Demining
Demining or mine clearance is the process of removing land mines from an area. In military operations, the object is to rapidly clear a path through a minefield, and this is often done with devices such as mine plows and blast waves. By contrast, the goal of humanitarian demining is to remove all of the landmines to a given depth and make the land safe for human use. Specially trained dogs are also used to narrow down the search and verify that an area is cleared. Mechanical devices such as flails and excavators are sometimes used to clear mines.
A great variety of methods for detecting landmines have been studied. These include electromagnetic methods, one of which has been employed in tandem with metal detectors. Acoustic methods can sense the cavity created by mine casings. Sensors have been developed to detect vapor leaking from landmines. Animals such as rats and mongooses can safely move over a minefield and detect mines, and animals can also be used to screen air samples over potential minefields. Bees, plants, and bacteria are also potentially useful. Explosives in landmines can also be detected directly using nuclear quadrupole resonance and neutron probes.
Detection and removal of landmines is a dangerous activity, and personal protective equipment does not protect against all types of landmine. Once found, mines are generally defused or blown up with more explosives, but it is possible to destroy them with certain chemicals or extreme heat without making them explode.
Land mines
Land mines overlap with other categories of explosive devices, including unexploded ordnance, booby traps and improvised explosive devices. In particular, most mines are factory-built, but the definition of landmine can include "artisanal" mines. Thus, the United Nations Mine Action Service includes mitigation of IEDs in its mission. Injuries from IEDs are much more serious, but factory-built landmines are longer lasting and often more plentiful. Over 1999–2016, yearly casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance have varied between 9,228 and 3,450. In 2016, 78% of the casualties were suffered by civilians, 20% by military and security personnel and 2% by deminers.There are two main categories of land mine: anti-tank and anti-personnel. Anti-tank mines are designed to damage tanks or other vehicles; they are usually larger and require at least of force to trigger, so infantry will not set them off.
Anti-personnel mines are designed to maim or kill soldiers. There are over 350 types, but they come in two main groups: blast and fragmentation. Blast mines are buried close to the surface and triggered by pressure. A weight between, the weight of a small child, is usually enough to set one off. They are usually cylindrical with a diameter of and a height of. Fragmentation mines are designed to explode outwards resulting in casualties as much as away. A subtype of fragmentation mines called "bounding" mines are specifically designed to launch upward off the ground before detonating. Their size varies and they are mostly metal, so they are easily detected by metal detectors. However, they are normally activated by tripwires that can extend up to away from the mine, so tripwire detection is essential.
The casing of blast mines may be made of metal, wood, or plastic. Some mines, referred to as minimum metal mines, are constructed with as little metal as possible – as little as – to make them difficult to detect. Common explosives used in land mines include TNT, RDX, pentaerythritol tetranitrate, HMX and ammonium nitrate.
Land mines are found in about 60 countries. Deminers must cope with environments that include deserts, jungles, and urban environments. Antitank mines are buried deeply while antipersonnel mines are usually within of the surface. Mines may be placed by hand or scattered from airplanes, in regular or irregular patterns. In urban environments, fragments of destroyed buildings may hide them; in rural environments, soil erosion may cover them or displace them. Detectors can be confused by high-metal soils and junk. Thus, demining presents a considerable engineering challenge.
Goals
Military mine clearance
In military demining, the goal is to create a safe path for troops and equipment. The soldiers who carry out this task are known as combat engineers, sappers, or pioneers. Sometimes soldiers may bypass a minefield, but some bypasses are designed to concentrate advancing troops into a killing zone. If engineers need to clear a path, they may be under heavy fire and need supporting fire to suppress the enemy or obscure the site with smoke. Some risk of casualties is accepted, but engineers under heavy fire may need to clear an obstacle in 7–10 minutes to avoid excessive casualties, so manual breaching may be too slow. They may need to operate in bad weather or at night. Good intelligence is needed on factors like the locations of minefields, types of mines and how they were laid, their density and pattern, ground conditions and the size and location of enemy defenses.Humanitarian demining
Humanitarian demining is a component of mine action, a broad effort to reduce the social, economic and environmental damage of mines. The other "pillars" of mine action are risk education, victim assistance, stockpile destruction, and advocacy against the use of anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions. Humanitarian demining differs from military demining in several ways. Military demining operations require speed and reliability under combat conditions to safely bypass a mine field so it is more acceptable if some mines are missed in the process. Humanitarian demining aims to reduce risk for deminers and civilians as much as possible by removing all landmines and demining work can usually be temporarily halted if unfavorable circumstances arise. In some situations, it is a necessary precondition for other humanitarian programs. Normally, a national mine action authority is given the primary responsibility for mine action, which it manages through a mine action center. This coordinates the efforts of other players including government agencies, non-governmental organizations, commercial companies, and militaries.The International Mine Action Standards provide a framework for mine action. While not legally binding in themselves, they are intended as guidelines for countries to develop their own standards. The IMAS also draw on international treaties including the Mine Ban Treaty, which has provisions for destroying stockpiles and clearing minefields.
