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The law caps annual transfers of so-called “excess defense articles” at a total value of $500 million a year. But the same law doesn’t dictate how much value the president assigns to a particular weapon. He in theory could price an item at zero dollars.
Oh, Christ. While I appreciate looking for unorthodox solutions, that's a court case tugging at its chain.
Yeah; reading the article it would seem "arguably legal" is probably a lot more accurate than "perfectly legal"
Now, there is a caveat in the EDA law. All weapons must be given away “as is, where is.” In other words, the U.S. government legally can’t pay for shipping.
But another caveat is that any weapons in Germany are excluded from this rule. Biden could ship those DPICMs to Germany aboard a few sealift ships and then declare them as excess to need before having the U.S. Army drop them off somewhere the Ukrainian armed forces would have no trouble retrieving them.
I mean, you can call this legal but when you're paying to ship equipment you've clearly decided is excess before declaring it "excess" in an attempt to get around the clear intent of the law...
Basically this comes down to: [The Executive Branch could use an arguably legal method to send to Ukraine 4 million 25 to 50 year old cluster shells that have been determined to be unreliable and unsafe]
Why worry? Trump has made it perfectly clear that the president can apparently do whatever the hell they want to and good luck at stopping them. I believe Biden should take the same liberties. Perhaps I’ve just lost faith in the system.
Probably should wait and see if SCOTUS agrees with Trump on that before jumping the gun.
Afterward? Yeah, Biden should do whatever the fuck he wants. And he had better.
People doing good things shouldn't wait to find out if shitty people doing malicious things are told no. Just do the right thing already, face the consequences later. That's what the shitty people do, and they usually get away with it.
You will bleed integrity with every one of those shortcuts you take. You say "let's skip it and just do the right thing". What can you not justify with that? You can excuse genocides, coups, war crimes. I don't just have a problem with Trump's motivations, but also his means. That approach, always correlated with populism, is foolish and always, always tends to oppression.
You all are aware that the subversion of the constitutional state for what you deem to.be good reasons will end in the same weakening of said state no matter who did it, right?
Don't lose track of what's at stake by getting blinded by bipartisan feuds. You can't fight the enemies of law, oder and democracy by undermining law, order and democracy. That is literally the only thing one can learn from the Star Wars Prequel trilogy.
I'm not from the USA so I don't have a dog in this fight but this seems like a mad approach to me. Think beyond the immediate short term.
In your place I'd be standing up for and strengthening your institutions and conventions; they aren't perfect but the checks and balances are the only thing holding back people like Trump. If you don't abide by the rules either that becomes the new normal and Trump-like figures will become commonplace and no longer be seen as an aberration.
I'm not from the US either, but I have heard of Project 2025. If Republicans actually implement what's in it, whatever checks and balances were left will go right out the window.
Could you imagine Republicans letting that happen if there was any way they could stop it? I'm guessing they would try every possible avenue to stop it.
Presumably they'd get the manufacturers to sue for the damage to their ability to set prices when the president is literally saying that their shit is worth nothing.
From the article:
The U.S. Army years ago determined that these DPICMs—produced in large quantities between the 1970s and 1990s—are unreliable and unsafe, as any particular submunition has up to a 14-percent chance of being a dud.
The Army around 2017 declared a requirement for a new cluster shell with a one-percent dud rate. “Rounds now in the U.S. stockpile do not meet the Office of the Secretary of Defense's goal,” wrote Peter Burke, then the service’s top ammunition manager.
Their shit is worth nothing. It's not even being manufactured any more.
I mean, if Biden sends them a bunch of "free" shells and this ridiculous loophole is closed I'd call that getting two birds stoned at once.
Especially since it's now known. Close that shit before Herr Cheeto has the chance to do that with arms to Russia.
I hope ukraine can send them to russia soon. For free and completely legal.
So the author proposes using not one but two legally questionable tactics to send Ukraine artillery shells that are actually worse than useless!?!
