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Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

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Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#11

Post by veqq »

markdown wrote: post #6
Victerius wrote: post #2

I had several thoughts while reading this article. > Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s. Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mi…

> Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised. How would this work? Surely the impact would trigger detonation.

Explosives are not generally very fragile. They require special detonators to go off and are otherwise mostly inert.

Landmines have already been dropped from aircraft for decades - and also by rockets:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfRt_v51Io4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=456A_GTWEZI

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#12

Post by Semaphor »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #7
senortumnus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Antipersonnel mines absolutely should have an expiry date after which they are no longer triggered by the depression of their sensor. Issue is, these things are mass manufactured and probably have some defect rate which increases with time after deployment. So they couldn’t be trusted to be ‘safe’ after expiring anyway. But still would save lives & limbs to have a mechanism like that built in.

That’s just not how explosives work. Any detonator explosive to set of a main charge must be reliable for dozens of good reasons. Over time an as a required condition. Asking for something decays or approaches an unreliable state after time is a non-starter. Another user pointed to a basically failed electronic program, but even then, you have to detonate the mines, you can’t just disarm them and make the highly effi…

Another user pointed out [0] that such a system does exist.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33797151

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#13

Post by defrost »

markdown wrote: post #6
Victerius wrote: post #2

I had several thoughts while reading this article. > Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s. Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mi…

> Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised. How would this work? Surely the impact would trigger detonation.

Mines and bombs can be complex objects, especially bombs that are intended to not immediately explode and thus deny access | use up human resources due to the poised threat.

Even as far back as WWII bombs from aircraft included booby trapped "anti personnel" bombs with secondary fuses hidden back to kill bomb disposal experts.

In the case of your concern, bombs can be released with "chemical burn safeties" (for example - when released from an aircraft two agents are released that start a timed burn that arms the bomb after X minutes (and the ground is reached).

Other technicques can use the impact force to arm a mine, it's not dangerous until after it's been slammed into the ground, etc.

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#14

Post by Semaphor »

satvikpendem wrote: post #3

This being on the front page at the same time as "The Army tried to develop a missile guided by pigeons" is...interesting [0]. Looks like militaries are having fun using animals for warfare. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33779361

It’s not just the military, the rats here are used by APOPO [0] a non-profit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#17

Post by asdff »

Victerius wrote: post #2

I had several thoughts while reading this article. > Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s. Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mi…

There should be international laws where after wartime, governments are responsible for clearing out any leftover ordinances and must perform ecological cleanup. One would think the U.S. government would be in support of this because it would make wars too cost prohibitive for other nations, and the contracts would be an excellent profitmaking opportunity for the military industrial complex.

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#18

Post by geomark »

markdown wrote: post #6
Victerius wrote: post #2

I had several thoughts while reading this article. > Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s. Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mi…

> Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised. How would this work? Surely the impact would trigger detonation.

They can even be dispersed using mortars and artillery, like what has been done in Ukraine recently with butterfly mines.

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#19

Post by idontwantthis »

asdff wrote: post #17
Victerius wrote: post #2

I had several thoughts while reading this article. > Cambodia is contaminated with millions of unexploded ordnances dropped as cluster bombs by the U.S. during the Vietnam War. In addition, millions of land mines were buried throughout the country during a series of civil wars from the 1970s–1990s. Millions. I can't process numbers that large. I know what a million is, but I struggle to imagine what a million land mi…

There should be international laws where after wartime, governments are responsible for clearing out any leftover ordinances and must perform ecological cleanup. One would think the U.S. government would be in support of this because it would make wars too cost prohibitive for other nations, and the contracts would be an excellent profitmaking opportunity for the military industrial complex.

That only makes any sense if the government that laid the mines still exists after the conflict and wasn’t entirely insane in the first place. Read about the Khmer Rouge.

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#20

Post by btilly »

defrost wrote: post #13
markdown wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fresh mines can be dropped from aircraft now if a sudden need arised. How would this work? Surely the impact would trigger detonation.

Mines and bombs can be complex objects, especially bombs that are intended to not immediately explode and thus deny access | use up human resources due to the poised threat. Even as far back as WWII bombs from aircraft included booby trapped "anti personnel" bombs with secondary fuses hidden back to kill bomb disposal experts. In the case of your concern, bombs can be released with "chemical burn safeties" (for examp…

How the bomb disposal experts first learned their craft is insane. https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Uxb-Heroic-Story-Disposal/dp/0... has the story.

Short version, the person working with the bomb would call out what they saw, then do what the partner said. The partner had a book and was out of the blast radius. They recorded it all, and if the bomb blew up would write down not to do THAT again!

Eventually they learned to somewhat reliably disarm the bombs by this type of trial and error. And then the other side would add better booby traps to stop them from succeeding.

Crazy.

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