Mine (land warfare)

Template:TOC-right In land warfare, a mine is an explosive device placed on ground or attacked to an object in which the user wants to establish a barrier, and which will explode due to some physical effect by a passing person or vehicle. In other words, mines are rarely used in an actual battle, but emplaced to attack at some future time.

As opposed to naval mines, the effect of land mines can be improvised in the field. Improvised explosive devices (IED), also called boobytraps, are similar to a land mine in that they usually lie in passive wait for a target. It is possible to build simple mines out of commercial and random military components and available explosives. warfare, naval mines are sufficiently large and complex that they are designed by engineers and produced in factories. Improvised explosive devices (IED) are quite common in land warfare, along with land mines that are produced by industry.

One of the attractions of mines is that, in many applications, do not need labor or maintenance once emplaced. In tactical use by conventional armies, however, it is generally assumed that minefields will be covered by manned weapons, or possibly with instruments that summon combat aircraft. In unconventional warfare, however, mines may be left unattended and used for area denial or the psychological infliction of terror of the unexpected.

Some mines, often using explosively formed projectiles, may be kept under observation and only triggered by an act of an operator. These are called command-detonated mines and are generally exempt from legal restrictions on land mines.

Mines were originally emplaced by hand. Today, they may be delivered by aircraft, guided missile, or artillery. Mines fired into an area usually have features to disarm themselves after a period of time, to be detonated only by contact with a large and heavy objects such as a tank or both. Much of the humanitarian concern with land mines regards simple antipersonnel mines that remain hazardous for long periods, and, after war's end, make an area unusable for civilian farming, transportation, and other mundane pursuits.

Mine sensing and detonation technology

The first mines were triggered by direct contact with the target. The mine fuze could be:

• Activated by pressure, as by a person stepping on it or a vehicle driving over it
• Pressure release, as when an object on top of the mine is listed. This usage, even with manufactured mine, blurs into the category of "boobytrap"
• Tension release, as when a taut wire is pulled or broken
• Intelligent sensing of characteristic sound profiles, magnetic effects of a large mass of metal, etc.
• Command detonated by an operator

Again blurring into boobytraps or specialized demolitions, the fuze could be intelligent. For example, when sabotaging a railroad, the enemy may learn to send heavy but essentially worthless, possibly unmanned, self-propelled cars ahead of a real train, in the hope of predetonating anti-railway mines. More intelligent mines, however, could be programmed so that they would allow the first few trains or cars to pass, and detonate only under valuable targets.

Legal aspects of the use of land mines

Mine ban treaties=

The 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, often called the Ottawa Treaty. focuses on banning antipersonnel mines. While there are many reports it applies to all mines, its very title focuses on antipersonnel mines.

Command-detonated antipersonnel devices are a gray area under the Convention. Purely command-detonated devices are widely considered exempt. The difficult situation is when they are used, for example, as part of the night defense of a temporary position of an infantry patrol. In such a case, they might be put out, on trip wires, for the hours of darkness, and then removed.

If this device is left permanently in an area containing civilians, it is a fairly clear violation of the Convention.

Principally over a perceived need for antipersonnel mines in the Demilitarized Zone between South Korea and North Korea, the U.S. has been unwilling to sign the Convention. Since the U.S. is taking a more of a support role in Korea, that decision may become that of the Republic of Korea. Improved sensors for a closely monitored area such as the DMZ also may obviate the military justification; if a sensor detects troop movement and artillery can be on the way in seconds to minutes, there might be no significant loss of capability by removing the mines.

Somewhat ironically, technology for mines made by countries with advanced industries may bring them much closer to a fail-safe configuration. "Insensitive high explosives", originally developed for the trigger mechanism of nuclear weapons, will fire only when a specialized, electrically powered detonator trigger. These explosives have not triggered in crashing airplanes or on receiving direct gunfire; if the detonator loses power, it is a reasonable assumption the mine is rendered harmless. One method of limiting the dangerous period is to use a battery with a deliberately short life, triggered only when the mine is put in place (e.g., a temporary minefield scattered from an artillery shell).

Unfortunately, IEDs will not use such insensitive explosives or fail-safe detonators.

Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

Protocol I of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons prohibits the use of weapons, including mines, that leave fragments in the body that are not detectable by X-rays. A number of lightweight, air- or artillery antipersonnel had had plastic casings to reduce weight; it was relatively rare, certainly by a conventional military, to create a weapon that deliberately was hard to detect in the body.

What would be more common is to use a wooden or plastic body to make a buried mine harder to detect and clear. The effect of its fragments in the body was incidental to the main reason for using the nonmagnetic, nonradio-opaque material.

Protocol II, which overlaps with the Ottawa Treaty, bans the use of land mines and boobytraps that pose a special hazard to civilians.

Protocol V of this convention deals with explosive remnants of war, an argument for land mines that disable themselves.