Leading GOP Lawmakers Push To Send Cluster Bombs To Ukraine

So much for weapons deemed inhumane and banned under UN-backed international treaties… apparently it’s OK if they are used against Russians or other official enemies of the United States – at least according to the logic of some US lawmakers.

A group of four Republican members of Congress are urging President Biden to send Ukraine cluster munitions as part of the next major weapons package approval . “Ukraine is seeking the MK-20, an air-delivered cluster bomb, to release its individual explosives from drones, and 155 mm artillery cluster shells,” according to prior reporting in Reuters. These Republican hawks want to provide it.

The Republican letter chastises the White House’s “reluctance to provide Ukraine the right type and amount of long-range fires and maneuver capability to create.”

The letter is signed by the following influential, high-level GOP Congress members: 

• Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
• Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee,
• Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
• Mike Rogers the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee

Some 120 countries have banned cluster munitions as they have long been understood to be more indiscriminate than conventional weapons, given they randomly disperse small bombs over large areas.

House and Senate GOP leadership exercise their solemn oversight responsibilities by calling on Biden to send cluster bombs to Ukraine https://t.co/7eoG10TJYc

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) March 21, 2023

For example, the MK-20, which is one of the weapons on Ukraine’s wish list, disperses 240 dart-like submunitions or bomblets after being deployed.

“The US had been producing and selling cluster bombs to its allies until a few years ago,” Antiwar.com recently pointed out. “In 2016, Textron Systems Corporation stopped producing MK-20s when the US stopped selling them to Saudi Arabia. But there’s still an estimated one million of the bombs Pentagon stockpiles.”