Land mines (sometimes called area denial munitions) are used to secure disputed borders and to restrict enemy movement in times of war. Tactically they serve a purpose similar to barbed wire or concrete dragon's teeth vehicle barriers, channelling the movement of attacking troops in ways that permit the defenders to engage them more easily. From a military perspective, land mines serve as force multipliers, allowing an organised force to overcome a larger enemy.

Anti-personnel land mines or APLs are widely considered to be ethically problematic weapons because their victims are commonly civilians, who are often killed or maimed long after a war has ended. According to anti–land mine campaigners, in Cambodia alone, mines have resulted in 35,000 amputees after the cessation of hostilities. Removal of landmines is dangerous, slow and costly; however, some countries maintain that land mines are necessary to protect their soldiers in times of war.

History

Around 14th century or 15th century, the Ming Dynasty started to make some primal modern mines with powder, which in form of stone, ceramic or pig iron.[http://news.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper148/20010406/class014800014/hwz355339.htm

At Augsburg in 1573, a military engineer by the name of Samuel Zimmermann invented an extremely effective mine known as the fladdermine. It consisted of a fougasse (or later, sometimes a shell fougasse, that is, a fougasse loaded not with stones but with early black powder mortar shells, similar to large black powder hand grenades) activated by a snaphance or flintlock mechanism connected to a tripwire on the surface. Combining the effects of a tripwire activated bounding fragmentation mine with a cluster bomb, it was devastating to massed attackers but required high maintenance due to the susceptibility of black powder to dampness. Consequently it was mainly employed in the defenses of major fortifications, in which rôle it continued to be used until the 1870s.The Origins of Military Mines, Major William C. Schneck, Engineer Bulletin July 1998

In Europe in the early eighteenth century, improvised land mines or booby traps were constructed in the form of bombs buried in shallow wells in the earth and covered with scrap metal and/or gravel to serve as shrapnel. Known in French as fougasse, the term is sometimes still used in the present day to describe such devices. This technique was used in several European wars of the eighteenth Century, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War.

The first modern mechanically fuzed high explosive anti-personnel land mines were created by Confederate troops of Brigadier General Gabriel J. Raines during the Battle of Yorktown in 1862.op cit. (As a Captain, Raines had earlier employed explosive booby traps during the Seminole Wars in Florida in 1840. HISTORICAL USES OF ANTIPERSONNEL LANDMINES: IMPACT ON LAND FORCE OPERATIONS, Roger L. Roy and Shaye K. Friesen, Department of National Defence Canada, October 1999) Both mechanically and electrically fuzed "land torpedoes" were employed, although by the end of the war mechanical fuzes had been found to be generally more reliable. Many of these designs were improvised in the field, especially from explosive shells, but by the end of the war nearly 2,000 standard pattern "Raines mines" had been deployed.

Improved designs of mines were created in Imperial Germany, circa 1912, and were copied and manufactured by all major participants in the First World War. In World War One, land mines were used notably at the start of the battle of Passchendale. Well before the war was over, the British were manufacturing land mines that contained poison gas instead of explosives. Poison gas mines were manufactured at least until the 1980s in the Soviet Union. The United States was known to have at least experimented with the concept in the 1950s.

Nuclear mines have also been developed, both land and naval varieties. An example is the British Blue Peacock project, while another was the U.S. Medium Atomic Demolition Munition.

Characteristics and Functioning

• firing Mechanism or other device (including anti-handling devices)
• detonator or Ignitor (sets off the booster charge)
• booster Charge (may be attached to the fuse, or the ignitor, or be part of the main charge)
• main Charge (in a container, usually forms the body of the mine)
• casing (contains all of the above parts)

Firing Mechanisms & Initiating Actions

A land mine can be triggered by a number of things including pressure, movement, sound, magnetism and vibration. Anti-personnel mines commonly use the pressure of a person's foot as a trigger, but tripwires are also frequently employed. Most modern anti-vehicle mines use a magnetic trigger to enable it to detonate even if the tires or tracks did not touch it. Advanced mines are able to sense the difference between friendly and enemy types of vehicles by way of a built-in signature catalogue. This will theoretically enable friendly forces to use the mined area while denying the enemy access.

Many mines combine the main trigger with a touch or tilt trigger to prevent enemy engineers from defusing it. Land mine designs tend to use as little metal as possible to make searching with a metal detector more difficult; land mines made mostly of plastic have the added advantage of being very inexpensive.

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. However, these self-destruct mechanisms are not absolutely reliable, and most land mines laid historically are not equipped in this manner.

