Land mine

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For other uses, see Land Mine (disambiguation).

"Minefield" redirects here. For other uses, see Minefield (disambiguation).

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

Land mines 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, channeling the movement of attacking troops in ways that permit the defenders to engage them more easily. From a military perspective, land mines serve as force multipliers, allowing an organized force to overcome a larger enemy.

Land mines have two core uses - to create tactical barriers and as area-denial weapons. The latter use seeks to deny access to large areas, since they are often unmarked and affect civilian populations after the cessation of military operations or hostilities. When used as a tactical barrier, they serve as deterrent to direct attack from or over a well defined and marked area. Without land mines in the demilitarized zones (DMZs) of hot spots such as Cyprus and Korea it is conceivable that small raiding parties crossing though these barriers could have inflamed hostilities since all that would oppose them would be physical barriers (such as barbed wire, which can be easily penetrated) and opposition soldiers (whose use would naturally indicate open conflict). In this latter use, anti-personnel land mines keep hostile parties from fighting each other.

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

[edit] History

Image:Mines-p012102.jpg The basic concept behind the land mine has appeared through military history. Some sources report that Zhuge Liang, of the Kingdom of Shu of China, invented a land mine 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.

Around 14th century or 15th century, the Ming Dynasty started to make some primal modern mines with powder, which in form of stone, ceramic or pig iron.[1] [2]

At Augsburg in 1573, a military engineer by the name of Samuel Zimmermann invented an extremely effective mine known as the fladdermine. It consisted of a fougasse (or later, sometimes a shell fougasse, that is, a fougasse loaded not with stones but with early black powder mortar shells, similar to large black powder hand grenades) activated by a snaphance or flintlock mechanism connected to a tripwire on the surface. Combining the effects of a tripwire activated bounding fragmentation mine with a cluster bomb, it was devastating to massed attackers but required high maintenance due to the susceptibility of black powder to dampness. Consequently it was mainly employed in the defenses of major fortifications, in which role it continued to be used until the 1870s.<ref>The Origins of Military Mines, Major William C. Schneck, Engineer Bulletin July 1998</ref>

In Europe in the early eighteenth century, improvised land mines 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 fused high explosive anti-personnel land mines were created by Confederate troops of Brigadier General Gabriel J. Raines during the Battle of Yorktown in 1862.<ref>op cit.</ref> (As a Captain, Raines had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840. <ref>HISTORICAL USES OF ANTIPERSONNEL LANDMINES: IMPACT ON LAND FORCE OPERATIONS, Roger L. Roy and Shaye K. Friesen, Department of National Defence Canada, October 1999</ref>) Both mechanically and electrically fuzed "land torpedoes" were employed, although by the end of the war mechanical fuzes had been found to be generally more reliable. Many of these designs were improvised in the field, especially from explosive shells, but by the end of the war nearly 2,000 standard pattern "Raines mines" had been deployed.

Improved designs of mines 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, land mines were used notably at the start of the battle of Passchendale. Well before the war was over, the British were manufacturing land mines 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, while another was the U.S. Medium Atomic Demolition Munition.

[edit] Characteristics and functioning

Image:Mine-components.jpg A land mine typically includes the following components:

firing mechanism or other device (including anti-handling devices)
detonator or ignitor (sets off the booster charge)
booster charge (may be attached to the fuse, or the ignitor, or be part of the main charge)
main charge (in a container, usually forms the body of the mine)
casing (contains all of the above parts)

[edit] Firing mechanisms and initiating actions

A land mine 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. Land mine designs tend to use as little metal as possible to make searching with a metal detector more difficult; land mines made mostly of plastic have the added advantage of being very inexpensive.

Some types of modern mines are designed to self-destruct, or chemically render themselves inert 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 land mines laid historically are not equipped in this manner.

[edit] Anti-handling devices (AHD)

Main article: Anti-handling device

Anti-handling devices (i.e booby-traps) trigger the mine fuse if someone attempts to tamper or defuse the mine. They are intended to prevent moving or removing the mine, and 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. Some countries employ AHDs on conventional AT mines only and not on anti-personnel mines. The makes it somewhat safer to remove mines laid by these forces. Other countries may employ AHDs on both AT and AP mines, or employe AP mines in the same minefields as AT mines to prevent the removal of the AT mines.

[edit] Anti-tank (AT) mines

Main article: Anti-tank mine

Image:Panzermine im Schnitt.jpg

Anti-tank mines are designed to immobilize 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.

