Pentagon signs $210 million deal with Israeli firm for new cluster munitions – Firstpost

The US Department of Defence has entered into a $210 million agreement with an Israeli state-owned arms manufacturer to procure advanced cluster shells, according to The Intercept. The contract, signed in September, marks the largest recorded purchase of weapons by the department from an Israeli company and signals a rare reversal in the usual direction of arms transfers between the two countries.

According to an online federal database covering the past 18 years, the deal is the biggest contract awarded by the department to an Israeli arms firm, reported the outlet. Under the agreement, the
US will pay the company, Tomer, over three years to produce a new 155 mm munition.

The shells are intended to replace decades-old cluster munitions that have been criticised for leaving unexploded bomblets scattered across
countries including Vietnam, Laos and Iraq.

Long-term civilian risks of cluster weapons

Cluster munitions have been widely condemned for their lasting danger to civilians, with unexploded bomblets continuing to pose risks long after conflicts end. These remnants often remain hidden in fields, forests and settlements, detonating years later without warning.

“The footprint of the injuries of these weapons is so horrifying,” said Alma Taslidzan, advocacy manager for the aid organisation Humanity & Inclusion, which campaigns to ban cluster munitions. She described speaking with a 17-year-old boy who found an unexploded cluster bomblet in a neighbour’s garden following the Bosnian War.

“He said he played with it for quite a while. Suddenly it exploded. It blew up both of his hands; it blew away part of his face as well,” she said.

New munition design and disputed safety claims

The new shells, known as the XM1208 munition, are designed to have a dud rate of less than 1 per cent. Army procurement documents and weapons experts say the munition relies on more complex fuses and self-destruct features to reduce long-term risks to civilians.

However, researchers argue that failure rates observed in testing conditions may not reflect real-world performance. Advocacy groups also maintain that any potential battlefield benefits do not outweigh the humanitarian consequences.

“They are inherently indiscriminate,” said Brian Castner, an Amnesty International weapons investigator and former US Air Force explosive ordnance disposal officer. “There’s not a way to use them responsibly, in that you can’t control where they land, and with this high dud rate you can’t control the effect on the civilian population afterwards.”

Civilian toll documented over decades

The Cluster Munition Monitor has recorded more than 24,800 injuries and deaths linked to cluster munitions since the 1960s, with three-quarters caused by unexploded remnants. In 2024 alone, at least 314 civilians were killed by cluster munitions, most of them in Ukraine, according to the outlet.

Both the XM1208 munition and the process used to award the contract are considered atypical. The Department of Defence issued the contract without public competition, invoking a “public interest” exception under federal contracting law. This was made possible through recent amendments that loosened rules for no-bid defence contracts linked to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel.

“I found this to be rather unusual,” said Julia Gledhill, a military contracting researcher at the Washington-based Stimson Center. “I have not seen something like this before — a sole source contract to a foreign military contractor for $200 million.”

Federal agencies are required to produce a “determination and findings” document to justify such contracts. This documentation can be requested under public records law, but the Army has not yet responded to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking it.

Tomer did not issue a statement. Responding to questions about the munition’s failure rate, US Army public affairs officer Shahin Uddin said the weapon “has undergone all required testing to ensure it meets all performance requirements, including compliance with the DoD Cluster Munition Policy.”

War in Ukraine and pressure on global treaties

The Pentagon’s move comes amid the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war, where both sides have extensively used older cluster munitions, including some supplied to Ukraine by the Biden administration. Concerns over potential conflict with Russia have prompted some Eastern European countries to consider withdrawing from the Convention on Cluster Munitions, with Lithuania becoming the first country to leave the treaty in 2024.

As a result, Castner said, “Both the cluster munitions convention and the anti-personnel land mine convention are under threat.”

Major military powers, including Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and the United States, have never signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use and production of such weapons among its 112 member states. Instead of joining the 2008 treaty, the US adopted a policy that year to phase out older cluster munitions by 2019 and develop alternatives with a dud rate below 1 per cent.

Progress slowed, and in 2017 the policy was weakened to allow continued use of older cluster bombs until sufficient stocks of newer models were available. That same year, the US military began testing the M999 cluster munition, developed by another Israeli state-owned arms company, IMI Systems.

“The U.S. wants all options,” said William Hartung, an arms industry researcher with the Quincy Center for Responsible Statecraft. “One of their arguments was it’s good if you’re in a close-packed artillery situation — a ground war. It clears more of an area.”