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