In the 1990s, before the IMAS, the United Nations required that deminers had to clear 99.6% of all mines and explosive ordnance. However, professional deminers found that unacceptably lax because they would be responsible if any mines later harmed civilians. In contrast, the IMAS call for the clearance of all mines and UXOs from a given area to a specified depth.
Contamination and clearance
As of 2017, antipersonnel mines are known to contaminate 61 states and suspected in another 10. The most heavily contaminated are Afghanistan, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Iraq, Thailand, Turkey, and Ukraine. According to TeKimiti Gilbert, Lebanon has the highest contamination density of cluster bombs relative to its size, with over a million cluster munitions and 357,000 landmines remaining in South Lebanon. Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty are required to clear all mines within 10 years of joining the treaty, and as of 2017, 28 countries had succeeded. However, several countries were not on track to meet their deadline or had requested extensions.A 2003 RAND Corporation report estimated that there are 45–50 million mines and 100,000 are cleared each year, so at present rates it would take about 500 years to clear them all. Another 1.9 million are added each year. However, there is a large uncertainty in the total number and the area affected. Records by armed forces are often incomplete or nonexistent, and many mines were dropped by airplane. Various natural events such as floods can move mines around and new mines continue to be laid. When minefields are cleared, the actual number of mines tends to be far smaller than the initial estimate; for example, early estimates for Mozambique were several million, but after most of the clearing had been done only 140,000 mines had been found. Thus, it may be more accurate to say that there are millions of landmines, not tens of millions.
Before minefields can be cleared, they need to be located. This begins with non-technical survey, gathering records of mine placement and accidents from mines, interviewing former combatants and locals, noting locations of warning signs and unused agricultural land, and going to look at possible sites. This is supplemented by technical survey, where potentially hazardous areas are physically explored to improve knowledge of their boundaries. A good survey can greatly reduce the time required to clear an area; in one study of 15 countries, less than 3 percent of the area cleared actually contained mines.
Economics
By one United Nations estimate, the cost to produce a landmine is between $3 and $75 while the cost of removing it is between $300 and $1000. However, such estimates may be misleading. The cost of clearance can vary considerably since it depends on the terrain, the ground cover and the method; and some areas that are checked for mines turn out to have none.Although the Mine Ban Treaty gives each state the primary responsibility to clear its own mines, other states that can help are required to do so.
In 2016, 31 donors contributed a total of $479.5 million to mine action, of which $343.2 million went to clearance and risk education. The top 5 recipient states received 54% of this support.
Conventional detection methods
The conventional method of landmine detection was developed in World War II and has changed little since then. It involves a metal detector, prodding instrument and tripwire feeler. Deminers clear an area of vegetation and then divide it into lanes. A deminer advances along a lane, swinging a metal detector close to the ground. When metal is detected, the deminer prods the object with a stick or probe to determine whether it is a mine. If a mine is found, it must be deactivated.Although conventional demining is slow, it is reliable, so it is still the most commonly used method. Integration with other methods such as explosive sniffing dogs can increase its reliability.
Demining is a dangerous occupation. If a deminer prods a mine too hard or fails to detect it, the deminer can suffer injury or death, and the large number of false positives from metal detectors can make deminers tired and careless. According to one report, there is an accident for every 1,000–2,000 mines cleared. 35 percent of the accidents occur during mine excavation and 24 percent result from missed mines.
Mine layers often use anti-demining techniques, including anti-lift devices, booby traps and two or three mines placed on top of each other. Anti-personnel mines are often triggered by tripwires.