Ukraine is privately asking US for cluster munitions for drone use

Ukraine continues to request cluster munitions from the US and has recently asked for MK-20 air-delivered cluster bombs, which it wants to adapt for drone use.

Source: Reuters, with reference to US Representatives Jason Crow and Adam Smith, who both serve on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee

Details: Representatives Crow and Smith said Ukrainian officials urged US lawmakers at last month's Munich Security Conference to press for White House approval of the MK-20 request, in addition to 155-mm artillery cluster shells that Ukraine requested earlier.

The lawmakers said that Ukraine views cluster munitions as a way to halt the kinds of "human wave" attacks Russia has mounted in its months-long drive to overrun cities and towns in eastern Ukraine, particularly Bakhmut.

Smith explained that the Ukrainian military believes these submunitions "have better armour-piercing capability" than the weapons it has been dropping from drones.

The MK-20 is delivered by aircraft. It opens mid-flight, releasing more than 240 dart-like submunitions, or bomblets. The production of MK-20s was halted in 2016, but there are more than 1 million of them in US military stockpiles.

Though there is some support in the US Congress for Ukraine's requests, the presidential administration is categorically opposed: cluster munitions are banned under a 2008 international pact due to their potential to kill civilians.

One Reuters source, however, agreed that providing this type of munition would ease shortages of other kinds of 155-mm shells in Ukraine, where Russia continues to maintain a significant advantage.

Background: Foreign Policy reported that Türkiye began sending Ukraine a form of US-designed, artillery-fired cluster bomb in late 2022 after months of Kyiv pleading with the Biden administration for the munitions. Ukraine has denied this.

CNN earlier reported that the Biden administration was weighing Ukrainian requests for access to the US stockpile of cluster munitions.

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