is trying to repel an invader of their own land. It's really up to them to decide what risks they want to subject their civilians to.
Great point, maybe its a different decision if Ukraine were sending these to Moscow, but on their own territory I think they're entitled to do what they think will help win. As I recall the Redcoats were outraged when the Americans hid behind trees and picked them off rather than forming lines and fighting in formation as was standard at the time.
If we don't give them what they need, all we've given them will be for naught and that's not why we stepped up in the first place. Everything about war is terrible.
I agree with the decision but it is a Hobson choice. Don’t help and they lose their country.
Help and we will be sending future Army reserve and guard engineer units on near continuous “training” deployments to defuse the unexplored ordinance.
The Russian mines are arguably far more dangerous to defuse over time.
Thank you, Lucian, for the background behind the decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine and the description of how they are deployed. It's horrible but understandable that the Ukrainians have requested these bombs to evict the (thousands? tens of thousands? of) Russian soldiers who are dug in on their land. Question: These days, shouldn't it be possible to include in each bomblet a cheap tracking device that could be used later to find and detonate all the unexploded ones by robot? If the goal is to clear out Russian soldiers at the time the missile is fired, rather than to use a different way to mine the land they're on with the unexploded bomblets, why not do this?
I am not someone who cheers on war or the armaments devised and supplied for killing. But, in this instance I feel this is a benefits vs risk situation. Russia has flattened Ukrainian cities, mined agricultural areas, bombed energy installations, destroyed national treasures, killed, maimed and kidnapped Ukrainian citizens and Ukraine has held their own - maybe more than that. They need to decisively gain the upper hand against a country whose armies have tortured civilians and dumped the bodies in mass graves. This is slaughter of innocents and we should not hold back in supplying Ukraine whatever will allow them to drive the invaders out of their country. Russia deserves no quarter.
Better than the Washington Post’s similar analysis today.
That's why you are a much appreciated paid subscriber. I've been beating these Big Media guys for 50 years.
My thoughts exactly. Lucian’s explanation is so complete. It however does not calm the fear and anxiety.
I have a dog in this hunt..... I used to be the EOD guy for ATACMS when I worked for Lockheed-Martin, and I had to deal with disposal of the ATACMS missile and the 900 bomblets in each warhead of the model I worked on in the late 1990s-early 2000s. There are no existing ATACMS missiles with the submunition warheads - they were all replaced or converted to the unitary explosive warhead, using the warhead design of the Harpoon anti-shipping missile. As you mentioned, there are artillery rounds with submunitions, and the newer Guided MLRS rounds have the AW warhead, which sprays 182,000 tungsten fragments from an air burst over the area the size of a football field, chopping up everything in that area, perfect for what the Ukrainians need to clear those trenches. There is a vast moral distance between using cluster munitions against civilian residences in cities (as the Russians have already done) and against military targets in open farmland, as the Ukrainians want to do. Have you seen pictures of the fields in Ukraine? In eastern Ukraine, they are pockmarked with literally millions of craters from artillery shells, each crater full of shrapnel that will hinder farming in the future. The alternative is that Russia WILL take all of Ukraine if it can, because Ukraine is not the goal - blocking the Bessarabian Gap in Romania and the Polish plain in Poland, points from which Russia was invaded in the past, that is the goal. If we do not stop the Russians in Ukraine now, they will be back. How many times do we want to do this..... In 20 years, Russia will not have enough young men to conduct such military operations - we just have to hold them off until that point.....
Thanks, Lucian, for a clear explanation of cluster munitions and how they work, as well as looking squarely at the moral question of unexploded devices. The answer to two crucial questions --- will these devices help clear minefields so Ukrainian forces can advance faster, and, will they kill more Russians in trenches --- appear to be yes, hastening a day when Ukraine can be free to be nothing more, but nothing less, than Ukraine. To quote your grandfather, "When you strike the enemy, aim to kill and destroy. Give the enemy no pause. Destroy him." How many trenches will have to be filled with how much Russian blood before this latest in humanity's awful history of bestial dictators is stopped?