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US Army to Test Laser Based Mine Clearing Device
QueueEhGuy writes "Yahoo News is running a Reuters story indicating that the United States will soon be testing a laser which "will either explode or evaporate the explosives in the device which can be up to 250 yards away.." It's about time, I was starting to think that we'd never blow stuff up with light." New Scientist has another story, complete with nifty graphic. The Zeus homepage has a few pictures and specs.
since it'll do nothing if they're buried in the slightest.
But for clearing scattered munitions this should be rather effective if it works. I mean, a great deal of casualties suffered by children in post-war countries comes from accidental mishandling of explosive material that is left on the ground. It's by far not an end-all solution, but it's a start.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
So what is exactly keeping these mines from getting cleaned up?
Two things. There are a lot of them. A staggering amount of landmines are already in place in many countries. The other problem is that people are still continuing to bury them at an equally staggering rate.
You can try clearing them out, but I'll bet that if you clear one area, not only will someone be following you to replace them, but another field will get filled up while you're doing it.
Apparently, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
This is troll bait, but whatever. From this:
The countries profiled in this chapter are the 10 with the highest number of landmine casualties. (Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Eritrea, Iraq [Kurdistan], Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan(footnote 3) as well as two others (Namibia and Nicaragua), which illustrate the global nature of the landmine contagion
The US is neither a huge producer of landmines nor is it a big user of landmines. Its controversy has stemmed from (as mentioned in the article) refusal to sign international landmine bans.
-Sean
1. The treat bans anti-pers (AP) mines only; the bulk of the Korean minefields are anti-tank (AT).
2. Doctrinally, all minefields are to be covered by observed direct or observed indirect fire. Thus, should the NK start infiltrating the minefields, a few rounds of belt-fed 7.62mm or 155mm should be an adequate deterrence.
And finally, even the venerable claymore can still be employed with its clicker; only the tripwire has to be set aside.
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Throw another bomb, it's a hell of a lot easier!
The MICLIC does just that. Fires a rocket that tows behind it 350 feet of C-4 at 5 lbs per foot (line charge). The line charge goes off, and whatever doesn't detonate gets thrown aside.
Even better, the Mongoose, which fires a rocket that tows behind it a net of explosives.
I drive a Police Interceptor (police edition Crown Victoria) and i second this. It comes stock with a souped up alternator, and can handle easily a lightbar, two-way radio, spotlight, loudspeaker, and all sorts of other law enforcement goodies without even straining. All it's got is a 4.6l V8, but military humvees with their (IIRC) big V12 fitted with a large alternator should have no problem doubling for at least bursts of power for this device.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Well. Not exactly. You see, the laser causes the explosive to detonate, all right. But it's a low-order detonation. It makes a pot hole instead of a crater the size of a frickin' volkswagen. This makes a _big_ difference if you're trying to get your airstrip back in use. The former can be patched or even covered with a little mat-like thing they can roll out. Not so much for the latter.
How do I know this? I was an engineer on the first version (the one mounted on an armored personnel carrier) and helped run the live-munition field testing (disclaimer: I left the company 7 years ago to go to grad school). Trust me, there's a _world_ of difference between setting a mine off with this thing and having one go off for real.
Oh, and the first laser at least was pretty much a standard welding/cutting laser, nothing too special--although it _was_ one of the more powerful versions available. And from reading the article, it sounds like the new version also has that parentage.
As for whether it's worth the money or not, I can't really say. I guess that depends on how much you care about what the mines are sitting on, and what kind of a time limit you're under to get rid of them. If you don't care about where they are, you can blow them up much more easily, but it's messy. If you've got time to spare, send people out to handle each one (risky, though!). But if you've got to clear a place fast, and you can't afford big craters, then there is at least an argument to be made that this is a reasonable way to go.
-M
What I remember from Landmines.org and other sites is that the main US minefield is the buffer zone between North and South Korea. The mines here are supposedly well marked. But this field is the main reason that the US did not sign the recent global anti landmine act. I have to admit that Korea is a problem because the fields are part of a fragile piece, no-one wants it to be too easy to start Korea War II.
According to people who are working on landmine clean up in Afghanistan, neither the US nor the Taliban planted mines during that conflict. Apparently most of the mines are from the Russian and various tribal conflicts...predating the current war.
There is, however, a really big problem of unexploded ordinance. Things we dropped on the Afghans that haven't exploded yet.
I remember, the other complaint that the US had with the landmine ban (of 199?) was that it required destruction of stockpiles before the US could complete the environmental impact statement. Aparently, some anti tank mines have nasty things like depleted uranium, and you don't want to just blow them up...because of the damage to the environment.
The US has been playing a major role in the landmine ban, but did not sign the treaty. We have a habit of doing things like this.