On November 19, Yemeni government forces detonated more than 6,000 mines and explosive devices in the country's western coastal areas. A government official said demining experts are still carrying out demining tasks in these areas.
On 25 November, two civilians were killed and 17 injured in a mine explosion in eastern Deir Ezzor and northern Hama in Syria.
Repeatedly swept, like a poisonous snake lying on the ground, maybe one day it will give people a fatal blow, this is a landmine. It was once called the "nuclear weapon of a poor country", and even in today's information age, its power cannot be underestimated.
However, just as the five elements are mutually reinforcing, from the day of the birth of the mine, the technology of mine detection and clearance has also come into being. With the development of science and technology, a large number of mine-sweeping equipment have successively appeared on the military stage and become a sharp weapon to open up "life channels." Today, let us get closer to these various types of mine-sweeping equipment.
The "Past and Present Lives" of Mine Sweeping Equipment
The earliest modern mines to appear were anti-infantry mines. During World War I, Germany converted artillery shells into anti-tank mines to contain the British offensive, which is considered to be the earliest anti-tank mines. Since then, countries have developed one after another, the types of landmines have been increasing, and the comprehensive damage efficiency has been continuously improved.
Where there is a spear, there is a shield. Soon after the birth of landmines, there were soldiers and equipment for demining. For mines in the modern sense, manual mine clearance with metal mine detectors was the most common method at that time. To this day, metal mine detectors still play a role in the armies of various countries. However, at that time, the metal mine detector error alarm rate was high, the efficiency was low, and it was easy to cause casualties among soldiers. Therefore, countries around the world have begun to study new methods and means of mine clearance.
At the end of the First World War, the British tested rolling minesweepers on tanks, which is considered to be the prototype of mechanical minesweeper equipment. During the Second World War, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States and other countries have successively installed a variety of minesweepers on tanks, such as the "Scorpion" strike minesweeper installed by the United Kingdom on the "Matilda" tank, and the excavation and blasting minesweeper installed by the Soviet Union on the T-55 tank. These minesweeping equipment is generally bulky in construction, slow in mine clearance, and difficult to transport and install.
From the 1950s to the 1960s, mechanical minesweeper equipment has developed rapidly, not only reducing weight, simplifying structure, but also simple connection methods and significantly improving performance. In the following decades, the performance of mechanical mine-sweeping equipment in terms of operating width, depth and personnel protection has been greatly improved, and more professional mine-sweeping equipment has emerged.
In 1994, Finland developed the ra-140ds series of minesweepers, designed with "three defenses" devices, which can disable anti-tank and anti-infantry mines in areas of 3.4 meters wide and buried at depths of more than 37 centimeters.
The BDV minesweeper developed by the Swedish Army Combat Engineering Agency can detect mines buried 50 cm underground; the "Hurricane" minesweeper device they installed on light tanks can rotate at a speed of 1200 rpm when working, hitting mines and submunitions and detonating them.
In addition, Sweden has a large number of advanced demining equipment, such as the "Mine Reveler" minesweeper can be disassembled into an independent part for long-distance transportation; the "Spitfire" mine clearance system developed by Boa Ketterbiller has an independent power system, and the success rate of mine clearance is quite high.
It is well known that the Soviet Union had the strongest armored force in the world at that time, and was also equipped with a large number of mechanical minesweeper equipment, with an average of one minesweeper or minesweeper for every 3 to 5 tanks. At present, Russia is still developing a new generation of mine-sweeping equipment, and its imr-2m mine-clearance equipment is installed on the T-72 tank to replace the imr engineer combat system installed on the T-54/55 tank.
The US military has also developed a variety of demining systems, such as minesweepers, minesweepers, minesweepers, and detonators. For example, the miniature minesweeper developed by Lockheed Martin can open up a 1.25-meter-wide safety passage; the 4.2-meter-wide minesweeper in the front of the "Grizzly" combat engineering vehicle can remove mines more than 30 centimeters underground.
In this field, the Husky series of mine detectors designed and manufactured by South Africa's dcd pm company is also representative, and its outstanding operational capabilities have been affirmed by multinational military users.
All kinds of minesweeper "sharp weapons"
In addition to manual and mechanical minesweepers, the more mature minesweeper methods in the world also include blasting minesweeping and electromagnetic minesweeping.
Mechanical demining equipment generally includes three types: minesweeper plow, minesweeper and mine-sweeping chain.
The minesweeper is like an iron rake that can plow out mines and push them out of the path as they advance. The most representative is the Royal Sapper Minesweeper, which is composed of multiple pieces of coulter and has a deflector, which can automatically adjust the height of the coulter to ensure that the minesweeper is complete.
Compared with minesweeper plows, the minesweeper chain is somewhat "rough". For example, Sweden's scanjack-3500 minesweeper and Germany's "wild boar" armored minesweeper are designed with minesweeper chains. Taking the "Wild Boar" armored minesweeper as an example, it rotates at high speed through 24 chain hammers linked to the roller, hits the ground with high frequency, smashes or detonates mines buried more than 25 centimeters deep, and can open up a safe passage of about 100 meters long and more than 4 meters wide in just 15 minutes to ensure the mobility of armored troops.
