Landmines

U.S. Army soldier removes fuze from a Russian-made mine to clear a minefield outside of Fallujah, Iraq.

A landmine is a type of self-contained explosive device which is placed onto or into the ground, exploding when triggered by a vehicle or person. The name originates from the practice of sapping, where tunnels were dug under opposing forces or fortifications and filled with explosives. Landmines generally refer to devices specifically manufactured for purpose, as distinguished from improvised explosive devices.

Landmines (sometimes called area denial munitions) are used to secure disputed borders and to restrict enemy movement in times of war. Tactically they serve a purpose similar to barbed wire or concrete dragon's teeth vehicle barriers, channelling the movement of attacking troops in ways that permit the defenders to engage them more easily. From a military perspective, landmines serve as force multipliers, allowing an organised force to overcome a larger enemy.

Anti-personnel landmines or APLs are widely considered to be ethically problematic weapons because their victims are commonly civilians, who are often killed or maimed long after a war has ended. According to anti–landmine campaigners, in Cambodia alone mines have resulted in 35,000 amputees after the cessation of hostilities. Removal of landmines is dangerous, slow and costly; however, some countries maintain that landmines are necessary to protect their soldiers in times of war.

History

The basic concept behind the landmine has appeared through military history. Some sources report that Zhuge Liang, of the Kingdom of Shu of China, invented a landmine type device in the third century. Forces in ancient Rome sometimes dug small foot-sized holes, covered and armed with a sharpened spike. In the Middle Ages in Europe, small, four-pronged spiked devices called caltrops or crows' feet could be scattered on the ground to delay the advance of an enemy.

In Europe in the early eighteenth century, improvised landmines or booby traps were constructed in the form of bombs buried in shallow wells in the earth and covered with scrap metal and/or gravel to serve as shrapnel. Known in French as fougasse, the term is sometimes still used in the present day to describe such devices. This technique was used in several European wars of the eighteenth Century, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.

The first modern mechanically fuzed high explosive anti-personnel landmines were created in Imperial Germany, circa 1912, and were copied and manufactured by all major participants in the First World War. In World War One, landmines were used notably at the start of the battle of Passchendale. Well before the war was over, the British were manufacturing landmines that contained poison gas instead of explosives. Poison gas mines were manufactured at least until the 1980s in the Soviet Union. The United States was known to have at least experimented with the concept in the 1950s.

Nuclear mines have also been developed, both land and naval varieties. An example is the British Blue Peacock project.

Triggering mechanisms

A landmine can be triggered by a number of things including pressure, movement, sound, magnetism and vibration. Anti-personnel mines commonly use the pressure of a person's foot as a trigger, but tripwires are also frequently employed. Most modern anti-vehicle mines use a magnetic trigger to enable it to detonate even if the tires or tracks did not touch it. Advanced mines are able to sense the difference between friendly and enemy types of vehicles by way of a built-in signature catalogue. This will theoretically enable friendly forces to use the mined area while denying the enemy access.

Many mines combine the main trigger with a touch or tilt trigger to prevent enemy engineers from defusing it. Landmine designs tend to use as little metal as possible to make searching with a metal detector more difficult; landmines made mostly of plastic have the added advantage of being very inexpensive.

Some types of mines used by the U.S. Army and many other forces are designed to self-destruct after a period of weeks or months to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties at the conflict's end. However, these self-destruct mechanisms are not absolutely reliable, and most landmines laid historically are not equipped in this manner.

Landmine varieties

Anti-tank mines (AT)

Anti-tank mines are designed to immobilise or destroy vehicles and their occupants. Anti-tank mines can achieve either a mobility kill (m-kill) or a catastrophic kill (k-kill). A mobility kill destroys one or more of the vehicle's vital drive components (for example, breaking a track on a tank) thus immobilising the target. A mobility kill does not always destroy the weapon system or injure the crew. In a catastrophic kill, the weapon system and/or the crew are disabled.

Anti-tank mines are typically larger than anti-personnel mines and require more pressure to detonate. The high trigger pressure (normally 100 kg (220 lb.)) prevents them from being set off by infantry. More modern anti-tank mines use shaped charges to cut through armour. These were first deployed in large numbers in World War II.

