So the Americans have provided cluster weapons to Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, the internet debates around them have not been the most fruitful or productive. The consistent opponents are one thing in that I find their arguments as flawed as they are understandable. Yes, it’s perfectly fine to be concerned about unexploded ordnance and collateral damage-as if there wasn’t plenty of that already, most of it caused by…. someone other than Ukraine.

But the more interesting thing to me has been the talk, largely from OSINT accounts, of treating clusters as an unstoppable superweapon. Between this and the Bayraktar TB2 slobbering of days past, it’s as big a sign as Michael Jordan’s baseball career that excellent talent in one area doesn’t equal having it in another. Anyway,

• Concern about unexploded bomblets, and not just for collateral reasons, is valid.
• Clusters are situational and even in the past before “normal” shells got better designed, had many situations where they were worse. They also had some where they were better.
• Cluster shells will still be extremely useful, if only because they’re a fresh source of things that things that go boom.