Ukraine seeks to step up lethal force with cluster-bomb drones

UKRAINE wants to increase the deadliness of its makeshift drones by arming them with anti-tank weapons from Usmade cluster bombs, American politicians have said.

Kyiv has asked Washington to send it the weapons so it can disassemble them and use drones to drop the explosives on Russian troops. Cluster bombs spread large numbers of smaller bomblets, or submunitions, over a wide area, causing massive destruction.

The request for the munitions, which are widely banned, was revealed by Jason Crow and Adam Smith, who serve on the House of Representatives armed services committee.

Ukraine has used drones to attack Russian tanks and trenches to great effect, with simple hand grenades destroying Soviet-era vehicles that have been left with their hatches open.

The bomblets of the CBU-100 could deliver even greater success as they are designed to punch through heavy armour.

Each 600g submunition contains a warhead that focuses the effects of the relatively small explosive payload on a smaller area. As a result, they are said to be capable of penetrating 7.5inches of armour.

Mr Crow, a US army veteran, said he might back sending the CBU-100 to Ukraine if Kyiv promised to remove the bomblets and “use them in a non-cluster employment”.

However, Ukraine’s plan is likely to face strong opposition.

Asked if the Biden administration was likely to agree to send the weapons to Kyiv, Mr Smith said: “That’s not going to happen.”

Cluster bombs have been banned by

more than 120 countries, including most members of Nato, because the bomblets often fail to explode and can pose a danger to civilians for years after conflicts have ended. However, the US, Russia and Ukraine did not sign a 2008 agreement that prohibited the production, use and stockpiling of the munitions and Ukrainian and Russian forces have used the weapons since Russia seized the Crimea in 2014, according to news reports and human rights groups.

The CBU-100 contains more than 240 submunitions, and the US is thought to have stockpiled more than a million of the weaponss.

Ukraine also wants Us-made cluster artillery shells – Dual-purpose Conventional Improved Munitions (DPICM) – to halt the “human wave” attacks that Russia has mounted in its months-long assault on the eastern city of Bakhmut, the politicians said. Each DPICM shell disperses 88 submunitions.

Mr Crow said he opposed providing the shells to Ukraine because the high failure rate of the bomblets would worsen Ukraine’s massive unexploded ordnance problem. The state department estimates that some 174,000 square kilometres of its territory – nearly a third of the country – are contaminated by landmines or other “explosive remnants of war”.

A 2009 law bans exports of US cluster munitions with bomblet failure rates greater than 1 per cent, which accounts for virtually all of the US’S stockpile. President Joe Biden can waive the prohibition.

The US spends more than $6million a year decommissioning 155 mm cluster artillery shells and older munitions, according to budget documents

Providing DCIPMS would ease shortages of other types of 155mm shells the US is sending Kyiv in huge quantities.