Anti-personnel mines (AP)

Anti-personnel mines are designed to kill or incapacitate their victims. Such mines require the commitment of medical resources on the part of the affected enemy force, may degrade unit morale, and can damage unarmoured vehicles. Some types of AP mines may break or damage the track on armoured vehicles. AP mines can be classified into three main types: blast mines, AP fragmentation mines and AP bounding mines.

AP blast mines

A typical AP blast mine can be classified as "pressure activated munition", the primary purpose of which is to incapacitate via the direct blast wave of the explosive charge. A typical AP blast mine will have the following components:

Typical components of an AP blast mine.

• Mine casing 

  The mine casing houses the components of the mine and protects it from its environment. Early landmines such as the ones found in the WWII era had casings made of steel and could be found with an electronic mine detector. Today, most AP blast mines have a casing made out of plastic which makes them immune from electronic mine detectors.

• Pressure plate/detonation mechanism

  The detonation mechanism is designed to set off the detonation charge either by striking it with a firing pin or passing an electric charge through it. Most AP blast mines use a spring-loaded detonation mechanism that strikes the detonator charge when activated.

• Detonator 

  The detonator charge is a highly sensitive explosive that will explode easily if sudden pressure is applied to it or an electric charge is applied through it.

• Main charge 

  The main charge of an AP blast mine consists of stable explosive that is itself detonated by the detonator charge. This is necessary, as making a mine out of highly sensitive "detonator charge" explosive would make it dangerously susceptible to explosion. In most AP blast mines TNT or tetryl is used. On a U.S. M-14 AP blast mine, around 31 grams of tetryl is used, while up to 200 grams of TNT is used in a Russian PMN mine.

Deployment of AP blast mines

AP blast mines are typically used to deny an area for use by military forces or civilians. They are normally buried under 5 to 10 cm of soil or in some cases put under leaves or rocks.

Consequences of activating an AP blast mine

When a subject activates an AP blast mine by stepping on one, the mine's main charge will explode and release a blast wave consisting of hot gases (the by-product of the explosion). This blast wave will send a huge compressive force upwards, bringing the mine casing and bits of the soil covering the mine along with it. When the blast wave hits the surface, it will quickly transfer the force into the subject's footwear and foot. This results in a massive compression force being applied to the subject's footwear and the foot's soft tissue and bone. In most cases, these will be crushed and torn off by the blast wave.

The resulting injuries to a human body depend on the size of the blast mine's main charge, the depth and type of soil it was laid in and how the victim contacted it. Different types of soil will result in different amounts of energy being transferred upward into the subject's extremities, with saturated "clay-like" soil transferring the most. Larger main charges result in a release of significantly more energy, driving the blast wave further up a target's foot and leg and causing greater injury.

Small landmines such as the Chinese Type 72 or the U.S. M-14 will result in a "traumatically amputated" foot up to the ankle, while large Russian PMN Blast mines with 200 g of TNT are so powerful that activating them will likely result in the injury of both of the subject's legs.

Secondary injuries from a blast mine will be caused by the material that has been torn loose by the mine's explosion. The material consists of the soil and stones that were on top of the mine, parts of the subject's footwear and the small bones in the subject's foot. This debris is projected upwards at great velocity and can become embedded in the wounds of the target, shredding tissue and encouraging infection.

Footwear, including combat boots or so-called "blast boots", does little to mitigate the effects of the mine, and the loss of a foot is the typical outcome of activating an AP Blast.

Anti-personnel fragmentation mines

AP fragmentation mines such as the German S-mine are a type of area denial munition designed to incapacitate or kill. When activated, the mine is designed to explode and project lethal metal fragments into its victim.

Most AP fragmentation mines are triggered by a tripwire. When a subject disturbs the wire, the mine will explode and release a shower of metal fragments into its surroundings. Any subject caught in its blast will likely suffer multiple shrapnel wounds over his or her body.

Anti-handling devices (AHD)

Anti-handling devices trigger the mine fuze if someone attempts to tamper or defuse the mine. They are intended to prevent moving or removing the mine, not to prevent reduction of the minefield by enemy dismounts. An AHD usually consists of an explosive charge that is connected to, placed next to, or manufactured in the mine. The device can be attached to the mine body and activated by a wire that is attached to a firing mechanism. U.S. forces employ AHDs on conventional AT mines only and not on Anti-personal mines. The makes it somewhat safer to remove mines laid by US forces. Other countries may employ AHDs on both AT and AP mines.

