Politics
Cluster Munitions and ‘Vacuum Bombs’: Russian Invasion Revives an Old Debate
Throughout an emergency assembly of the United Nations Normal Meeting final Wednesday, referred to as in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. ambassador made an allegation in regards to the weapons getting used within the struggle.
“Now we have seen movies of Russian forces shifting exceptionally deadly weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield mentioned.
“That features cluster munitions and vacuum bombs — that are banned underneath the Geneva Conference,” she added.
The identical day, on CNN, David H. Petraeus, a retired common and former commander of U.S. Central Command, denounced Russia’s use of “missiles, rockets, artillery, cluster bombs, even these horrific thermobaric weapons that suck the oxygen out of an space and out of lungs.”
Ukraine’s ambassador to america, Oksana Markarova, made the same remark the night time earlier than. “They used the vacuum bomb at present,” she mentioned, in response to Reuters. “The devastation that Russia is attempting to inflict on Ukraine is massive.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with its fixed stream of movies and photographs displaying devastating assaults, has reinvigorated discussions about whether or not sure weapons are too merciless or too indiscriminate to be used in warfare.
Pentagon officers have mentioned they’re conscious of experiences and allegations that Russia is utilizing cluster munitions and thermobaric weapons — which some name vacuum bombs — in Ukraine, however have been unable to substantiate them. Final week, the NATO secretary common, Jens Stoltenberg, confirmed that Russia had certainly used cluster bombs.
However in calling out Russia’s actions, some officers and commentators have repeated inaccurate descriptions of a number of the weapons. For instance, neither cluster munitions nor thermobaric weapons are addressed within the Geneva Conventions, a sequence of worldwide agreements that govern warfare.
Cluster munitions are a category of weapon comprising rockets, bombs, missiles, mortar and artillery shells that cut up open midair and dispense smaller weapons or bomblets over a large space. Humanitarian teams centered on demining have famous that 20 % or extra of the anti-personnel variations of these bomblets fail to detonate on impression, but they’ll explode if later picked up or dealt with.
The Conference on Cluster Munitions, which took impact in 2010, bans their use due to the hurt they pose to noncombatants. Greater than 100 nations have signed the treaty, however america, Ukraine and Russia haven’t.
The weapon that Ms. Markarova known as a “vacuum bomb” is obscure by comparability, hardly ever utilized by trendy militaries and never banned by treaties.
The warheads in most standard bombs and rockets are designed to kill primarily by producing massive quantities of deadly steel fragments after they explode. However a “vacuum bomb” — typically referred to as a fuel-air explosive — releases an explosive slurry into the air that spreads and mixes with oxygen earlier than exploding.
Gas-air weapons have been used to clear minefields and touchdown zones of thick vegetation. However movies taken in Ukraine present that the Russian military has used them as a part of an artillery weapon, a rocket system referred to as the TOS-1A.
The Russian military’s personal characterization of the TOS-1A has solely added to public confusion about its nature. Russia variably refers to it as a heavy flamethrower and as a thermobaric weapon — the latter being a time period the U.S. navy makes use of to explain the sorts of munitions which have largely changed fuel-air explosives. The brand new weapons have stable explosive mixtures that may produce equally massive and longer length blast waves.
The Pentagon has used thermobaric explosives in airdropped bombs to destroy cave complexes in Afghanistan in addition to in specialised hand grenades and shoulder-fired rockets meant to destroy buildings.
The time period “vacuum bomb,” which refers back to the weapon’s use of atmospheric oxygen and the massive strain wave it produces, is usually misconstrued to have an excellent darker which means. Public misunderstanding about these weapons harks again to a 1975 incident through which South Vietnamese pilots had been accused of utilizing fuel-air explosive weapons throughout one of many last battles of the Vietnam Struggle at Xuan Loc. That will have been the genesis of the parable that persists at present — that the explosions kill individuals by sucking the air out of their lungs.
