Land mine

From left to right: an M14, Valmara 69, and VS-50

A land mine is an explosive device designed to be placed on or in the ground to explode when triggered by an operator or the proximity of a vehicle, person, or animal. The name originates from the practice of mining, where tunnels were dug under enemy fortifications or forces. These tunnels ("mines") were first collapsed to destroy fortifications above, and later filled with explosives and detonated. 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 or to restrict enemy movement in times of war. Tactically they serve a purpose similar to barbed wire or concrete dragon's teeth vehicle barriers, slowing or channeling the movement of attacking forces to the advantage of defenders. From a military perspective, land mines serve as force multipliers, because they increase the efficacy or potency of a force without requiring more personnel.

Land mines are controversial because they remain dangerous after the conflict in which they were deployed, killing and injuring civilians and rendering land impassable and unusable for decades. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines has sought to prohibit their use, culminating in the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, known informally as the Ottawa Treaty. As of 2007, a total of 158 nations have agreed to the treaty. Thirty-seven countries have not agreed to the ban, including China, Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and the United States.

Contents

Use

Land mines have two main uses - to create tactical barriers and to act as area-denial weapons. The latter use seeks to deny access to land areas by military and civilian traffic. When used as a tactical barrier, they serve to deter direct attack from or over a 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 could cross these zones, since simple physical barriers such as barbed wire may be more easily penetrated.

Anti-personnel land mines or APLs are widely considered to be unethical 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.

History

Mines mounted to "Rommel's asparagus" obstacles, during the Battle of Normandy.

Premodern development

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, but these devices were not explosive.

Some sources report that the 3rd century Prime Minister Zhuge Liang of the Kingdom of Shu in China invented a landmine type device in the third century. This claim was made by Jiao Yu in his Huolongjing Quanzhi (Fire-drake Manual in One Complete Volume), his preface written in 1412 AD (although the book was originally published in the mid 14th century),[1] and that Zhuge had used not only "fire weapons" but landmines in the Battle of Hulugu Valley against the forces of Sima Yi and his son Sima Zhao of the Wei Kingdom.[2] However, this claim is dubious, considering that gunpowder warfare did not exist in China until the advent of the flamethrower (Pen Huo Qi) in the 10th century, while the land mine was not seen in China until the late 13th century.[3]

Explosive landmines

East Asia

The Chinese 'self-tripped trespass land mine' from the Huolongjing, compiled by Jiao Yu and Liu Ji in the mid 14th century.

Explosive landmines were being used in 1277 AD by the Song Dynasty Chinese against an assault of the Mongols, who were besieging a city in southern China. The invention of this detonated "enormous bomb" was credited to one Lou Qianxia of the 13th century.[4] The famous 14th century Chinese text of the Huolongjing, which was the first to describe hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder,[5] was also the first to describe the invention of the landmine in greater detail than references found in texts written beforehand.[4] This mid 14th century work compiled during the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty (before 1375, when its co-editor Liu Ji died) stated that mines were made of cast iron and were spherical in shape, filled with either 'magic gunpowder', 'poison gunpowder', or 'blinding and burning gunpowder', any one of these compositions being suitable for use.[6] The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole.[6] In those days, the Chinese relied upon command signals and carefully timed calculation of enemy movements into the minefield, since a long fuse had to be ignited by hand from the ambushers in a somewhat far-off location lying in wait.[7] However, the Huolongjing also describes landmines that were set off by enemy movement, called the 'ground-thunder explosive camp', one of the 'self-trespassing' (zifan) types, as the text says:

“ These mines are mostly installed at frontier gates and passes. Pieces of bamboo are sawn into sections nine feet in length, all septa in the bamboo being removed, save only the last; and it is then bandaged round with fresh cow-hide tape. Boiling oil is next poured into (the tube) and left there for some time before being removed. The fuse starts from the bottom (of the tube), and (black powder) is compressed into it to form an explosive mine. The gunpowder fills up eight-tenths of the tube, while lead or iron pellets take up the rest of the space; then the open end is sealed with wax. A trench five feet in depth is dug (for the mines to be concealed). The fuse is connected to a firing device which ignites them when disturbed.[7] ”