Mine warfare

In military science, minefields are considered a defensive or harassing weapon, used to slow the enemy down, to help deny certain terrain to the enemy, to focus enemy movement into kill zones, or to reduce morale by randomly attacking matériel and personnel.

Since combat engineers with mine-clearing equipment can clear a path through a minefield relatively quickly, they are usually considered effective only if covered by fire.

A German engineer installs a warning sign following extensive mine-laying at El Alamein

The extents of minefields are often marked with warning signs and cloth tape, to prevent friendly troops and non-combatants from entering them. Of course, sometimes terrain can be denied using dummy minefields. Most forces carefully record the location and disposition of their own minefields, because warning signs can be destroyed or removed, and minefields should eventually be cleared. Minefields may also have marked or unmarked safe routes to allow friendly movement through them.

Placing minefields without marking and recording them for later removal is considered uncivilized and is illegal under international conventions.

Laying mines

Minefields may be laid by several means. The preferred, but most labour-intensive, way is to have engineers bury the mines, since this will make the mines practically invisible and reduce the number of mines needed to deny the enemy an area. Mines can be laid by specialized mine-laying vehicles. Mine-scattering shells may be fired by artillery from a distance of several tens of kilometres. Mines may be dropped from helicopters or airplanes, or ejected from cruise missiles.

Anti-tank minefields can be scattered with anti-personnel mines to make clearing them manually more time-consuming; and anti-personnel minefields are scattered with anti-tank mines to prevent the use of armoured vehicles to clear them quickly. Some anti-tank mine types are also able to be triggered by infantry, giving them a dual purpose even though their main and official intention is to work as anti-tank weapons.

Some minefields are specifically booby-trapped to make clearing them more dangerous. Mixed anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields, double-stacked anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines under anti-tank mines, and fuzes separated from mines have all been used for this purpose.

Detecting and removing landmines

Main article: Demining

Hydrema mine clearing vehicle

While placing and arming landmines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the reverse of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous.

Various means to detect landmines include:

• Carefully searching suspected or known minefields areas for mines. Often this is done by crawling slowly into the field, inserting a probe (anything from a knife to a stick) into the soil to find hard objects. When walking in mined areas, mine-clearing personnel may wear large, pillow-like pads strapped under their feet, to spread their weight and dull the impact of their footsteps, as very slight disturbances of the ground can tip off old, unstable, or intentionally sensitive mine triggers.

Protective clothing

Protective demining shoes

• Using metal detectors to sweep a suspected minefield. However, the detectors may not easily differentiate various types of metal objects, which slows the search.
• Using animals like dogs that can sniff out explosive chemicals like TNT in landmines. Recent experiments with the Gambian giant pouched rat have indicated that it has the required sensitivity to smell, can be trained reliably with food-reward incentives, and is typically too small to set off the mines.
• Sowing genetically engineered flower seeds over suspected minefields from the air. The flowers bloom in distinctive colours when there are explosives nearby in the soil.[1]

Methods for removing landmines include:

• Manually disarming them.
• Destroying or detonating them safely, possibly using another explosive or even an artillery barrage.
• Driving a heavily armoured vehicle like an armoured bulldozer or a tank equipped with a mine roller, plough, or flail through a minefield to deliberately detonate the explosives.
• Using a specialized mine-clearing explosive, typically a pipe or hose filled with explosive material, pushed or launched across a minefield. Examples include the Bangalore torpedo, Giant Viper, and Antipersonnel Obstacle Breaching System.

Efforts to ban anti-personnel mines

After a sustained and successful international campaign led by a coalition of NGOs, and with key support from the government of Canada, the majority of the world's countries (144 to date) have made the use and possession of anti-personnel landmines by its military forces illegal. The only three Western democracies that have not banned anti-personnel landmines are the United States, Finland and Israel. Some other countries like Russia, China and North Korea also continue to use and manufacture them.

The Ottawa Treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) came into force on March 1, 1999. The treaty was the result of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, launched in 1992. The campaign and its leader, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts.

Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty agree that they will not use, develop, manufacture, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel landmines. Existing stocks must be destroyed within four years of signing the treaty. There were originally 122 signatories in 1997; as of February 2004, it has been signed by 152 countries and ratified by 144.

