kurios55 SG Incidentally, Singapore happens to manufacture quite a lot of mines. Conflict of interests for Spore to ratify UN Convention against Landmines. Mines are usually used in area denial or force channeling operations. When you are faced with an old-fashioned Soviet tank rush, the only real hope sometimes is mines, unless you have enough arty zeroed in to kill all those tanks. The standard AP and AT mines are bad enough, throw in the cluster munitions that can be delivered courtesy air freight and you are in a world of hurt. Mix in delayed fuses and nobody is going to using that piece of land for a long time. Projected Line Charge type systems typically can only clear one "lane" for vehicles and personnel, not very cost-effective for long term mine disposal.
tripwire SG try cluster bomb... cargo rounds... FAEs to denotate the mines... in emergencies... but if got time..... chop down afew coconut trees, tied them together and have a soil excavator roll it across theminefield... cheap cheap somemore..
<sk> SG There are other methods as well, 1 AP mine attached at the bottom to a Spike AP mine... Most popular is the Spike mine on top of a pressure sensitive AP mine, hence Spike shoots up split sec and the same time the pressure sensitive mine explodes causing a secondary exposion making it really powerful spkies to fly in all directions, hence area of danger can be about 10 m - 50m...
vleelee SG this seems to be a good read on mine clearance techniques http://www.hdic.jmu.edu/journal/3.2/focus/hess_systems/hess.htm
storywolf SG Ok let talk about the manual methods. AP too dangerous to even try disarm, just dust away the covering soil, so you can see it clear, can use C4 to blow it or use a hook with a long string to drag and flip it over the same time , usually it will blow . use wood and string to make tripod and dangle something heavy over the mine, release string from far to drop the thing over the ap mine . yep there is roller methods..... but one advance method under research is to shoot a chemical fill bomb over the minefield, it blow and create a sudden air pressure over the whole piece of land, which is enough to trigger all the AT and AP mines to denote. Super fast, possible one person to manpack, and cover a large area.
SingaporeTyrannosaur SG Fuel Air Explosives, the overpressure generated will set off any mine… But you have to use quite a lot of them to clear a field.
storywolf SG Haha yes, that ideal was for it to be done by aircraft. I am just too eager and jump to the future to hope to see a manpack version.
