Mine Detection and the Need for New Technology

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak directly to American physicists by mean of this short article. I am not a physicist, so my article will be short on technical detail, and I can merely give a general outline of the problems encountered by various technologies used to date. In case any subscribers are interested in contributing to the fight against landmines, I have included some outline descriptions of what our equipment needs are, and how your ideas can be drawn in to our thinking. Right now, we need all the technological help we can get. Like any industry, the mine action industry has many functions with as many definitions and titles. For brevity, I am expanding the word “mine” to cover all forms of explosive rubbish (sometimes known as unexploded ordnance or UXO), buried or on the surface, encountered by clearance teams during post-conflict mine action programmes. I am also abbreviating “mine clearance staff” to “deminers”. The post-conflict removal of unexploded landmines and other explosive materials is a continuing problem, which will plague many countries for some years to come. It is also an area where few major technological advances have been made since the 1940s. But why new technologies? Because mine detection and clearance is currently slow, dangerous and inefficient. It involves teams of men and women trying to detect the metallic components in a mine, which in some cases can be very small – indeed, some mines have been produced which have no metallic content at all. Otherwise, mines have to be detected by prodding the ground with sharpened rods like overgrown knitting needles, or by detecting the explosive vapour from the mines by the use of dogs. Prodding can be even more dangerous in hard or stony soil, when normal prodders have to be replaced by short bayonets for stiffness and strength. Many deminers have lost hands, faces and eyes during this process. But why cannot you avoid the whole detection issue by destroying the mines in situ by rolling over them, hitting them flail weights, or crunching them up in some way? Because, alas, in practice these methods will not produce the accuracy of clearance required. Mines do not always explode first or second time they are pressured, especially if they have been in the ground for some time. Mines with bits knocked out of them are still effective if the firing system remains intact. Experience has shown that while machines can help to speed up the clearance process, the only truly accurate way of getting rid of all the mines is to detect and locate them first. Back to square one. What do we want from new technologies? In the demining community we have analysed our actions to identify our most pressing needs, and these lie in two areas, both concerned with detection. Our studies have shown that we have two main detection needs – to identify reliably the location of each individual mine, and to locate where mines are not, a process called “area reduction”. Let us deal with the location of individual mines first. Our desired detection tool is one that will give an accurate identification of a mine, as little as 4cm in width, buried up to 20cm in the soil. It must preferably give some idea of size, shape and depth under the soil, to allow better discrimination between mines and