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.
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.
The Brothers Grimm could see the future:
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