When requested about experiences that an American-made bomb might have suffocated a whole bunch of victims at Xuan Loc, a Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Gen. Winant Sidle, speculated {that a} particular fuel-air explosive weapon would possibly have the ability to devour all the air inside 20 yards of the place it detonated. But when that had occurred as the final provided, atmospheric air would have rapidly stuffed the ensuing vacuum.
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It’s potential, nevertheless, that survivors and rescuers encountered a horrifying scene at Xuan Loc: corpses with no seen exterior accidents. As a result of fuel-air explosives produce an enormous blast however comparatively little attendant shrapnel, a number of the lifeless in all probability would have suffered solely inside accidents.
The lungs of these victims wouldn’t have been devoid of air, however slightly full of blood after air sacs often known as alveoli ruptured. The strain may even have crushed their inside organs, which might not essentially have left behind an clearly mangled corpse.
Through the Vietnam Struggle, activists seized on sure weapons like napalm, fuel-air explosives and cluster weapons as a approach to protest the battle normally, although their issues didn’t end in any long-term adjustments by the Pentagon. U.S. troops used all three of these weapons in Desert Storm in 1991 and once more in Afghanistan in 2001.
In 2008, Protection Secretary Robert M. Gates pledged that the Pentagon would get rid of its use of older failure-prone cluster weapons by Jan. 1, 2019. Within the intervening decade, use of those weapons required approval from one of many four-star generals and admirals referred to as combatant commanders.
In 2009, a type of commanders, Normal Petraeus, oversaw the final recognized use of cluster weapons by American forces in fight.
In late December of that 12 months, two ships from the usS. Nimitz Strike Group working within the Northern Arabian Sea launched Tomahawk cruise missiles loaded with clusters of bomblets at a suspected Al Qaeda camp in Yemen.
Navy paperwork launched to The New York Occasions present that two of the Nimitz’s escort ships engaged targets in Yemen — destroyer U.S.S. Pinckney, which launched seven Tomahawks on Dec. 24, and the cruiser U.S.S. Chosin, which launched one other seven Tomahawks on Dec. 29.
In November 2017, simply over a 12 months earlier than the U.S. navy’s self-imposed ban on cluster munitions was to enter impact, Pentagon management reversed Mr. Gates’s coverage, citing potential struggle with North Korea as a motive to maintain the weapons out there to be used.
The official transcript of Ms. Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks to the U.N. Normal Meeting final week now accommodates a footnote, following questions from The Occasions, to mirror that america, Ukraine and Russia are usually not events to the treaty on cluster munitions. The precise use of cluster weapons and so-called vacuum bombs “directed in opposition to civilians” is banned underneath the Geneva Conventions, the footnote clarifies. The language in her speech about exceptionally deadly weaponry having “no place on the battlefield” has been crossed out.
Final week, in response to a query from The Occasions, John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, mentioned that the Protection Division’s cluster munitions coverage was underneath overview.
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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., clashed Tuesday with a University of Pennsylvania law professor over the number of nationwide judicial injunctions imposed by district judges against President Donald Trump’s executive actions on matters including deportations, tariffs, and cuts to federal funding and the federal workforce.
During the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing titled “The Supposedly ‘Least Dangerous Branch’: District Judges v. Trump,” Hawley displayed a bar chart to argue that nationwide injunctions against the executive branch, which had not been used until the 1960s, surged when Trump came into office for his first term and then dramatically dropped again during former President Joe Biden’s time at the White House.
“Now, you don’t think this is a little bit anomalous?” Hawley asked University of Pennsylvania law professor Kate Shaw.
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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, speaks to members of the media during a vote at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Monday, June 2, 2025. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Shaw, a Supreme Court contributor for ABC News who previously worked for former President Barack Obama’s White House Counsel’s Office, responded, “A very plausible explanation, senator, you have to consider is that [Trump] is engaged in much more lawless activity than other presidents. Right?”
“This was never used before the 1960s,” Hawley said. “And suddenly Democrat judges decide we love the nationwide injunction. And then when Biden comes office, no, no.”