Speaking of minesweepers, the most typical is Sweden's rutted minesweeper, which is made of high-strength steel, weighs 6 tons, can use its own weight to crush the mine, can withstand 20 explosions of anti-tank mines, and the efficiency of sweeping a single pressure anti-tank mine is more than 95%. Israel once installed it on the "Merkava" tank to open a passage in the Minefield of the Syrian Army.
Although mechanical mine clearance has certain results, it takes a relatively long time and is easy to attract enemy fire to concentrate on attack, so in the course of engagement, the explosive minesweeping method is generally used to clear the minefield and open up a safe passage for the troops in a short period of time. Britain's blasting and demining system "Big Pit viper" can use a powerful shock wave to detonate or throw mines beyond the path, with a maximum launch distance of 350 meters, which can open up a passage of 7.3 meters wide and 183 meters long at one time.
With the continuous advancement of technology, explosive, tactile pressure-resistant, anti-blow electronic fuze mines appear in large quantities, such mines will only explode when receiving special signals such as sound, light, electricity and other special signals released by targets such as tanks, and mechanical minesweepers and blasting and sweeping equipment are helpless to it. Therefore, various countries have successively developed the "electromagnetic signal simulation mine clearance system", which simulates the electromagnetic, infrared and vibration signals of the tank to detonate electronic induction mines within a few meters in front of the vehicle body.
In this process, it has also been found that a single demining equipment has become difficult to adapt to the needs of war. As a result, multi-functional mine-sweeping equipment came into being. Such as Russia's BMR-3M armored minesweeper, France's K2D minesweeper system and so on. Take the French k2d mine clearance system as an example, it is also equipped with a minesweeper, electromagnetic signal simulation minesweeper system, rocket blasting minesweeper and path marking device, when cleaning up the minefield, it can not only launch a blasting minesweeper to open up a channel, but also use the minesweeper and electromagnetic signal simulation minesweeper system to eliminate the "fish that slipped through the net", and can also use the path marking device to place indicators to mark the channel range for the follow-up troops.
At present, many countries already have the ability to develop and produce multi-functional mine-clearance equipment. A certain new type of integrated mine-sweeping vehicle developed by China, which integrates mechanical mine clearance, blasting and demining and electromagnetic mine clearance, has been deployed to carry out demining tasks in the Lebanese peacekeeping mission area.
Unmanned minesweeper equipment into a "new favorite"
In order to minimize the risk of officers and soldiers in mine-clearance operations, many countries have begun to develop unmanned mine-sweeping equipment and have achieved many results in this field.
Since the late 1980s, the US military has successively developed unmanned mine-sweeping equipment such as "Devil's Claw", "PikePort", and "Mine Hunter". In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has used dozens of detection, demining and detonation robots, including seven minesweeping robots from the First Panzer Division that detonated more than 1,000 mines.
Compared with traditional mine-sweeping equipment, mine-sweeping robots have the advantages of small size, large role, strong environmental adaptability, and relatively low mine-sweeping costs. For example, the "Comet 2" robot developed by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology uses acoustic radar technology to detect not only ordinary metal shell mines, but also plastic mines that metal detectors cannot find.
In 2016, Russia's "uran-6" multi-functional mine-sweeping robot was installed in its army engineer unit, which set a variety of "kung fu" in one, and can install a variety of mine-sweeping tools such as section rollers, bulldozers, grippers, forklifts, rear shovels and robotic arms, which can clear mines, detonate, and extinguish fires, which greatly improves the mine-sweeping efficiency of the Russian Army's engineer units.
In recent years, in response to the United Nations peacekeeping operations, Slovakia, Norway and other countries have also developed remotely operated mine clearance robots.
At present, some of the mine-sweeping robots developed by China have been put into international humanitarian mine-clearance tasks under the framework of the United Nations, which has been well received by the international community. In this field, China has not only developed minesweeper robots with independent intellectual property rights, but also derived a variety of models that adapt to different terrains. For example, it is suitable for minesweeper robots that operate in relatively flat areas such as deserts, plains, and Gobi, and minesweeper robots that are suitable for operation in environments such as bushes, mountains, hills, and woods.
It is foreseeable that with the continuous application of high technology, especially the development of artificial intelligence, in the near future, more "smart" unmanned mine clearance equipment will continue to appear. In addition to the traditional mine-sweeping equipment, there will be more highly intelligent robots operating on the minefield in the future. They may be able to form a "self-organizing" and "self-coordinating" system, make efficient decisions, cooperate with each other, and complete large-scale demining tasks in a short period of time. (Qiang Tianlin, Zhu Mengyuan)
(Editor-in-charge: Li Qiangqiang, Gao Hongxia)