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?

Comments

Re:Smart landmines

[alen]

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.

Minerats

[ktakki]

Hacker/genius John Walker (founder of Autodesk) proposes the construction of minerats, autonomous mine-clearing robots.

k., Lego Minestorms?