[edit] Anti-personnel (AP) mines

Main article: Anti-personnel mine

Anti-personal mines are normally designed to kill or injure as many enemy combatants as possible. Smaller anti-personnel mines are sometimes designed to maim rather than kill in order to increase the logistical (mostly medical) support required by such an enemy force. Some types of anti-personnel mines can also damage the tracks on armoured vehicles or the tires of wheeled vehicles.

Member-states under the Ottawa Treaty have banned the use of anti-personnel mines.

[edit] 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. In some engagements during World War 2, antitank mines accounted for half of all vehicles disabled.

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

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.

Artillery and aircraft scatterable mines allow minefields to be placed in front of moving formations of enemy units, including the reinforcement of minefields or other obstacles that have been breached by enemy engineers. They can also be used to cover the retreat of forces disengaging from the enemy, or for interdiction of supporting units to isolate front line units from resupply. In most cases these minefields consist of a combination of antitank and antipersonnel mines, with the antipersonnel mines making removal of the antitank mines more difficult. Mines of this type used by the United States are designed to self destruct after a preset period of time, reducing the requirement for mineclearing to only those mines whose self destruct system did not function.

[edit] Terrorism

None of the conventional tactics and norms of mine warfare applies when they are employed in a terrorist role:

The mines are not used in a defensive role (for specific position or area).
Mined areas are not marked.
Mines are usually placed singly and not in groups covering an area.
Mines are often left unattended (not covered by fire).

The normal aim of terrorism - and to a certain extent guerilla warfare is to spread fear and panic. This can be achieved by a single mine left on a civilian road to be detonated by a civilian target which is clearly quite different from the normal military application.

One example where such tactics were in employed is in the various Southern African conflicts during the 1970s and 1980s, specifically Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

[edit] Laying mines

Image:Minefield warning.JPG 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 fuses separated from mines have all been used for this purpose.

[edit] Demining (Detecting and removing)

Main article: Demining

While placing and arming landmines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the reverse of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous. This is especially true of irregular warfare where mines were used on an ad hoc basis in unmarked areas. Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, because of their small size and the fact that many are made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to avoid detection. New detection systems however are being developed by making use of rats. Because these rats have a high sense of smelling and are light, they are suited to detect landmines without being blown-up. http://www.apopo.org/whyrats/

[edit] Efforts to ban anti-personnel mines

Main article: Ottawa Treaty

Image:Ottawa Treaty members.png

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 land mines, launched in 1992. The campaign and its leader, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts.

The treaty does not include anti-tank mines, cluster bombs or claymore-type mines operated in command mode and focuses specifically on anti-personnel mines, because these pose the greatest long term (post-conflict) risk to humans and animals since they are typically designed to be triggered by any movement or pressure of only a few kilograms, whereas anti-tank mines require much more weight (or a combination of factors that would exclude humans). Existing stocks must be destroyed within four years of signing the treaty.

Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty agree that they will not use, develop, manufacture, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel land mines. There were originally 122 signatories in 1997; as of November 2006, it has been signed by 155 countries and ratified by 152. Another 40 have yet to sign on.

There is a clause in the treaty, Article 3, which permits countries to retain land mines for use in training or development of countermeasures. 64 countries have taken this option.

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.

[edit] Manufacturers

The ICBL has identified the following countries as manufacturing land mines as of August 2004. None are signatories of the Ottawa Treaty. [3]

Cuba [4]
India [5]
Iran [6]
Iraq (although production had presumably ceased since the invasion of 2003)[7]
Myanmar [8]
Nepal [9]
North Korea [10]
Pakistan [11]
Russian Federation [12]
Singapore [13]
Vietnam [14]

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

Turkey is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty.[15]
Serbia and Montenegro is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty.[16]
Egypt has unofficially stated that production ceased in 1988. [17]
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." [18]
South Korea has stated that no mines have been produced since 2000. [19]
An official from China stated in September 2003 that production has ceased there, since they have an ample stockpile. [20]
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 [21]
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. [22]

The Soviet Union was accused of using mines specifically-designed to look 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Trivia

Ironically, the laying of land mines inadvertently proved a positive development in Argentina and The Falkland Islands. This is because the mine fields, laid by the sea during the Falklands War have proved favourite places for penguins. They are too light to set off the explosives and took advantage to breed in areas where humans would not dare enter. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that there has been some effort to avoid having the mines removed by offering to finance mine removal in regions where mines are a persistent danger much more human populated area such as in Cambodia. Planet Ark
In Cambodia the Malayan viper is sometimes called the "landmine snake" because of its habit of hiding in roadside vegetation and biting people who come too near when passing by or collecting grass.