Ukraine War, 9 July 2023: Shell Hunger & CBUs

Hello everybody!

Before I come back to my ‘regular reporting’, few words about yesterday’s decision of the US President Biden, to start shipping cluster bomb munition (CBU) to Ukraine.

Last few days…. indeed, most of the last two weeks, I’m getting to hear an ever-increasing amount of complaints about the ZSU being short on artillery ammunition, and NATO – ONCE AGAIN – NOT delivering what it promised or should (depending on source).

…or what Ukraine expected….

Obviously, in the current situation, this can easily have catastrophic consequences. As should be crystal clear after more than a year of repeating this: the artillery is dominating this war. It’s the ‘life’ of the Ukrainian war effort. If the ZSU is not receiving enough artillery ammunition (like this was the case the last winter), it cannot even hold its current lines, not to talk about continue advancing.

….often enough not even if suffering heavy casualties….

The reason is that this is a huge, massive war, involving huge numbers of troops and combat vehicles. That in turn needs huge amounts of explosives to destroy. There is simply no other means of doing that with conventional weapons, but with help of artillery. The reason is that the artillery is capable of ‘delivering’ more explosives against the enemy than any other branch of military forces, air power included.

As is well-explained here, the ZSU needs a steady supply of at least some 110,000 conventional (read: high-explosive) shells calibre 155mm a month. That’s including BONUS and SMArt guided rounds - and is something like absolute minimum. Ideally, Kyiv would like to have – and spend - over 300,000 shells a month. It’s far from getting as many: by now, and thanks to Japan agreeing to supply explosive fillers, USA and European NATO-partners are in the process of increasing their monthly rate of production from around 65,000 shells to about 107,000 – and a portion of that is kept for own forces…

…and that number is less likely to increase dramatically, any time soon, also because already the second or third Bulgarian ammunition factory and ammunition depot ‘spontaneously exploded’, few days ago – and Bulgaria is known to be supplying ammunition to Ukraine since the start of the war…

The solution was found in form of Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM): essentially, cluster bomb units (CBUs) in form of shells calibre 155mm. DPICM shells like M483A1 contain 88 bomblets: when reaching a pre-selected altitude above the target, such a shell ‘falls apart’ and sprays the target with a ‘shower’ of these 88 bomblets. Is (murderously) effective, especially against enemy infantry, but also vehicles and field fortifications.

An M483A1 CBU artillery shell calibre 155mm.

Now, Ukrainian demands for DPICMs provoked a controversy – because CBUs are highly controversial in the West. The reason is their high ‘dud’ rate: in earlier weapons of this type, up to 50% of bomblets failed to detonate (the ‘best known’ for their high failure rate were the British-made Hunting BL.755, US-made CBU-30 and CBU-59, and the Russian RBK-250 and RBK-500 series of air-released bombs). The result was the creation of massive, unmarked minefields all over the South East Asia, Middle East, and much of Africa – wherever the West (or some of its local allies) and different of the Russian allies have fought wars deploying them: many of unexploded bomblets, and resulting minefields, remain ‘intact’ for decades after (latest examples of deployment of CBUs would be such like Syria and Yemen). Unsurprisingly, bomblets from CBUs are extremely dangerous for civilians in particular. As a result they’ve been banned by most of countries…bar such like USA, Russia, Brazil, India, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea…and Ukraine.

Fighting a war requires moral decisions. Fact is: Russia is running a war of extermination of Ukraine. It drove millions of Ukrainians out of their homes; it stole thousands of children; it killed thousands; and has already destroyed large parts of the country. There’s simply no denial that Russia is seeking a way to kill as many of Ukrainians as possible. Unsurprisingly, it has already infested huge parts of eastern and southern Ukraine with millions of mines (the most conservative, yet reliable estimate I’ve heard is ’10 million’), and dozens of thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance, too. The Russian deployment of mines in what is obviously an illegal aggression on Ukraine is reaching such proportions that, while Western military handbooks are still discussing minefields the size of 200, 300 to 1000 square metres, in Ukraine the ZSU is discussing Russian minefields in terms of ‘square kilometres’.

For orientation: a single square kilometre is an area the size of 1 million square metres.

….or 100 hectares…

Russia is deploying artillery rockets with CBU warheads all the time. Russia is continuously deploying CBU-warheads against Ukrainian cities, too – which is just another violation of international laws of war.

Have no doubt: Ukraine would do the same, if only having such ammunition. It has none: it used to have CBUs for its BM-27 and BM-30 multiple rocket launchers, and for Tochka ballistic missiles. But, it seems, it has spent all the remaining stocks of these.

Problem: the CBU-warheads of Soviet/Russian-origin have around 20-30% duds (indeed: some are quoting rates over 50%, depending on the weapons system in question).

Unexploded PTAB-1A cluster bomb ammunition deployed by the Russian rocket artillery against the city of Mykolaiv, in early March 2022.

A field in Ukraine used to store exploded and unexploded Russian ammunition…

Matter of fact is: that with already significant deployment of CBUs in Ukraine unlikely to change any time soon. Indeed, the less shells Ukraine gets, the more likely is the number of CBUs deployed by Russia going to increase….if for no other reason then because Russia is meanwhile ‘down’ to importing 40-years-old Chinese-made artillery ammunition from Iranian- (and similar) stocks. Which means that Ukraine is going to continue being infested with bomblets from CBUs and unexploded ordnance, ‘anyway’ - regardless if its gets any M483A1s or not - and for much longer…

A stock of 152mm shells from Chinese production, stored and then overhauled in Iran, before being brought to Russia and then to Ukraine - where it was captured by the ZSU.

The Ukrainian – and US – calculation is that modern-day DCIPM shells like M483A1 have a dud rate of 2.5-3%. The ‘off-records’ rate (i.e. the rate of duds that’s not official, but rumoured, is at 14%). Means: in combat, they should leave significantly less unexploded bomblets behind than the Russian CBUs already do.

Foremost: the USA have retained a stock of around 4.6 million DPICM shells calibre 155mm. Means: since President Biden’s decision to release this stock for delivery to Ukraine, and considering the armed forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) are nowadays primarily consisting of infantry, DPICM shells are - at least - going to ‘still’ the Ukrainian shell-hunger. In longer term, they’re likely to ‘bridge the gap’ until NATO manages to increase its production of conventional shells to necessary levels (see: 300,000+, a month), sometimes the next year…

…and, gauging by the story of effectiveness of the CBUs from certain earlier wars (see the Iran-Iraq War as one example), they must be expected to cause heavy Russian casualties, too - which, as tragic as this is, is the only way for Ukraine to win this war.

Besides, let us not forget that it was primarily (though not exclusively) due to the Western ‘reluctance’ and feet-dragging in regards of related decisions, the last year, that the Russians were given so much time to mine so much of Ukraine, or to deploy yet more of their CBUs there…

Bottom line: one must not be ‘happy’, about this development. But, and sadly: this is a war, and presently that’s the only way forward.