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.

Comments

Not as effective as it seems

[stuffman64]

From the New Scientist article:

Laser beams cannot penetrate soil, so it won't work against buried mines.

From what I know, most anti-personel (and I'd assume, anti-vehicle mines) are burried a few inches underground for concealment. If at all, the only part that is above the ground is the pressure plate that activates the mine. Perhaps adding focused sound waves or other suitable technology can distrupt the ground nearby enough to allow the laser to reach the entire mine. This device is therefor only suitable for mines strewn about by helicopters or low-flying aircraft.

Re:americans finally see the light

[smoondog]

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

Re:look at the other point

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

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.

Re:007

[BoyPlankton]

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.

Re:US Landmine placement - Korea

[yintercept]

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.