The Huolongjing describes the trigger device used for this as a 'steel wheel', which directed sparks of flame onto the connection of fuses running to the multiple-laid land mines underneath the carefully-hidden trap.[8] However, further description of how this flint device operated was not made until a Chinese text of 1606 AD revealed that a weight drive (common in medieval clockworks) had been used to work the 'steel wheel'.[8] The way in which the Chinese land mine trigger worked was a system of two steel wheels rotated by a falling weight, the chord of which was wound around their axle, and when the enemy stepped onto the disguised boards they released the pins that dropped the weights.[9] In terms of global significance, the first wheellock musket in Europe was sketched by Leonardo da Vinci around 1500 AD, although no use of metal flint for gunpowder weapons were known before that point in Europe.[8]

Besides the use of steel wheels providing sparks for the fuses, there were other methods used as well, such as the 'underground sky-soaring thunder'.[10] The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) text of the Wu Bei Zhi (Treatise on Armament Technology), written by Mao Yuanyi in 1628, outlined the use of land mines that were triggered by the heat of a slow-burning incandescent material in an underground bowl placed directly above the train of fuses leading to the mines buried 3 ft beneath.[11] The booby trap of this mine system had a mound where weapons of halberds, pikes, and lances were dug in, meant to entice the enemy to walk up the small mound and claim their stolen prize of war booty.[10] When the weapons were removed from the mound, this movement disturbed the bowl beneath them where the butt ends of the staffs were, which in turn ignited the fuses.[11] According to the Wubei Huolongjing volume of the 17th century, the formula for this slow-burning incandescent material allowed it to burn continuously for 20 to 30 days without going out.[11] This formula included 1 lb of white sandal wood powder, 3 oz of iron rust (ferric oxide), 5 oz of 'white' charcoal powder (from quicklime), 2 oz of willow charcoal powder, 6 oz of dried, ground, and powdered red dates, and 3 oz of bran.[11]

The Chinese also employed the use of the naval mine at sea and on the rivers of China and elsewhere in maritime battles.

Western world

The first land mine in Europe was created by Pedro Navarro, a Spanish soldier, who used it in the settles of the Italian castles, in the beginning of the sixteenth century. 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.[12]

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.

British troops mining a road to halt the German advance in 1918.

The first modern mechanically fused high explosive anti-personnel land mines were created by Confederate troops of Brigadier General Gabriel J. Rains during the Battle of Yorktown in 1862.[13] (As a Captain, Rains had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840.[14]) Both mechanically and electrically fused "land torpedoes" were employed, although by the end of the war mechanical fuses 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 "Rains 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 Passchendaele. 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.

Characteristics and functioning

Mine components

A land mine typically includes the following components:

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 catalog. 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.

Anti-handling devices (AHD)

Main article: Anti-handling device

Anti-handling devices detonate the mine if someone attempts to lift, shift or disarm it. The intention is to hinder deminers by discouraging any attempts to clear minefields. There is a degree of overlap between the function of a boobytrap and an anti-handling device insofar as some mines have optional fuze pockets into which standard pull or pressure-release boobytrap firing devices can be screwed. Alternatively, some landmines may mimic a standard design, but actually be specifically intended to kill deminers e.g. the MC-3 and PMN-3 variants of the PMN mine. Anti-handling devices can be found on both anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines, either as an integral part of their design or as improvised add-ons. For this reason, the standard render-safe procedure for mines is often to destroy them in situ without attempting to lift them.

Anti-tank (AT) mines

Main article: Anti-tank mine
Section of an anti-tank mine. Note the yellow main charge wrapped around a red booster charge, and the secondary fuse well on the side of the mine designed for an anti-handling device.

Anti-tank mines are designed to immobilize or destroy vehicles and their occupants. In U.S. military jargon destroying the vehicles is referred to as a catastrophic kill (k-kill) while only disabling its movement is referred to as a mobility kill (m-kill).

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 or smaller vehicles of lesser importance. More modern anti-tank mines use shaped charges to focus and increase the armor penetration of the explosives.

Anti-personnel (AP) mines

Main article: Anti-personnel mine

Anti-personnel mines are designed to kill or injure enemy combatants as opposed to destroying vehicles. They are often designed to injure rather than kill in order to increase the logistical support (evacuation, medical) burden on the opposing force. Some types of anti-personnel mines can also damage the tracks or wheels of armored vehicles.

Under the Ottawa Treaty, signatory countries undertake not to manufacture, stockpile or use anti-personnel mines. As of 2007, it has been signed/accessioned by 155 countries. Forty states, including the People's Republic of China, Russian Federation and the United States, are not party to the Convention.

