Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

sapiens.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 132 posts

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#61

Post by Xylakant »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #9
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.

Naval mines have dropped by parachute. You could drop them with mechanical timers before they arm. There are reminiscent of Swiss watch mechanisms for munitions already. I imagine a shape that will definitely land in one direction could have a pressure switch on the other.

There are mines that set themselves up in the proper orientation after deployment, the AT2 for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT2_mine

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#62

Post by wnkrshm »

InCityDreams wrote: post #43
anikan_vader wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An interesting idea, although I think the US is actually ahead of the curve on mines. From Wikipedia: >> Opponents point out that the Ottawa Convention places no restriction whatsoever on anti-vehicle mines which kill civilians on tractors, on school buses, etc. The position of the United States is that the inhumane nature of landmines stems not from whether they are anti-personnel as opposed to antivehicle but from…

> All US landmines now self-destruct in two days or less, in most cases four hours. Supremely commendable, but it does seem remarkably short windows. I do wonder what troops on the ground, in 'busy', and highly stategic defensive positions, feel about having to re-lay the same mines every two days, let alone four hours: surely the enemy could take severe advantage?

You lay those mines with an aircraft or missile, I'd suspect.

It's like a sleeping cluster bomb - one of the worst (in terms of humanitarian problems) antipersonal mines out there, the Russian PFM-1 butterfly mine [0] is a cluster munition that simply floats to the ground and stays there.

The PFM-1 also has a deactivation mechanism but it didn't work well enough in practice.

Deactivation mechanisms are one thing but what the explosives do over time is a big deal, even if the trigger/fuze is guaranteed to be inert after a short time.

Explosives can be like mayonnaise, they can separate after a while, forming sensitive mixtures, making the 'inert' mine suddenly dangerous again.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFM-1_mine

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#65

Post by ClumsyPilot »

asimjalis wrote: post #16

They should use AI driven mini robots that go around and blow up mines.

The rats are already mini, and have real intelligence unlike AI does. They also reproduce cheap.

Mines are cheap and numerous, and anything that deals woth them had to be cheap

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#66

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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…

So in your post to incorrect others on 'thats not how explosives work' you got absolutely everything wrong about how explosives work. Typical HN.

> You wouldn’t ever give your enemy deliveries of repackagable charges.

Where did you get this preposterous idea? Do you imagine a major military will send out it's soldiers to collect labdmines on purpose to dissasemble them and take out tiny amount of explosive? And after loosing dozens of soldiers and huge amount of time to get explosives of dubious age and quality, do what with it?

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#67

Post by stavros »

raisin_churn wrote: post #27

I would prefer to use US senators who refuse to ratify the Mine Ban Convention. They won't need any particular skills or training, just have them wander around possible UXO sites until they find one with their foot. The great thing about this is, US senators are a 100% renewable resource.

I do think it's symmetrical that, if we use senators to clear land mines, we should use rats to ratify the convention.

Re: Using rats to clear land mines in Cambodia

#69

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

wnkrshm wrote: post #62
InCityDreams wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All US landmines now self-destruct in two days or less, in most cases four hours. Supremely commendable, but it does seem remarkably short windows. I do wonder what troops on the ground, in 'busy', and highly stategic defensive positions, feel about having to re-lay the same mines every two days, let alone four hours: surely the enemy could take severe advantage?

You lay those mines with an aircraft or missile, I'd suspect. It's like a sleeping cluster bomb - one of the worst (in terms of humanitarian problems) antipersonal mines out there, the Russian PFM-1 butterfly mine [0] is a cluster munition that simply floats to the ground and stays there. The PFM-1 also has a deactivation mechanism but it didn't work well enough in practice. Deactivation mechanisms are one thing but…

> Explosives can be like mayonnaise, they can separate after a while, forming sensitive mixtures, making the 'inert' mine suddenly dangerous again.

In the 1970s, there was a Friedkin movie, that used this as a plot point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer_(film)

Post reply on HN