The Biden administration is expected to announce Friday that the U.S. will provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, according to multiple administration and defense officials, a controversial move to boost the country’s military in its fight against entrenched Russian forces.
President Joe Biden signed a presidential waiver on the transfer of the weapons in recent days, two officials said.
The dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, or DPICMs, are surface-to-surface warheads that explode and disperse multiple small munitions or bombs over wide areas — bringing more widespread destruction than single rounds. The rounds can be charges that penetrate armored vehicles, or they can shatter or fragment to be more dangerous for people.
Some human rights groups oppose their use because of concerns that unexploded bomblets, or duds, could explode after battle, potentially injuring or killing innocent civilians.
Ukraine has been asking the U.S. for DPICMs since last year, but the idea was met with resistance because of an international treaty that bans the transfer, use and stockpiling of the weapon.
The U.S., Ukraine and Russia are not signatories to the treaty, called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but U.S. law requires the president to sign a waiver before exporting cluster munitions with more than a 1% dud rate. The DPICMs the U.S. would provide have a dud rate of 1.3% to 2.35%.
The U.S. has a stockpile of roughly 10,000 cluster munitions in Europe that could be shipped to Ukraine almost immediately, the officials said.
NBC News reported last week that the Biden administration was leaning toward providing the weapons to Ukraine.
The U.S. developed the cluster munitions during the Cold War and later stockpiled a large number of them, many now nearing the end of their shelf life. Last week, a bipartisan group of members of Congress sent a letter asking the Biden administration to unleash the “untapped, vast arsenal” to Ukraine.
DPICMs can be fired from artillery systems that the U.S. has already provided to Ukraine.
Worldwide, civilians represented 97% of all cluster munition casualties, according to a report in August by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a campaign group that works to eradicate their use. Children accounted for 66% of all casualties where the age group was known, the report said.
Their use by both sides has been documented during the war in Ukraine, according to Human Rights Watch, an international nongovernmental organization. It is unknown how many people the munitions have killed or how large an area might have been affected, but Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said in April that more than 67,000 square miles of the country had been blighted by unexploded ordnance.
