A typical anti-tank landmine is circular, and a vehicle's wheels or tracks, which make up only a small proportion of its total width, must actually press on the mine to activate it.

By comparison, it would take 30 sappers 60 minutes to lay a 1,000 yard minefield consisting of 655 bar mines weighing a total of 7.2 tonnes.

It was reported that they disabled a number of M60A1 Rise Passive Patton tanks and other armoured vehicles belonging to the United States Marine Corps, even when these were fitted with mine-clearing ploughs.

[3] The British Army has since been using bar mines simply as breaching frame charges, for instance to blow holes in tough compound walls in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2012, a parcel of forty bar mines being shipped by rail on a Ministry Of Defence (MOD) train from DMC Longtown to Oxfordshire disappeared while in transit.

Twenty-eight were recovered promptly alongside the line near Warrington, but twelve (approximately 100 kg of RDX) were missing, Counter-terrorism officers together with the Royal Military Police led the enquiry.