Mine warfare

A U.S. Army soldier removing the fuse from a Russian-made mine in order to clear a minefield outside of Fallujah, Iraq.

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 material and personnel. In some engagements during World War II, anti-tank 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 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, with the anti-personnel mines making removal of the anti-tank 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 mine clearing to only those mines whose self destruct system did not function.

Guerrilla Warfare

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

One of the aims of terrorism - and to a certain extent guerrilla 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.[15]

Laying mines

Minefield warning on the Golan Heights, still valid more than 40 years after creation of the field by the Syrian army

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 kilometers.

Mines may be dropped from helicopters or airplanes, or ejected from cluster bombs or 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 armored 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.

Another specific use is to mine an aircraft runway immediately after it has been bombed in order to delay or discourage repair. Some cluster bombs combine these functions, one example is the British JP233 cluster bomb which includes munitions to damage (crater) the runway as well as anti-personnel mines in the same cluster bomb.

Demining (Detecting and removing)

Main article: Demining
School posters in Karabakh educating children on mines and UXO

Whereas the placing and arming of landmines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the process 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, due to their small size and the fact that many are made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to escape detection.

Manual clearing remains the most effective technique for clearing mine fields, although hybrid techniques involving the use of animals and robots are being developed. Animals are desirable due to their strong sense of smell, which is more than capable of detecting a land mine [16].

Ironically, the laying of land mines inadvertently proved a positive development in the Falkland Islands. This is because the mine fields laid by the sea during the Falklands War have become favorite places for penguins, which are too light to detonate the mines, and are therefore able to breed safely in areas where humans do not enter. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that there has been some effort to prevent having the mines removed by offering to finance mine removal in regions with human populations where mines are a persistent danger, such as in Cambodia.[1]

Efforts to ban anti-personnel mines

Main article: Ottawa Treaty
Party states to the Ottawa Treaty
Argentine minefield at Port William, Falkland Islands created in 1982; clearance inhibited by boggy terrain

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 leadership of the Government of Canada working with 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.

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; currently, it has been signed by 155 countries and ratified by 153. Another 40 have yet to sign on. United States is not one of the signatories, based on lacking an exception for the DMZ of Korea.

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, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

Manufacturers

The ICBL has identified the following countries as manufacturing land mines as of August 2004. None are signatories of the Ottawa Treaty. [2]

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

Abatis · Castle walls · Castra · Crannóg · Defensive wall · Hill fort · Sudis · Stronghold · Stockade · Palisade · Trou de loup · Vallum · Wagon fort
Since Middle Ages

Barbican · Balistraria · Bastion · Caltrop (Makibishi) · Castle · Concentric castle · L-plan castle · Water castle · Cheval de frise · Citadel · City gate · Curtain wall · Embrasure · Gabion · Drawbridge · Keep · Moat · Murder-hole · Peel tower · Réduit · Wall tower · Watchtower · Guard tower · Tower house · Turret · Yett
Since Early modern period

Bastion fortress · Blockhouse · Caponier · Polygonal fort · Punji sticks · Sandbag · Station · Outwork
Since 19th century

Barbette · Bunker · Casemate · Gun turret · Land battery · Coastal artillery · Land mine · Trench warfare · Wire obstacles · Barbed wire
Since 20th century

Barbed tape · Concertina wire · Defensive fighting position · Spider hole · British "hedgehog" road block · Czech hedgehog · Dragon's teeth · Electric fence · Flak tower · Hesco bastion · Main Line of Resistance · Sentry gun
Others

Area denial weapons

See also

Bomb disposal PPE
Mine-clearing organizations;
Landmine Victim Assistance
Anti-mine organizations

Notes

  1. ↑ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 27.
  2. ↑ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 28.
  3. ↑ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 8, 25.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 192.
  5. ↑ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 264.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 192-193.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 193.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 199.
  9. ↑ Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 200.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 204.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 203.
  12. ↑ The Origins of Military Mines, Major William C. Schneck, Engineer Bulletin July 1998
  13. ↑ op cit.
  14. ↑ HISTORICAL USES OF anti-personnel LANDMINES: IMPACT ON LAND FORCE OPERATIONS, Roger L. Roy and Shaye K. Friesen, Department of National Defense Canada, October 1999
  15. ↑ "Leopard - Land Mine Resisting Vehicle". Retrieved on 2008-07-18.
  16. ↑ APOPO Landmine Removal Rats

References

External links