The US announced on Friday that it will be providing cluster munitions to Ukraine,
a controversial weapon that is banned by over 100 countries around the world,
including key us allies like the uk and Germany. Now the us defended its decision on Friday to
provide these cluster munitions to Ukraine, saying that it will be necessary in order to maintain
Ukraine's ammunition stockpiles as it continues to prosecute its counteroffensive against Russia.
Us national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters that without tapping in to the stockpile
of us cluster munitions, Ukraine could run out of ammunition. Later this year. And it is not a
scenario that the us wants to see where Ukraine runs out of artillery ammunition. Given that it
is so key in the war, they are fighting against the Russians. Now the us is aware that allies
had concerns about this. Many of them have banned these munitions because they potentially pose a
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because they potentially pose a risk to civilians, a long term risk because many
of the little bomblets that these cluster munitions detonate, they actually fail to
explode when they hit the ground. And that can pose a risk to civilians that is similar to the
danger posed by landmines. But the us says that the munitions that they will be providing to the
Ukrainians will have a dud rate of lower than 3, around 2.35, and that is much lower than the rate
of the cluster munitions currently being used by the Russians in Ukraine. The us argument is that
the Ukrainians will not use these to target civilian areas like the Russians have been
and that these cluster munitions will be used by Ukraine to help it defend its own territory
rather than attack another sovereign country as Russia has been doing. But the us has been trying
to reassure allies behind the scenes that this is what Ukraine needs right now. And according
to the national security adviser, us allies have embraced that argument with open arms.
>> Joining me now is CNN military analyst and retired air force colonel
Cedric Leighton. Colonel, good to have you. >> Good to be with you, Victor. Good morning.
>> Good morning to you. So let's start here with two of the major concerns about sending
these munitions. And I want to cite here an op Ed from former senator Patrick Leahy and sitting
senator Jeff Merkley, in which they say this sending cluster munitions to Ukraine would not
only reverse decades of us policy and practice, it would also kill more civilians and exacerbate
the very problem we're seeking to address when we provide millions of dollars for ordnance
clearance. And it would go against the two thirds of nato members and other allies and partners who
are party to the convention and whose support is critical to our collective defense of Ukraine. The
last thing we need to do is risk a rupture with key allies over a weapon that the United States
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weapon that the United States should be leading. The global effort to prohibit.
So let's start first with the threat to life. Are U.S munitions these cluster munitions any safer,
less likely to create the duds than the Russian cluster munitions? Do
>> They certainly are, Victor. And the key thing to remember is the so called dud rate,
which is basically the rate at which these munitions become unexploded ordnance. The dud
rate for the us weapons is much, much, much lower than the Russian dud rate. The Russian dud rate
is somewhere around 30 to 40. The us dud rate is less than 5% and there advertising a rate of about
2.3 or so percent . Now the rate will probably be higher on the us side than advertised, but will
definitely not be as high as the Russian dud rate. >> And those two senators, they point out in their
op Ed in the Washington post that there was a law passed, that there can be no
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law passed, that there can be no transmission or use of anything with a dud rate over 1. And that
would be unlawful. So we'll see . I guess there will be some way to know the dud rate of these.
Does the transmit Russian the sending of these these cluster munitions to Ukraine provoke further
use of them by by Russian military or should that be a concern? Well if the Russians are going to be
using cluster munitions, regardless of what we do. >> So in one sense, and when it comes to the law
of proportionality, the Ukrainians are fully justified in using cluster munitions because
the Russians are doing that. Now, that's not the white house argument. They specifically
say national security adviser has specifically said that that is not the reason they're doing
this. The main reason that this is happening, Victor, is because our defense industrial base,
our weapon manufacturers are not keeping pace with the standard artillery munitions production
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artillery munitions production that is required for the Ukrainians to maintain not only their
counteroffensive, but their ability to hold their positions that they have right now in
both eastern and southern Ukraine. So this is basically become an issue of munitions shortages.
And the very fact that we're having to grab into the cluster munitions bag that indicates that we
have other things that we have to fix in our defense industrial base, both in the United
States and with our nato partners nations. >> Yeah, I was going to get to that later,
but you've brought it up, so let's go to it now. I found that to be the most, I guess, jarring
part of the snippet of the conversation that the president had with Fareed that we saw a little
earlier is that he said that they're running low on ammunition and supplies. Coming from the us
perspective, at least, is slowing a bit. What does that portend for next winter? Spring as we
get deeper into this? Is this just a small short slowdown or is this something that's
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or is this something that's going to be a challenge chronically?
>> I think it's going to be a chronic challenge, Victor, and this is something where we really
have to think about how we produce weapons and the quantities in which we produce weapons. You know,
the one thing that we know about warfare is that it takes a lot longer than initially
anticipated. That's almost always the case. The few exceptions in history,
you know, being, you know, kind of remarkable incidents, but and outliers in that sense. But
the key thing about this is that our defense industrial base has not kept pace with the
demand needs of the Russia-Ukraine war. And that should give us a lot of pause,
not only for the current conflict, the one that Ukraine is in, but any type of future
conflict that the United States or its nato allies might find itself in. It also goes, of course,
for Taiwan on the other side of the world. >> Can we extrapolate from here? I mean, if
the reason that these cluster munitions, which are controversial globally and even
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controversial globally and even domestically, as I just read from these senators, the shortage of
munition for Ukraine is why we're sending these is what happens after that. I mean,
if this is not going to change the trend in a war of attrition, is there a more controversial or I'm
not talking anything that's not conventional, but another weapon that that might we have to resort
to at least keep the Ukrainians on an even field? >>
Well, yeah. >> Beyond, you know, something terrible like
a nuclear weapon. There's or a chemical weapon which are both basically forbidden either by law
or by practice. And the real answer is not really there are some weapons that are out there, some
precision guided munitions that could be used. And of course, the Ukrainians have been asking for the
atacms system, which generally uses conventional warheads to do its job. Conventional rockets and
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Conventional rockets and missiles to do its job. So that's that's the kind of thing that, you know,
we'll have to be done. The other thing, of course , is a bit of a longer term or medium term issue,
and that is the provision of fighter jets for the Ukrainians. And that's where the talk of the f-16
comes in. So if you had, you know, provided the f-16 beforehand, perhaps we wouldn't be using
cluster munitions in time. It's hard to say if that's actually would have actually been the case.
But I think that that is, you know, something to definitely look into and see whether or not the
provision of f-16s and the atacms together would have prevented us from using cluster munitions
as kind of this method of not quite last resort, but at least something as a stopgap at the moment.
>> Yeah, well, certainly the Ukrainians have been arguing that if we give in as much such
military hardware as rhetoric, that maybe they'd be in a better