US Putting Off Planned Ban on Its Use of Cluster Bombs

Thanks for sharing my friend LTC Ivan Raiklin, Esq. that the USS has reconsidered its stance on cluster bombs which make perfect sense in certain hostile environments IMHO.
"The Pentagon has put off indefinitely a planned ban on using certain cluster bombs, which release explosive sub-munitions, or bomblets. The U.S. military considers them a legitimate and important weapon, although critics say they kill indiscriminately and pose hazards to civilians.

A 2010 international treaty outlaws the use of cluster bombs, but the U.S. is not a signatory.
The George W. Bush administration declared in 2008 that after Jan. 1, 2019 the United States would continue its use of cluster bombs only if they met a performance standard of failing to detonate 1 percent or less of the time. That standard is important because armed and unexploded cluster munitions left on the battlefield pose a long-term hazard to civilians.
Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman, said that despite efforts to develop more reliable, and thus safer, cluster munitions, the U.S. military has been unable to produce bombs with failure rates of 1 percent or less. He said it's unclear how long it might take to achieve that standard, and thus the Pentagon concluded in a months-long policy review that it should set aside the 2019 deadline and allow commanders to authorize the use of the weapons when they deem it necessary.

The new policy drew immediate criticism. Mary Wareham, arms division director for Human Rights Watch, said there is no compelling reason for the use of cluster munitions.

"The U.S. says it can't produce 'safe' cluster munitions, so it has decided to keep using 'unsafe' ones," she said. "We condemn this decision to reverse the long-held U.S. commitment not to use cluster munitions that fail more than 1 percent of the time, resulting in deadly unexploded sub-munitions." Her organization is chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, an international campaign seeking to eliminate cluster bombs.

A new Pentagon policy approved Thursday erases the 2019 deadline and asserts that the weapons are legitimate, not necessarily a humanitarian hazard, and important for wartime attacks on "area targets" like enemy troop formations.

The new policy authorizes commanders to approve use of existing cluster bombs "until sufficient quantities" of safer versions are developed and fielded. "Safer" means meeting the 1 percent failure standard or developing bombs equipped with a self-destruct mechanism or that can be rendered inoperable in 15 minutes or less by the exhaustion of their power source.

The policy does not define what qualifies as "sufficient quantities" of safer weapons, and it sets no new deadline.

In practice, the U.S. rarely uses cluster bombs. The Pentagon says its last large-scale use was in the 2003 Iraq invasion. They could be considered important for use in a large-scale conflict such as a ground war against North Korea."

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I really do not see what the problem is. Sure we want to minimize collateral damage to civilians, but war in itself creates risk, risk that has to taken. As long as there is a honest attempt to minimize collateral damage, I'm good.