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.
That’s nice, but $375 million, in US Military terms, is the equivalent of loose change between the cushions. We better send Ukraine a fat Christmas present.
I would like some loose change, Mr. President
Cluster bombs are being deployed in your house
We’re planning on sending several billion in our extant weapon stocks, and disbursing a smaller but also 10 digit amount to purchase more weapons for Ukraine’s use.
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.
Special military operation crimes then!
Russia did declare it a war a while ago. They dropped the stupid military operation pretense.
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?
Only if you care about civilians
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…
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.
Ukraine 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
I think that “honor” is for Israel.
With their actions in Lebanon? Ugh, you might be right…
“May you live in interesting times”, eh?
They haven’t been winning with them either
And a little more debt for Ukraine.
What would you suggest Ukraine do instead?
My point is that this is not a helping hand but a business for the arms dealers.
Okay, again, what would you suggest Ukraine do instead?
.ml want Ukraine to surrender. That’s pretry much it.
They don’t care about the people
They don’t care about the US taxpayer’s money
They don’t care that the weapon companies profitThey just want russia to win.
“Having a discussion” is just smoke and mirrors with them.
I know, but I like to give them enough rope…
Hey if you care so much about the people of Ukraine why don’t you go over there and fight so they don’t have to be kidnapped off the street and forced to die at the front?
Ok moron, post that on facebook
huh?
I don’t care about ML. What I say is that this is NOT HELPING. It’s MAKING A PROFIT on someone in need. Helping would be “I give you the weapons to defend yourself and we will pass the bill to Russia”, not this.
I don’t care about ML. What I say is that this is NOT HELPING. It’s MAKING A PROFIT on someone in need. Helping would be “I give you the weapons to defend yourself and we will pass the bill to Russia”, not this.
hence why we keep giving them massive loans. And sending them old equipment from our military, and sharing intelligence with them, and providing public media support for them as well.
War is more than just capital my friend.
“I give you the weapons to defend yourself and we will pass the bill to Russia”, not this.
also this is literally what europe is looking to do with their stockpile of frozen russian assets.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Why are you pressing that question as if Ukraine is an independent actor?
Because… they are? Unless you share Russia’s opinion on the matter.
Why are you refusing to answer the question?
You can’t refuse to answer a question that was never directed at you.
Unless you share Russia’s opinion on the matter.
The fact that Ukraine is a proxy state is spoken out loud by American politicians as well.
Kayfabe is for the kids.
The fact that Ukraine is a proxy state is spoken out loud by American politicians as well.
Please provide evidence for this supposed fact.
Also, Putin doesn’t call it a proxy state, he calls it the homeland of the Russian people, which is why he’s trying to make it part of Russia.
lil bro on the internet discovers that in a globalist capitalist world, that even military conflicts are burdened by the concepts of capital itself.
Then they shouldn’t sell it as “help”. If you help, you help. If you sell, you sell.
Edit: and I know the World is mostly a shitty place but that doesn’t make me less angry.
yeah and we aren’t selling them weapons, we’re giving them money to buy weapons. Instead of just, giving them weapons they probably don’t want/need.
We are donating a lot of weapons globally, but universally money is still required, and money can buy weapons so…
Most enlightened tankie. I guess Ukrainians should use rocks, or jedi powers to defend against the orcs?
Or the NATO could give them weapons and pass the bill to the Russians.
“A little more debt for Poland and France” - bufalo1973 in 1944
most of which is default-able. The rest is probably going to be paid back inevitably, due to ukraine receiving a massive industry boom post war for shit like drones and stuff.
Not to mention the rebuilding of the economy.
The post-war part is another different thing. But telling someone that’s on fire “pay me for putting the flames down” is inhuman.
we’re not telling them, i think ukraine is even asking for them at some points. Ukraine agrees to the loans, and like i said, i think some amount of the money is default-able loans. So it’s not actually “debt sharking” here.
If it’s an ally and NATO is defending human rights and democracy (I know, I know) it should be “free” for Ukraine.
If ukraine is an ally, i understand that to be fairly recent, prior to zelenskyy the president of Ukraine was a russian plant. I believe he was voted in about 2014 or so.
NATO is primarily an alliance between members of the alliance, of which ukraine is not a member. Protecting members outside of NATO is not really inside the purview of NATO as an organization, although protecting border states is politically advantageous.
anyway, i tried looking for some data and didn’t have much luck, but even thinking about it from a strategic position it wouldn’t make sense to loan shark ukraine here. Worst case scenario they collapse after winning due to the loans, and then russia takes over, or they collapse during the war, and we have to deal with getting that money back, because it’s marked as a loan, which wouldn’t really make any sense.
I think the idea is relatively simple, it provides a way for ukraine to borrow money, assuming they win it provides them a way to pay it back or default on it, and that allows ukraine to stay relatively neutral. Just giving free money to ukraine is probably less than ideal.
From the research i did do, i couldn’t find anything talking about how it would be problematic, it was mostly talking about numbers which makes sense, so i guess that checks out, but i would’ve been surprised if nobody had reported on that either.
It should be interesting to see who pays for this when Russia wins.
Russia can’t win. I don’t mean I don’t want it to happen, despite that being true. I mean there is no winning condition for Russia or Putin to end this conflict. Even if they were to occupy Kiev, they should really remember what happened when they attempted to occupy Afghanistan, because the exact same thing will happen. We didn’t even have to supply bombs and missiles, just some shoulder mounted surface to air shit, and the Russian occupation was completely halted. The Ukrainians aren’t going to give up, even if Russia declared victory.
What’s worse is that I’m not certain if we have passed the point where Russia literally cannot make enough people for this war to not cripple their economy and political power for the next century or so, but they’ve lost so many young men that if we haven’t passed that point yet, we will by the end of the year.
probably russia