Anti-handling devices (AHD)

Anti-handling devices trigger the mine fuse if someone attempts to tamper or defuse the mine. They are intended to prevent moving or removing the mine, not to prevent reduction of the minefield by enemy dismounts. An AHD usually consists of an explosive charge that is connected to, placed next to, or manufactured in the mine. The device can be attached to the mine body and activated by a wire that is attached to a firing mechanism. U.S. forces employ AHDs on conventional AT mines only and not on anti-personnel mines. The makes it somewhat safer to remove mines laid by US forces. Other countries may employ AHDs on both AT and AP mines.

Anti-tank (AT) mines

Anti-tank mines are designed to immobilize or destroy vehicles and their occupants. Anti-tank mines can achieve either a mobility kill (m-kill) or a catastrophic kill (k-kill). A mobility kill destroys one or more of the vehicle's vital drive components (for example, breaking a track on a tank) thus immobilising the target. A mobility kill does not always destroy the weapon system or injure the crew. In a catastrophic kill, the weapon system and/or the crew are disabled.

Anti-tank mines are typically larger than anti-personnel mines and require more pressure to detonate. The high trigger pressure (normally 100 kg (220 lb.)) prevents them from being set off by infantry. More modern anti-tank mines use shaped charges to cut through armour. These were first deployed in large numbers in World War II.

Anti-personnel (AP) mines

Anti-personnel mines are designed for use against personnel as opposed to anti-tank mines that are designed for use against vehicles, although they can damage the wheels or tracks of armoured vehicles.

Mine warfare

Since combat engineers with mine-clearing equipment can clear a path through a minefield relatively quickly, mines are usually considered effective only if covered by fire.

The extents of minefields are often marked with warning signs and cloth tape, to prevent friendly troops and non-combatants from entering them. Of course, sometimes terrain can be denied using dummy minefields. Most forces carefully record the location and disposition of their own minefields, because warning signs can be destroyed or removed, and minefields should eventually be cleared. Minefields may also have marked or unmarked safe routes to allow friendly movement through them.

Placing minefields without marking and recording them for later removal is considered uncivilized and is illegal under international conventions.

Terrorism

None of the conventional tactics and norms of mine warfare applies when they are employed in a terrorist role:

• The mines are not used in a defensive role (for specific position or area).
• Mined areas are not marked.
• Mines are usually placed singly and not in groups covering an area.
• Mines are often left unattended (not covered by fire).

The normal aim of terrorism - and to a certain extent guerilla warfare is to spread fear and panic. This can be achieved by a single mine left on a civilian road to be detonated by a civilian target which is clearly quite different from the normal military application.

One example where such tactics were in employed is in the various Southern African conflicts during the 1970s and 1980s, specifically Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Laying mines

Anti-tank minefields can be scattered with anti-personnel mines to make clearing them manually more time-consuming; and anti-personnel minefields are scattered with anti-tank mines to prevent the use of armoured vehicles to clear them quickly. Some anti-tank mine types are also able to be triggered by infantry, giving them a dual purpose even though their main and official intention is to work as anti-tank weapons.

Some minefields are specifically booby-trapped to make clearing them more dangerous. Mixed anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields, double-stacked anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines under anti-tank mines, and fuses separated from mines have all been used for this purpose.

Demining (Detecting and removing)

While placing and arming landmines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the reverse of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous. This is especially true of irregular warfare where mines were used on an ad hoc basis in unmarked areas. Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, because of their small size and the fact that many are made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to avoid detection.

Efforts to ban anti-personnel mines

The Ottawa Treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) came into force on March 1, 1999. The treaty was the result of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, launched in 1992. The campaign and its leader, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for its efforts.

The treaty does not include anti-tank mines, cluster bombs or claymore-type mines operated in command mode and focuses specifically on anti-personnel mines, because these pose the greatest long term (post-conflict) risk to humans and animals since they are typically designed to be triggered by any movement or pressure of only a few kilograms, whereas anti-tank mines require much more weight (or a combination of factors that would exclude humans). Existing stocks must be destroyed within four years of signing the treaty.

Signatories of the Ottawa Treaty agree that they will not use, develop, manufacture, stockpile or trade in anti-personnel landmines. There were originally 122 signatories in 1997; as of February 2004, it has been signed by 152 countries and ratified by 144.

There is a clause in the treaty, Article 3, which permits countries to retain landmines for use in training or development of countermeasures. 64 countries have taken this option.

As an alternative to an outright ban, 10 countries follow regulations that are contained in a 1996 amendment of Protocol II of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). The countries are China, Finland, India, Israel, Latvia, Morocco, