US soldiers firing a M110 howitzer during Operation Desert Storm, December 29, 1990. The howitzer fired the type of artillery projectiles Turkey has requested permission to retransfer to Ukraine, until it was retired from US service in the mid-1990s.
(Washington, DC, August 11, 2026) – Türkiye has requested permission from the United States to “retransfer” to Ukraine tens of thousands of cluster munition rockets, missiles, and artillery projectiles that have been in Türkiye’s stockpiles for decades, Human Rights Watch said today.
These weapons, which contain over 10 million explosive submunitions, were originally produced in part by Türkiye under licenses from the US initiated in 1987. The artillery projectiles that make up the bulk of the proposed deal were removed from US service in 1994, when the howitzers that fired this ammunition were retired from US service.
“Dumping obsolete cluster munitions into a conflict creates a humanitarian liability for civilians that is tragically foreseeable,” said Nicole Widdersheim, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “The impact on civilians of these more than 30-year-old inaccurate and unreliable munitions is what motivated 112 countries to ban the weapon by joining the international Convention on Cluster Munitions.”
In addition to selling its entire inventory of 12 M270 multi-barrel launchers, Türkiye’s proposed US$256 million deal includes transferring three types of cluster munitions:
70 M39 ATACMS ballistic missiles, each containing 950 M74 antipersonnel/anti-materiel submunitions totaling 66,500 individual submunitions.2,524 M26 rockets, each containing 644 M77 dual purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) submunitions, for a total of 1,625,456 individual submunitions.47,000 M509A1 203mm artillery projectiles, each containing 180 M42 DPICM submunitions, for a total of 8,460,000 individual