As the article correctly notes the US quit using those M483A1 and M864 DPICM rounds because of their high failure rate. If Ukraine were to fire even 2,000 of these per day that means there would be 280 (or more) unexploded bomblets lying on the ground just waiting for a unsuspecting soldier or child to wander by and set it off.
It gets mind bogglingly worse the longer they are used too, as after just a year there would be over 100,000 of the damn things laying around!
So no, they shouldn't be used anywhere...unless you want to spend the next hundred years dealing with the unexploded ordinance littering your terrain!
Republicans need to STFU and get back to funding the real stuff. THAT is the answer, not legal chicanery to send shit ordinance.
What a nonsense take.
For a start: The orcs are using cluster munitions since the start of the war, and their dud-rate is much higher.
Second: Ukraine has requested the DPICM munitions already and has used the ones they received to great effect. Especially against the meat wave attacks they work very well.
Third: If the choice is between no munitions or (in the opinion of non-warfighters) shitty munitions, ask the Ukrainians what they prefer, but I'll assure you they will be loading DPICM's.
The US quitting these munitions has much to do with the type of warfare they engaged in over the past decades, the amount of civilian casualties when using the cluster munitions in civilian centers is just unacceptable. But at a trench front in a positional war, these limitations do not apply.
Ukraine atm has millions if not tens of millions of mines all over the place. Adding a few hundred or thousand bomblets wouldnt make things measurably worse.
Many of these wont even be used as artillery shells, they will just strip them and ducktape the bomblets on fov drones.
Both sides have been extensively using mines and cluster munitions, because they are extremely effective. Sending Ukraine extra ammunition will save countless ukranian lives.
After the war, both sides will have a strong incentive to remove mines. Mines are often an issue for poorer countries, who dont have the funds to clear them out. Of course even in Ukraine there will be incidents decades later, but they should be comparatively low(to the amount of mines used).
Ultimately, the issue with cluster munitions is mostly about conflicts that dont already have millions of mines, because failed bomblets can act like mines. Thats less of an issue in Ukraine, because it already has millions of mines, acting like mines.
PS Russian cluster munition are terribly unreliable, much more than even old nato ones
The shells have cute little yellow hats :)
This article's title reads like clickbait
Yeah, because it is. The actual munitions they theorise could be sent to Ukraine are highly unreliable cluster munitions that Ukraine is already condemning the use of because of their danger to civilians during rebuilding efforts thanks to their insanely high dud rate.
I'm against war and warfare in every case, but since this war is well underway, I have no issue with Joe Biden legally sending millions of artillery shells to Ukraine; I have to believe that we should be doing everything we can to ensure that Russia does not prevail in their horrific genocidal global takeover.
To be clear, then, you're not against war and warfare "in every case".
hell yeah Joe, do it let's gooooo
Didn't Reagan try something like this back in the 80s, under his friend Oliver North?
Yeah I get the point of the article but maybe it isn't a good thing that the president can send anyone a bunch of weapons without oversight
And there it is:
Forbes recommending Biden sends Ukraine a bunch of potentially faulty ammunition that are known to make rehabilitation of warzones insanely difficult because of the civilian risk posed by dud cluster munitions.
The same kind of munitions the west condemns being used by Russia against Ukraine for those above reasons.
The law caps annual transfers of so-called “excess defense articles” at a total value of $500 million a year. But the same law doesn’t dictate how much value the president assigns to a particular weapon. He in theory could price an item at zero dollars.
And another president (guess who?) could in theory do the same thing to provide the same thing to Russia, which is probably why he hasn't done it.
If Biden does it now, the conservative SCOTUS would likely rule against him, as they are wont to do. That would actually be beneficial in stopping a future potential president from doing the same for Russia.
Nah, a future president would give the weapons to Russia and the SCOTUS would rule "it's totally different this time somehow."
What would stop "another president" from doing it anyway, regardless of what Biden did or didn't do?