Shaw cited Mila Sohoni, a Stanford Law School professor, as suggesting that the first nationwide injunction came in 1913 and others were issued in the 1920s.
“The federal government was doing a lot less until 100 years ago,” she said. “There’s many things that have changed in the last hundred or the last 50 years.”
“So as long as it is a Democrat president in office, then we should have no nationwide injunctions?” Hawley shot back. “If it’s a Republican president, then this is absolutely fine, warranted and called for? How can our system of law survive on those principles?”
Shaw said she believes a system where there “are no legal constraints on the president is a very dangerous system of law,” but the Republican from Missouri contended that’s not what the law professor believed when Biden was president.
“You said it was a travesty for the principles of democracy, notions of judicial impartiality and the rule of law,” Hawley said. “You said the idea that anyone would foreign shop to get a judge who would issue a nationwide injunction was a politician, just judges looking like politicians in robes. Again, it threatened the underlying legal system. People are just trying to get the result they wanted. It was a travesty for the rule of law. But you’re fine with all of that if it’s getting the result that you want.”
Kate Shaw, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, testifies during a Senate Committee on the Judiciary joint subcommittee hearing to examine District Judges v. Trump, on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
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Hawley cited Shaw’s stance in a specific abortion pill ruling during Biden’s presidency. In April 2023, U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction on the Biden Food and Drug Administration’s mifepristone rules, which Shaw described at the time as “a travesty for the principles of democracy, notions of judicial impartiality and the rule of law.”
Hawley said she had failed to offer a legitimate principle for issuing nationwide injunctions now.
“I understand you hate the president,” the senator told Shaw. “I understand that you love all of these rulings against him. You and I both know that’s not a principle. You’re a lawyer. What’s the principle that divides when issuing a nationwide injunction is OK and when it is not? When the Biden administration was subject to nationwide injunctions, you said that they were travesties for the principle of democracy.”
“When it’s Biden, it’s OK. When it’s Biden, oh, it’s a travesty. When it’s Trump in office, it’s a no holds barred, whatever it takes,” the senator added.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., greets University of Pennsylvania law Professor Kate Shaw before a subcommittee hearing about the unprecedented number of nationwide judicial injunctions against President Donald Trump on June 3, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Hawley said Shaw and his Democratic colleagues were raising “very principled injunctions” to nationwide injunctions issued against Biden just nine months ago and “all that’s changed in nine months is the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“I realize that my colleagues on this side of the aisle very much dislike that individual,” Hawley said, referring to Trump. “And I realize that you think that the rulings that he has lost are fundamentally sound.”
“I disagree with all of that, but we can put that to one side. The question we’re talking about here is, ‘Should judges, single judges, district court judges be able to bind nonparties who are not in front of them?’ And you used to say no. Now you say yes,” he said. “Let’s be consistent. I would just suggest to you our system of government cannot survive if it’s going to be politics all the way down.”
Shaw responded that “democracy is not as simple as majority rule,” but Hawley interjected, saying, “You would have it as simple as majority rule. When you get the majority you like, you’re for the nationwide injunction. When you don’t, you’re not.”
He openly advocated for the death of then-President-elect Donald Trump, hailing himself as an “assassin” and threatening to shoot the would-be 47th commander-in-chief shortly after the election, prosecutors say.
Those words, left on Facebook posts, are at the center of a federal grand jury indictment. On Tuesday, Yucca Valley resident Thomas Eugene Streavel, 73, pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of making threats.
The San Bernardino County man was arrested Monday just before 11 a.m. by United States Marshals and arraigned the next day inside Central District Court in Riverside.
He’s out on a $10,000 bond and is expected back in court July 28. Streavel could serve up to 15 years in prison if found guilty on all counts.
“This defendant is charged with threatening the life of our President — a man who has already survived two deranged attempts on his life,” said U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in a statement. “The Department of Justice takes these threats with the utmost seriousness and will prosecute this crime to the fullest extent of the law.”
A number listed for Streavel was not answered, and no attorney was listed for him in court documents.
