Land mine
A land mine, or landmine, is an explosive weapon often concealed under or camouflaged on the ground, and designed to destroy or disable enemy targets as they pass over or near it.
[2] Land mines are typically pressure activated, exploding automatically when stepped on by a person or driven over by a vehicle, though alternative detonation mechanisms are sometimes used.
The use of land mines is controversial because of their indiscriminate nature and their potential to remain dangerous many years after a conflict has ended, harming civilians and the economy.
As with modern land mines, they were "victim-operated", often concealed, and complicated attempts by the enemy to remove the obstacles by making them vulnerable to projectiles such as spears.
To maintain the siege and defend against the reinforcements, Caesar formed a line of fortifications on both sides, and they played an important role in his victory.
They were used by the Jin dynasty in China at the Battle of Zhongdu to slow down the advance of Genghis Khan's army; Joan of Arc was wounded by one in the Siege of Orléans; in Japan they are known as tetsu-bishu and were used by ninjas from the fourteenth century onward.
[15] A 14th-century military treatise, the Huolongjing (Fire Dragon Manual), describes hollow cast iron cannonball shells filled with gunpowder.
[16] The wad of the mine was made of hard wood, carrying three different fuses in case of defective connection to the touch hole.
[17] Another victim-operated device was the "underground sky-soaring thunder", which lured bounty hunters with halberds, pikes, and lances planted in the ground.
The percussion cap, developed in the early 19th century, made them much more reliable, and pressure-operated mines were deployed on land and sea in the Crimean War (1853–1856).
[24] Tens of millions of mines were laid in the Second World War, particularly in the deserts of North Africa and the steppes of Eastern Europe, where the open ground favored tanks.
[25][21] In the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, the Germans prepared for an Allied attack by laying about half a million mines in two fields running across the entire battlefield and five miles deep.
The main method of breaching minefields involved prodding the dirt with a bayonet or stick at an angle of 30 degrees to avoid pressuring the top of the mine.
[27] In the Korean War, land mine use was dictated by the steep terrain, narrow valleys, forest cover and lack of developed roads.
[34] In the First World War, the Germans developed a device, nicknamed the "Yperite Mine" by the British, that they left behind in abandoned trenches and bunkers.
Some types of modern mines are designed to self-destruct, or chemically render themselves inert after a period of weeks or months to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties at the conflict's end.
In the asymmetric warfare conflicts and civil wars of the 21st century, improvised explosives, known as IEDs, have partially supplanted conventional land mines as the source of injury to dismounted (pedestrian) soldiers and civilians.
The injuries from the anti-personnel IED were recently reported in BMJ Open to be far worse than with landmines resulting in multiple limb amputations and lower body mutilation.
After a certain period of time, either the charge dissipates, leaving them effectively inert or the circuitry is designed such that upon reaching a low level, the device is triggered, destroying the mine.
[51] This initially resulted in heavy South African military and police casualties, as the vast distances of road network vulnerable to insurgent sappers every day made comprehensive detection and clearance efforts impractical.
[50] South Africa is widely credited with inventing the v-hull, a vee-shaped hull for armoured vehicles which deflects mine blasts away from the passenger compartment.
According to Laurence Rees "Curt von Gottberg, the SS-Obergruppenführer who, during 1943, conducted another huge anti-partisan action called Operation Kottbus on the eastern border of Belarus, reported that 'approximately two to three thousand local people were blown up in the clearing of the minefields'.
Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, due to their small size and many being made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to evade metal detectors.
The treaty was the result of the leadership of the Governments of Canada, Norway, South Africa and Mozambique working with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, launched in 1992.
Thirty-six countries, including the People's Republic of China, the Russian Federation and the United States, which together may hold tens of millions of stockpiled anti-personnel mines, are not party to the Convention.
[68] Submunitions and unexploded ordnance from cluster munitions can also function as land mines, in that they continue to kill and maim indiscriminately long after conflicts have ended.
Before the Ottawa Treaty was adopted, the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch identified "almost 100 companies and government agencies in 48 countries" that had manufactured "more than 340 types of anti-personnel land mines in recent decades".
[69][70] As of 2017, the Landmine & Cluster Munition Monitor identified four countries that were "likely to be actively producing" land mines: India, Myanmar, Pakistan and South Korea.
Development of systems such as Termite, by arms firm EMC Operations has led to criticism from proponents of past multilateral agreements against the placement of land mines and submunitions due to expectations of similar long-dormancy period issues after systems break or fail after it was announced that vehicles would likely be armed to destroy static targets, rather than focus purely on demining efforts.
[74] Reconstruction and development of important structures such as schools and hospitals are likely to be delayed, and populations may shift to urban areas, increasing overcrowding and the risk of spreading diseases.
