Decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine on Biden’s desk

But the administration has more recently leaned toward sending the cluster munitions as Kyiv expends large numbers of its stocks of conventional weapons. A top Pentagon official recently told lawmakers military analysts had concluded that cluster munitions would be useful on the battlefield, especially against dug-in Russian positions, but they had not yet been provided due to congressional restrictions and “concerns over allied unity.”

Late last week, multiple officials told POLITICO that the administration now was actively “considering” the transfer of the weapons — setting the stage for Biden’s expected approval.

A National Public Radio reporter said in a tweet Wednesday that the approval for the weapons was expected Thursday.

Both sides are already using cluster munitions, officially called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, to deadly effect in Ukraine. They are designed to take out multiple military targets by scattering large numbers of explosive “bomblets” over a wide area, but the unexploded ordnance left behind can pose danger to civilians both during and conflict and for years afterward.

Biden will have to navigate political crosscurrents on the issue, as several key Republicans have been urging Biden for months to provide the controversial systems, and others in Biden’s own party are more skeptical. In a recent interview, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, said some lawmakers worry that providing the banned weapons could splinter allied support and blur the moral lines for Ukraine.

“There are those that are 100 percent for and those that are 100 percent against, and there are those assessing it because of what it means when they don’t go off and the danger they present — and they are equally concerned with how our NATO allies will react,” Quigley told POLITICO.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo), a former Army Ranger and Afghanistan veteran, also argues against sending cluster munitions, saying that the long-term risks to civilians outweigh the immediate battlefield benefit.

“I spent formative years of my life in Afghanistan looking at kids seeing young Afghan children walking around without arms and legs decades after cluster munitions were used by the Russians in the ‘80s, and I don’t want to see that with Ukrainian children,” Crow said in an interview.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Mike McCaul (R-Texas), House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), and their Republican counterparts in the Senate, have argued that cluster munitions would allow Ukraine’s forces to save their missiles for “higher-value Russian targets.”

The decision to send cluster munitions, often referred to by their acronym DPICMS, would open the door for “new systems that have a DPICM variant,” including 155mm artillery rounds and longer ranged missiles, they said in a March letter to Biden.

Paul McLeary contributed to this report.