JULY-AUGUST 2023

  

For some time now we (United States and Allies) have worked with Ukraine's military to assist in their war effort by developing a search and destroy capability through drone delivery. These drones have pinpointed targets and either relayed precise coordinates to Ukraine's artillery or impacted the target directly with on-board explosives. They have proved very effective to date.

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As Ukraine's new strategic plan of unleashing a Summer Offensive has been disappointingly slow to unfold, the United States has now elected to equip Ukraine with ground-fired cluster bombs (known also as cluster munitions, CBU-87s, which can be fired both from the air and the ground). They release bomblets which are dispersed over a large area and can explode immediately or over time.

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Russia and Ukraine have already been employing their own, but the United States has not supplied these weapons directly to Ukraine nor used them since the Iraq war as they can create excess civilian casualties. The implications of the release of this new form of munition is that we (US and Ukraine) do not envision the Ukrainian Spring offensive to be unfolding as planned.             

       

Just how do we ever expect to conclude this war? Victory from the Ukrainian perspective seems unrealistic. A stalemate seems more probable with thousands of more casualties likely. Our benefit seems simply to obtain a tactical military education, but at a substantial monetary outlay ($75 billion in total aid thus far).

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Stay tuned to this webpage for further reflections on the Ukrainian conflict.

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