America has a stockpile of weapons they cannot sell to anyone and can't really use anywhere, this is an opportunity to dispose of them in a relatively cheap manner.

[–] variaatio@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but the part I don't get is Ukraine choosing to litter it's country side and eastern cities with un-exploded submunitions. It will be massive and nasty clean up operation after wards. everyone time cluster munitions have been used anywhere it leads to both friendly fire and civilian casualties from lingering UXO submunitions.

Like I absolutely get why USA is offering, what I don't get is Ukraine accepting instead of demanding different kind of munitions. Hopefully they stuck them in "last resort reserve, if all else runs out" and then after war they just blow them up in big pile in some artillery range.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because

Better a mined countryside than losing the war and
The countryside is already full of mines and stuff anyway.

As to other munitions: First of all those aren't exactly plentiful, secondly you'd also have to have the necessary hardware to have a similar effect on the battlefield. You can hook up a couple of PzH 2000, say, seven, put ordinary rounds in their barrels and tell them to all shoot say 10 rounds a particular area all 70 impacting at the same time (so that noone can take cover), or you can use one cluster round with a couple of duds in it. Ukraine doesn't just have a couple of PzH 2000s standing idly around just waiting for an opportunity to imitate a much cheaper cluster round.