US plans to send Ukraine cluster munitions: Officials

US$800 MILLION PACKAGE

A Pentagon spokesman said the Biden administration was considering sending DPICMs to Ukraine, but only those that had a failure rate lower than 2.35 per cent.

The US military believes cluster munitions would be useful for Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official said in June, but they had not been approved for Kyiv yet because of congressional restrictions and concerns among allies.

The US Army is currently spending more than US$6 million a year to decommission 155mm cluster artillery shells and other older munitions, according to budget documents. Sending DCIPMs would ease a drain on standard 155mm shells that Washington has been shipping to Kyiv in massive quantities.

Also in the aid package to be announced, which is expected to be worth as much as US$800 million, Ukraine will receive munitions for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and ground vehicles such as Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker armoured personnel carriers, the officials said.

The package was still being finalized and could change, the officials said. It would be funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, which authorizes Biden to transfer articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval during an emergency. The material will come from US excess inventory.

The security assistance package would be the 42nd approved by the United States for Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022, for a total of more than US$40 billion.

Ukraine has also been pushing for new Western fighter planes, including F-16s, as it pursues its counteroffensive.

“F-16 or any other equipment that we do need will give us an opportunity to move faster, to save more lives, to stand our ground for a longer time,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an ABC News interview broadcast on Thursday.

NATO members Denmark and the Netherlands are leading efforts by an international coalition to train pilots and support staff, to maintain aircraft and ultimately supply F-16s to Ukraine.