Networked Landmines Work Together

crazedpilot writes "New landmines will soon communicate via a radio network, and move from place to place in order to be most effective." Termed the "self-healing minefield", the individual mines are capable of detecting an enemy breach and then moving to seal the gap.

Comments

who supports land mines ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the list of the 40 countries that have not signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty as of 26 Apr 06. The 3 that have signed the treaty but not ratified are show in bold.

These signatory states have made a political commitment to joining the treaty, and they have a legal obligation not to take actions that would violate the treaty.

      1. Armenia
      2. Azerbaijan
      3. Bahrain
      4. Burma
      5. China
      6. Cuba
      7. Egypt
      8. Finland
      9. Georgia
    10. India
    11. Indonesia
    12. Iran
    13. Iraq
    14. Israel
    15. Kazakhstan
    16. Korea, North
    17. Korea, South
    18. Kuwait
    19. Kyrgyzstan
    20. Lao PDR
    21. Lebanon
    22. Libya
    23. Marshall Islands
    24. Micronesia
    25. Mongolia
    26. Morocco
    27. Nepal
    28. Oman
    29. Pakistan
    30. Palau
    31. Poland
    32. Russian Federation
    33. Saudi Arabia
    34. Singapore
    35. Somalia
    36. Sri Lanka
    37. Syria
    38. Tonga
    39. Tuvalu
    40. United Arab Emirates
    41. United States
    42. Uzbekistan
    43. Vietnam

reads like a whos who of third world countries and banana republics, what good company USA keeps

Re:who supports land mines ?

[Distinguished Hero]

Ever heard of the Korean DMZ. The US probably plans to use these things to prevent Kim Jung-Il from invading South Korea (incidentally, both the Koreas are on your list, I wonder why...). I'm not aware of any other part of the world where the US uses landmines (care to enlighten me?). So yeah, damn the "military-industrial complex" for helping keep the South Koreans from ending up impoverished, starving, and oppressed like their brethren in the north.

reads like a whos who of third world countries and banana republics, what good company USA keeps

Actually, a huge portion of those countries are second-world or former second-world countries (communist countries that sided against the US during the Cold War). You'll also notice that China, Vietnam, India, a whole bunch of Muslim Countries (Iran, Pakistan, etc.) are on your list, so if we go by population (not number of countries), the majority of the world (or very close to it) has not joined the treaty.

Re:who supports land mines ?

[guruevi]

It's also nice to know that the US didn't sign it because most of those mines are made (and invented/improved) in the USA. According to Human Rights Watch, between 1969 and 1992, the country was responsible for exporting at least 4.4 million landmines to 32 or more countries. US landmines have reportedly been used in Angola, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia and Zambia.

The USA is also among the greatest stockpilers (4th in row) of landmines.

For those who say/think that the US doesn't use landmines: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-10-land mines-usat_x.htm => quote: The Pentagon is preparing to use anti-personnel land mines in a war with Iraq

For the USA it would be too much of an economic problem (for some people related to both Clinton and Bush) to ban landmines. Landmines are good for nothing. They are easy to deploy and cheap but hard and expensive to clean up and it is often not done properly or at all leaving a lot of innocent casualities long after. They are mainly used in the psychology of battle. A mine is not made to kill someone, it is made to disable soldiers and dishearten the rest of them that see it happening.

Re:The last thing the world needs is more landmine

[Dachannien]

In addition to the mines communicating with each other, the field commanders can communicate with the landmines to detonate them remotely once they are no longer needed.

Re:Detection

[Anonymous Coward]

The goal of a minefield is not to be secret. It's supposed to be an obstacle which requires you know where it is.

I wrote about half the code for these mines (and we're slashdotted 5 years later...). I'm sure you'll be tickled to know they use Linux.

Doesn't surprise me that new mines hae comms

[Realistic_Dragon]

The British Army are, I believe, required to mark out where minefields are and clean them up when they leave the area.

Obviously removing mines is a nervous business (unless you have one of the awesome <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matilda_tank">W W2 style flail tanks</a>, which look like so much fun they should be illegal) and so being able to remotley disable them makes a great deal of sense. The chance of an enemy being able to discover a 256bit AES key is essentially zero and certainly a preferable option to accidentally immolating a bunch of your own sappers in almost all circumstances.

Self-deactivating mines already exist

[phonicsmonkey]

Self terminating mines already exist in a much simpler version - a timed deactivation mechanism preset for the estimated end of conflict. The problem is that the failure rate, i.e., the failure to deactivate, is around 5%-10%. This makes it almost as good as nothing - would you want to plow a field knowing that "only" 10% of the original mines are still active? Cluster bomb bomblets, basically small touch-sensitive tactical mines, are even worse with an estimated failure-to-explode rate around 25%-30%. The only safe minefield is a non-existant one.

Re:Self Healing?

[dedazo]

• All mines are lethal and deadly. Even those designed to wound (yes, they exist) have an error margin (meaning they'll kill you anyway).
• There is no such thing as a "humane" weapon, unless it's specifically designed not to kill. There's no difference between a .45 hollow point slug to the head or a fuel air explosive. You're still dead. Perhaps you were thinking of scale or lethality radius.
• "US" mines will kill just as effectively as British, Russian, Chinese or Indonesian mines.
• Despite the much-publicized PR trips of famous people to victims of landmines in war-ravaged countries, landmines are still a valuable component of defensive warfare. There's a difference between using mines for clear military purposes and just sowing the countryside to see if you can kill a few kids. I'd really have the US continue to use mines in places like the DMZ than to have to rely on a larger deterrent force. Like it or not, landmines are very cost effective.
• I don't know who taught you that minefields should be cleared with artillery barrages. This has been a mistaken assumption since WWI. In the first Gulf War the US Army gave up trying to do that because the overpressure from a relatively large artillery shell would not reliably detonate the mines but instead generate cratering that made navigating the minefield even more dangerous. They even tried MLRS volleys to no avail. I believe current doctrine relies on a type of shaped charge ("bomb on a rope") that is fired from a special "gun" on a carrier vehicle over the minefield and is then detonated to create the breach. Failing that there's always the trench tool and lots of cojones.

Re:Useful for post-war clean up too!

[Jerf]

There is a machine to clear a landmine field. There's a picture in this article, and if you catch it, an episode of Modern Marvels or something on the History Channel or the Discovery Channel about it.

It doesn't really contradict what you say about there being no easy way, though; this is the "easiest" but I still wouldn't call it easy. It's reasonably safe compared to any other technique, but still dangerous.

Re:The last thing the world needs is more landmine

[Reaperducer]

Then someone else put a gun on an offensive plane to shoot down the defensive planes. Then someone else said "To hell with reconnaisance; let's drop bombs on the enemy." ...and so on.

While your point is well taken, I'd like to pick a little nit: Bombs were dropped on people long before the airplane. People used tethered balloons.

Re:The last thing the world needs is more landmine

[Firehed]

Hitting one police officer with a taser, or indeed a gluing net, would almost certainly provoke (ie, authorize) them to use lethal force. Again, great in concept, but not quite what you were looking for.

Re:Hoppers!

[tsm_sf]

I thought it was the fact that N. Korea is primarily made up of starving dirt-farmers, while S. Korea is a wealthy and populous nation backed by the most powerful government on the planet.

Could be the mines tho. Or maybe this bananna I've got stuck in my ear.