Cluster munitions

The Biden Administration is expected to announce today that the U.S will provide cluster bombs to Ukraine that's according to Administration and defense Department officials more than 120 countries have banned these Munitions as inhumane and indiscriminate the U.S Ukraine and Russia are three countries that have not signed on to that convention which prohibits the production stockpiling and use of cluster bombs joining me now is NBC Pentagon correspondent Whitney Kuby Michael Crowley the Diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times Natalie lozo a member of the European Parliament and a former member of the macron government welcome to All of You So Courtney you've been reporting on this before anyone else so how quickly could the U.S get these weapons to Ukraine as the counter-offensive is kind of slogging through a very tough Russian defense they can get there very quickly in fact we know now that there are upwards of 10 000 of these Munitions that are already forward-based sitting in Europe ready to be moved into Ukraine just waiting for that go ahead so we could see those literally transferred into Ukraine in the coming days Andrea and why this is so critical right now is there is a continued difficulty in getting artillery to Ukraine they are running through thousands and thousands of artillery rounds in this very brutal war and it's difficult to get the 155 millimeter artillery artillery shells to them in the number that they need well that's where these cluster Munitions come in they have the ability to sort of take up where some of those artillery shortfalls come in but you use the word indiscriminate when you were describing it and that's where this becomes a controversial now when these cluster Munitions explode they release a series of what are called bomblets essentially tiny little bombs they disperse over a wide area and that's where this indiscriminate notion comes in it it has the ability and some of them have the ability to pierce armor or to go after Personnel what the military calls frags or fragmentation of the explosive which can hurt and kill people in the path but there also is at times with some of these Munitions a high dud rate what that means is some of these bomblets don't explode when they're supposed to now according to the officials we've been speaking to about this for now several weeks the the specific Munitions that the U.S would give to Ukraine here have a very low dud rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3 to two and a half or so percent dud rate and that's one of the reasons that they feel with this need that the Ukraine has for this counter-offensive that it's a relatively small chance that there would be the potential for civilians to be killed after the fact if they don't explode when they're supposed to Andrea Michael you know these weapons are controversial and Courtney's explained why banned by most of the world and the New York Times is reporting today that Tony blink and the secretary of state was the last to sign on to this in the National Security Council they expect it to be announced this afternoon sometime potentially what are the concerns about the Diplomatic follow yeah Andrea I think that secretary blinken I'm sure had humanitarian concerns as everyone does about the potential effect on civilians of these weapons uh but he is also primarily responsible for managing uh our alliances and in particular our alliance in support of Ukraine and I think he understands that this is going to be um offensive to many of our Allied countries whose populations thought that these weapons were basically over and done with they may not want to be associated with the war effort um in which these are being used to this extent um you know clearly I don't think this one issue is going to break up the Coalition but they you know secretary blanken and the Biden Administration have really been quite intensely focused on trying to maintain very tight Unity not have daylight between the members of the Coalition that are supporting Ukraine and this is an issue where you are probably going to see some other governments have to say you know we don't approve of this we don't like this I believe the French and the Germans have already spoken out although in Fairly mild terms so I'm sure a lot of diplomatic Spade work was done ahead of time um and at a minimum uh if these other countries aren't signing off uh I think that there was a lot of work to say hey let's try to keep this as quiet and as private as possible uh so as not to uh you know show cracks within our Coalition because Unity against the Russians is so fundamentally important you know and announcing it on a Friday afternoon in the summer is one way to try to downplay the coverage back here at home uh Natalie it's good to see you again so what do you expect the reaction in France will be to this um will it be muted or no I'm certainly going to be a strong debate because as you said this Munitions are bad and for good reasons and we all know that uh we have to uh ramp up our efforts to support Ukraine but we'll still have to ramble our diplomatic efforts um for moral leadership in this world and I'm not sure this helps I don't understand why there were so many red lines from the Allies including the us as we got fighter jets and now uh breaking a red line about band ammunitions we in Europe are working right now to run purple manufacturing of ammunitions we just decided 500 million euros to uh incentivize our Industries to manufacture faster and better for Ukraine uh certainly not through uh cluster ammunitions and do you think it's going to become a an issue with the NATO summit we're heading to Vilnius next month next week the main issue at the NATO Summit there are two main issues the first is to give security guarantees to Ukraine and not to be reluctant to open the door widely to Ukraine after the war the war is over for NATO membership and the second one is to twist arms of turkey so that Sweden stops being black made by one of the NATO members this is what we expect including from Washington Natalie thanks to you thanks to Michael and of course Courtney Kuby to all of you as we look forward to the NATO meeting next week foreign