PROM-1

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PROM-1 anti-personnel mine. Normally the mine is buried so that only the prongs are visible.

The PROM-1 is a Yugoslavian manufactured bounding type of anti-personnel mine. It consists of a cylindrical body with a pronged fuze inserted into the top of the mine. It is broadly similar in operation to the German S-mine.

The mine is triggered by the tilting of the prongs situated on top of the mine. This is caused by either direct pressure on the prongs or by tension on a tripwire attached to the prongs. The tilting of the prongs allows three striker retaining balls to escape, releasing the striker, which is driven by a spring into the stab sensitive detonator. The detonator then explodes. Some sources report that a one and a half second delay is then initiated before igniting the three gram propellant charge. The explosion of the propellant forces the upper half of the mine body into the air, shearing several brass screws and leaving the base plug of the mine behind in the ground.

The mine's body is tethered to its base by a short length of wire, which unwinds behind it as it rises. When the mine reaches a height of approximately 60 centimetres the wire pulls taut. This jerks the detonator assembly downwards into striker, triggering the main detonator. The main charge then detonates, breaking the internally grooved body into a large number of high-velocity steel fragments, which spray in all directions. Because the time taken from triggering the mine to detonation is less than one second, there is no time to take cover from the blast.

As with all bounding mines it is lethal at relatively long distances. It is capable of projecting dangerous fragments to range of 100 meters or more, with a lethal range of around 50 meters. This mine will almost certainly seriously injure or kill anyone caught within 30 meters of the blast. As with any bounding mine, wearing standard kevlar body armour offers no guarantee of safety: the large number of fragments produced by a PROM-1 will wound the unprotected limbs, face and eyes of the victim.

The PROM-1 can be particularly hard to spot in undergrowth because, apart from the prongs, most of it is buried underground and therefore cannot be seen. Although this mine does contain lots of steel (thereby making it easy to detect with a mine-detector) the act of sweeping the detection head over the ground can easily strike the prongs (or connected tripwire) and detonate the mine.

The PROM-1 is difficult to render safe because the fuse becomes unstable after being exposed to weather for several years. Most deminers therefore recommend that this mine is destroyed in situ by detonating an explosive charge next to it.

Usually (though not always) trip-wires around 20 feet (6 meters) in length are fitted to this mine in order to increase its activation area. When tracking trip-wires back to their source, deminers must keep in mind that other landmines may have been planted along its length. It is all too easy to concentrate on following a trip-wire back to its source, forgetting that there could be PMA-3, PMN or similar blast mines lying buried underneath.

The mine has been found in Angola, Bosnia, Chile, Croatia, Eritrea, Iraq, Kosovo, Mozambique and Namibia.