The remaining 42 countries have not signed. The biggest of these are the People's Republic of China[2], India[3], the USA[4] and the Russian Federation[5]. The United States refuses to sign the treaty because it does not offer a "Korean exception", as landmines are a crucial component of the U.S. military strategy in South Korea. According to the US government, the one million mines along the DMZ between North and South help maintain the delicate peace by deterring a North Korean attack. Despite conducting research on technologies that could replace the mines in Korea by 2006, in 1999 the U.S. modified the Ottawa Treaty by introducing the M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition (PDM) which was meant to slow enemy pursuit on retreating armed forces. While still a landmine, PDM exploits technical loopholes in the Ottawa Treaty; therefore, the future of landmines in the U.S. is unclear.

According to the ICBL report for August 2004, eighty countries declared stockpiles totalling 48 million landmines, of which 37.5 million have been destroyed so far. 65 countries have completed the destruction of their stockpiles, and another 51 countries have declared that they did not possess stockpiles to destroy. Nine countries signed the treaty in the year to August 2004. [6]

There is a clause in the treaty, Article 3, which permits countries to retain landmines for use in training or development of countermeasures. 64 countries have taken this option. In February 2004, the number of mines retained varied from 93 for Mauritius, 1783 for the United Kingdom, around 4000 for France and Spain, 9,000 for Japan right up to as many as 69,200 for Turkmenistan. Other high levels are reported by Brazil (16,545), Sweden (16,015), Algeria (15,030), and Bangladesh (15,000). In total 289,000 mines have been declared as retained by various countries under Article 3. A further 23 countries have not declared a figure. [7]

As an alternative to an outright ban, 10 countries follow regulations that are contained in a 1996 amendment of Protocol II of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). The countries are China, Finland, India, Israel, Latvia, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the United States. [8]

The Ottawa Treaty does not include anti-tank mines, cluster bombs or claymore-type mines operated in command mode, but does cover victim-activated claymore-type mines (including those activated by tripwires). [9]

Manufacturers

The ICBL has identified the following countries as manufacturing landmines as of August 2004. None are signatories of the Ottawa Treaty. [10]

• Cuba [11]
• Iraq (although production had presumably ceased since the invasion of 2003)[12]
• Iran [13]
• India [14]
• Myanmar [15]
• Nepal [16]
• North Korea [17]
• Pakistan [18]
• Russian Federation [19]
• Singapore [20]
• Vietnam [21]

Of other states which are thought to have manufactured landmines recently:

• Turkey is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty [22]
• Serbia and Montenegro is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty [23]
• Egypt has unofficially stated that production ceased in 1988. [24]
• The United States has not manufactured anti-personnel mines since 1997, but a government statement in February 2004 stated that, “The United States will continue to develop non-persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines.”[25]
• South Korea has stated that no mines have been produced since 2000. [26]
• An official from China stated in September 2003 that production has ceased there, since they have an ample stockpile. [27]
• In March 2004, a Libyan official stated that the country has never produced anti-personnel mines, but is known to have laid landmines in the 1970s and 1980s [28]
• A United Nations assessment mission to Peru reported that production of landmines in the country ceased in January 1999. Peru was one of the original signatories and to the treaty came into force for them in March 1999. [29]

The Soviet Union had been accused of using specifically-designed mines looking like toys (to target children) in its conflict with Afghanistan. Some of the Soviet mines used were small, green, made from plastic and winged so that they could be deployed from planes, with the result that children often mistook them for toys, but others were allegedly manufactured of red and white plastic in the shape of toy trucks.

See also

• Demining
• Improvised explosive device
• Cluster bomb
• Naval mine

Anti-mine organizations:

• Roots of Peace
• International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)
• ICBL landmine monitor: http://www.icbl.org/lm/

Types of mines and mine delivery systems used by US military:

• Artillery Delivered Antipersonnel Mine (ADAM)
• M14 mine
• M16 mine
• Claymore mine
• Gator mine
• Volcano mine
• Ground Emplaced Mine Scattering System (GEMSS)
• M86 Pursuit Deterrent Munition (PDM)
• Modular Pack Mine System (MOPMS)

Controversy articles:

• Land mine controversy of Afghanistan

External links

• The International Committee of the Red Cross on Landmines
• The International Campaign to Ban Landmines
• Steve McClure, Japan Times, 16 May 2001, "The sweet sound of a good cause" - "Zero Landmine" charity CD and television programme.
• UK author Alexander Deane defends the use and legality of landmines: [30]
• Aurora Land Mines Task Force: An example of student activism against land mines.
• Demining with Africa`s Sniffer Rats (APOPO)