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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Is there any legitimacy to the claims that the Ukrainians want to disassemble these munitions to use as drone bombs? I suppose time will tell and no assurances have been made that this is the case.
Imagine 1/3rd of the shells you fire at the enemy didn't do anything. This was woulda been over a long time ago
this problem matters a lot less if youre dropping dozens of the things at a time
Right. If your hit by 9 bombs it does really matter if your were also hit by three duds.
Given the way that Russian made weapons seem to work I’d agree that the dud rate is probably not what’s described. It’s probably closer to 5% US did rate and 60% for Russian made garbage. I mean, I remember the start of the war when they had videos all over of cluster munitions that were unexploded.
If there’s one thing the US values it’s value-per-dollar, and dud bombs not working would be bad business.
Also, to the OPs question about using them to make drone bombs. They would be crazy to do that. Especially when the battlefield as it’s described talks about trenches with mines on top making it difficult to run Bradley’s and Challengers over. My guess is they’ll use the cluster munitions to carpet an area, detonate any mines underground and clear out trenches, and then push forward through the newly opened line.
The big advantage of these weapons for Ukraine is that they can be fired directly from the western -suupplied Howitzers and HIMARS they already have without needing modification. Ukraine's problem is that they are running out of shells. Cluster munitions go further since they are area weapons.
No, Ukraine already has been using cluster munitions against civilians for a long time:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/06/ukraine-civilian-deaths-cluster-munitions
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/04/more-evidence-that-ukraine-fired-the-missile-which-killed-dozens-in-kramatorsk.html