Slashdot Mirror
New Ideas on Clearing Land Mines?
LaoK asks: "Afghanistan's millions of land mines continue to pose
a threat to civilians, and a potential hazard for
international forces mobilizing to strike the terrorist
suspects and their Taliban protectors. After reading the
recent comments brainstorming the idea of hydrogen fuel
for jetliners, a discussion of practical (and hopefully
inexpensive) ideas for clearing mines seems like another
good topic for this technically-minded gathering. One of the most useful things the international community can do to aid the Afghan people in a post-Taliban era is to finish cleaning up this mess." Such techniques would find ready use all over the world. Has anyone heard of safer techniques in mine removal, or is it still a large and dangerous guessing game?
America has always used it's best scientists for military research. Do you know that an M1 tank can ride at 30-40 miles an hour over rough terrain jumping up and down. But the computer will compensate and keep the sights straight and level on the target. Then it will shoot out a laser that when it returns will tell the computer the weather conditions, wind etc to compute the firing solution. An M1 tank has something of an 80% chance of hitting a moving target from 1 mile away in this enviroment.
The next generation of weapons are supposed to be so called brilliant weapons. They will distinguish between friend or foe. The next generation cruise missiles are planned to fly around the battlefield for hours until they spot a valuable target worth destroying.
The US army is planning a Unix based TCP/IP network on the battlefield for instantaneous sending of information up and down the chain of command. From the combat vehicle fighting a battle to a corps command center hundreds of miles behind the lines.
Hacker/genius John Walker (founder of Autodesk) proposes the construction of minerats, autonomous mine-clearing robots.
k., Lego Minestorms?
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Howstuffworks has a page about clearing landmines and here is another page that describes how it can be done. The US Army even has a page about different ways to detect and remove mines. There is a UK company/charity that is developing an anti-mine robot. During the Gulf War, the military used small rockets to shoot lengths of explosive cord into a mine field. When the cord exploded, it would detonate the mines near the surface. Detonation of fuel-air bombs is another technique that I've heard about. Unfortnately, most of the land mine resources on the web that I've found appear to be charity/activist pages about the need to get rid of land mines, but very little on how to actually do it.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Maybe before trying to get rid of existing landmines, the US could finally sign the treaty banning landmines. Along China, they are the last to oppose banning of landmines. It is nice to know that the profit of the US military industry is more important than stoping more kids of loosing one leg (or their life for the less lucky ones).