Smart mine

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Smart mines are new types of mines originally developed to reduce the risk to non-combatants and civilians living in post-conflict areas. Contemporary developments in smart mines have also led to such developments as self-healing mines and mines that communicate with each and are able to move themselves to accommodate changes in the minefield.^[1]. Smart mines have been advocated as an alternative to movements to ban mines, as they can be programmed to deactivate once the conflict is over reducing the risk of injury for civilians.

[edit] Categories of Smart Mines

[edit] Controversy

Critics of smart mines say that the technology is unreliable and will lead to an increase in the use of mines in conflicts. Current guidelines allow for a 10% failure rate of the mines, meaning thousands of mines may never deactivate themselves and thus still pose a serious risk to non-combatants. Additionally, in the case of self-destructing mines, civilians still are at risk of injury when the mine self-destructs and are denied access to land which has been mined due to the disruptions mine deployment causes.^[2]

As mines are inherently non-discriminate weapons even smart mines may injure civilians during a time of war. Many critics believe this to be unacceptable under international law. The human security paradigm in particular is outspoken on the issue of the reduction in the use of land mines due to the extremely individual nature of their impact - a facet that is ignored by traditional security concerns which focus on military and state level security issues.