His actions were detailed in a grand jury indictment from May 29 that was unsealed Tuesday.
Streavel posted a variety of threats in the days after Trump’s electoral victory in November, according to the Justice Department.
“[T]rump is a dead man walking for the time being until a patriot like myself blows his [expletive] brains out in the very near future,” Streavel posted on Nov. 6., according to court documents.
Six days later, Streavel posted on Facebook that he was “willing to make America great again and blow his [expletive] brains out,” the indictment says.
There were similar Facebook rants on Nov. 19 and on 28.
In the earlier instance, he wrote, “Let me put a bullet right between the ears of your president-elect…That’s my purpose for living,” according to the indictment.
He later posted, “I’m praying for a successful assassination of your president-elect.” He then added, “my life’s mission is killing the worthless LOSER [expletive] and my mission starts tonight so watch yourself trump [sic], you are a dead [expletive] and I am your assassin,” court documents show.
Streavel’s posts extend to before the election, when on Oct. 15 he wrote, “today is the perfect day to blow his brains out and I’d love to be the one to pull the trigger.”
The Secret Service is also investigating the matter.
“The type of rhetoric and threats made by this defendant are similar to those that led to an attempt on the President’s life last year,” said United States Atty. Bill Essayli. “There is no place for political violence or threats of violence in the United States.”
Trump was injured in a shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13. The shooting left one rally attendee dead and two critically injured, and the unidentified gunman was killed by the Secret Service, according to that agency.
At Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla., golf course on Sept. 15, a Secret Service agent scoping out the area one or two holes ahead of him saw the muzzle of an AK-47-style weapon pointing out of the tree line on the perimeter of the course.
Trump was unharmed in the second attempt on his life in two months.
Politics
Red state tops annual Heritage Foundation scorecard for strongest election integrity: 'Hard to cheat'
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FIRST ON FOX: The Heritage Foundation released its annual Election Integrity Scorecard on Tuesday, which ranks the states it believes are strongest in terms of election integrity, in a review that resulted in Arkansas topping the list.
Arkansas, led by GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, moved up from No. 8 and earned the No. 1 ranking in the new report that was compiled by looking at factors including voter ID implementation, accuracy of voting lists, absentee ballot management, verification of citizenship and other attributes.
In a press release, Sanders touted several accomplishments in a recent legislative session, including Act 240, Act 241 and 218, which the state said “strengthened protections on Arkansas’ ballot amendment process so that bad actors cannot influence and change the Natural State’s Constitution.”
Sanders also signed legislation to prevent foreign entities from funding state and local measures.
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(Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images/File)
“My goal this session was simple: make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Sanders said in a statement. “I was proud to work with my friend, Secretary of State Cole Jester, to make Arkansas ballot boxes the safest and most secure in America and end petition fraud to protect our Constitution. Today’s announcement shows that all our hard work paid off.”
In a statement, Jester said, “As Secretary of State, I have said from day one we would have the most secure elections in the country.”
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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images/File)
“I’m proud of the work my team has completed implementing new procedures and technology. None of this would be possible without the great work of Governor Sanders and the men and women of the Arkansas legislature.”
Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told Fox News Digital that Sanders and the state of Arkansas “deserve serious credit” for their efforts at election integrity.
“States across the country should follow Arkansas’ lead by implementing these critical election reforms that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” Snead said.
Red states made up the entirety of the top-10 ranking and included Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
The last of the states on the list included Oregon, Vermont, California and Hawaii.
Earlier this year, Snead’s Honest Elections Project released a guide, first reported by Fox News Digital, outlining what it said are must-needed reforms to be taken up in states across the country to ensure election integrity.
The report listed more than a dozen “critical” measures ranging from voter ID to cleaning up voter rolls to banning foreign influence in elections.
“Election integrity ballot issues passed with flying colors across the board on election night,” Snead said at the time. “Now that state legislative sessions are starting up, lawmakers have a duty to fulfill the mandate the American people gave to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
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