Land mine Totally Explained

Everything about Minefield totally explained

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, India, Russia and the United States.

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's 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

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 printed in the mid 14th century), 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. However, this claim is dubious, considering that gunpowder warfare didn't exist in China until the advent of the flamethrower (Pen Huo Qi) in the 10th century, while the land mine wasn't seen in China until the late 13th century.

Explosive landmines

East Asia

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 accredited to one Lou Qianxia of the 13th century. The famous 14th century Chinese text of the Huolongjing, which was the first to describe hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder, was also the first to describe the invention of the landmine in greater detail than references found in texts written beforehand. The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole. 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:
Anti-handling devices (as opposed simply booby-trapping the mine) trigger the mine fuse if someone attempts to tamper with or defuse the mine. They are intended to prevent or discourage removing or disarming of the mine. These devices can consist of an additional explosive charge connected to, placed next to, or manufactured as part of the mine.
Some countries only employ AHDs on conventional anti-tank mines and not anti-personnel mines. This makes it somewhat safer to remove mines laid by these forces, especially the relatively larger numbers of anti-personnel mines so often the cause of unintended casualties after the cessation of military hostilities.

Anti-tank (AT) mines

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

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

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 didn't function.

Terrorism

None of the conventional tactics and norms of mine warfare applies when they're employed in a terrorist role:

The mines are not used in a defensive role (for specific position or area).

Mined areas are not marked.

Mines are usually placed singly and not in groups covering an area.

Mines are often left unattended (not covered by fire). The normal aim 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.

Laying mines

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)

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 .
Ironically, the laying of land mines inadvertently proved a positive development in Argentina and 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 don't 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.(External Link

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Efforts to ban anti-personnel mines

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 doesn't 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're 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 won't 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 isn't under the signatories.
   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. (External Link

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Iraq (although production had presumably ceased since the invasion of 2003)(External Link

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Nepal (External Link

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North Korea (External Link

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Pakistan (External Link

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Russian Federation (External Link

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Singapore (External Link

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Vietnam (External Link

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Turkey is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty.(External Link

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Egypt has unofficially stated that production ceased in 1988. (External Link

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South Korea has stated that no mines have been produced since 2000. (External Link

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An official from China stated in September 2003 that production has ceased there, since they've an ample stockpile. (External Link

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In March 2004, a Libyan official stated that the country has never produced anti-personnel mines, but is known to have laid landmines in the 1970s and 1980s (External Link

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A United Nations assessment mission to Peru reported that production of landmines in the country ceased in January 1999. Peru was one of the original signatories and the treaty came into force for them in March 1999. (External Link

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Denmark has officially declared having 6 factories producing landmines in 1995. But production has ceased since ratifying the Ottawa treaty. (External Link

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