Ukraine desperate for help clearing mines, says defence minister
Ukraine desperate for help clearing mines, says defence minister
Exclusive: ‘Most heavily mined country on Earth’ critically short of sappers and equipment to clear frontlines
It's fucked up that these mines won't become dud after some time. It means that even after the war comes to it's end, some undiscovered mines would continue to kill and maim civilians. What a stupid, dull weapon, but there are plenty of them to throw around.
Some mines are designed to self-destruct after a defined interval. FM 20-32 (Mine/Countermine Operations) PDF describes some of the US-made systems starting on page 3-6 and notes that 2-5% of mines are expected to remain live after their self-destruct time has passed. Not the best but it's better than a freshly-laid minefield at least. There are also procedures to follow for marking minefields as well as record-keeping and reporting requirements so they're easier to locate and clear afterward.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In an urgent appeal to allies, Oleksii Reznikov told the Guardian his soldiers were unearthing five mines for every square metre in places, laid by Russian troops to try to thwart Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
The number of sappers in the Ukrainian armed forces was nowhere near enough to get through the complex Russian defences on the vast 600-mile (1,000km) front, with mine clearing units targeted with heavy fire.
Defence ministry officials in Kyiv suggested there was an opportunity for countries such as Japan that do not want to provide lethal aid to offer support in the form of mine clearing equipment and training.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has complained that having to wait for western delivery of arms and delay the start of this year’s counteroffensive allowed Russia to lay millions of mines ahead of their positions.
At a meeting in July in Ramstein in Germany of the alliance of 54 countries supporting Ukraine, Lithuania, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark agreed train and equip Ukrainian mine clearing units.
Pete Smith, the Ukraine programme manager of the mine-clearing NGO Halo, and formerly an officer in command of all of the British army’s explosive ordnance disposal assets, said the level of mine contamination was “unrecognisable in modern history”.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Seems a fine thing for some robotics to solve. There are so many we can't possibly train all the sappers needed. Or risk people for it either.
First iteration literally plants a flag in the ground. Second could surface. Third could defuse.
Given the vast areas now involved, any push is going to be massively hindered by these fields. Combat ready models a requirement too then. Something bigdog like with a metal detector, ground penetrating radar, and/or underground sonar would be my starting point
Very naive question - why is it so hard to find landmines?
Why can’t you see the holes where they placed the mines from a helicopter?
Is there no machine that can “see” underground and help locate them?
Is there no way to just spray a bunch of objects in the field and detonate them?
Why can’t you see the holes where they placed the mines from a helicopter?
Anti tank mines are buried so after some time they are basically invisible. If they are lucky it might be recently placed (dirt is still visibility disturbed) or places poorly and they can find them.
Anti personal mines are straight up too small to see from the air. Google butterfly mines. Almost impossible to see in some of the dense foliage.
Also flying shit in an active combat zone often gets shot down.
Is there no machine that can “see” underground and help locate them?
There is metal detectors which are widely used. But very hard to use in a combat zone. Anything bigger would trip the mine.
Speaking of big things triggering it, it also happens to also be a way they clear it. They attach these big disposable wheels to the front of tanks which activates the mines. They are just extremely slow and once again hard to use in an active combat zone.
Is there no way to just spray a bunch of objects in the field and detonate them?
They do something similar actually, instead it's a huge rope of explosives that blows open a corridor. It gets shot out of a vehicle using rockets. But the amount of explosive used is not cheap so limited supplies and it's also a very dangerous target due to the amount of explosives needed. Some of the biggest explosions I have seen online have been from these mine clearing vehicles.
Land mines are designed to only be found when they go boom.
There are devices and such like designed to do exactly that- but land mines are fundamentally designed to make that not easy. It takes a lot of people, a lot of effort and a lot of time to clear just a single small stretch of field.
They’re also using African pouch rats in places to smell the - and the little fellas are both cute and heroic!
Fair question, to touch on another yet to be mentioned issue landmines can be cheaply made thus used in massive numbers. If there's a field with 5 land mines every sq meter and you remove 80% of the mines you've spent hundreds of collective man hours to create a field you can't move an army through.
Also if you did clear a narrow pathway across it you expose your troops to risk crossing if they exit the cleared path and also you leave behind an entire field of landmines, in your home country that will remain lethal for decades to anyone who wandered in it.
I can only answer the first question about visibility since I read a response previously on it. Basically, the overgrowth moves quick so you can’t see anything with plant coverage pretty quickly. Also rain and snow cover tracks and flatten out the soil that would have been disturbed. Comes down to, can’t see any of them unless you are up close and personal…and even then you need to be trained to spot them. As for blowing them up, they’ve been placed everywhere by the Russians. You can’t explode a few thousand square kilometers (I mean short of doing something crazy).
Plus, a lot of the mines are butterfly mines. Nasty little fuckers right here.
Check out this NGO that works on the problem: https://digger.ngo/