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| Afghanistan |
| Drones Used to Find Toy-Like "Butterfly" Land Mines |
| 2019-01-03 |
| [TerrorismWatch] "A type of land mine called the "butterfly" has a particularly insidious reputation for two reasons: It is known for killing or crippling children who may pick up what looks a lot like a green plastic toy, and its mostly nonmetallic construction means it often evades traditional mine detectors. Butterfly mines’ light-touch detonators go off easily if stepped on by a fighter‐or farmer‐and their relatively small charge often maims people without immediately killing them. More than a million Russian-made PFM-1 land mines‐the most common butterfly type, possibly inspired by similar U.S. weapons deployed during the Vietnam War‐still litter Afghanistan after decades of conflict. During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, military helicopters dropped swarms of these mines, whose "wings" let them flutter to the ground. This created instant minefields blocking high mountain passes, contributing to the problem of land mines and unexploded ordnance responsible for killing or injuring more than 30,000 Afghan civilians since 1978. In recent years children have made up the majority of victims killed or wounded by such weapons in Afghanistan. Land mine clearance usually involves a careful, meticulous, time-consuming process of interviewing local residents and then sweeping suspected areas twice on foot, using handheld mine detectors. The estimated costs of removing a single mine can range from $300 to $1,000‐and even confirming a patch of ground is safe without finding any mines costs money. But now, early tests by a group of U.S. researchers have shown they may be able to make the process a lot faster and more efficient by using a thermal imaging camera mounted on a quadcopter drone. "The only way to clear mines is to poke every inch of the ground," says Alex Nikulin, assistant professor of energy geophysics at Binghamton University in New York. "But we can tell you where to poke."" |
| Posted by:newc |
| #1 Weren't these called toe-poppers before? |
| Posted by: gorb 2019-01-03 00:51 |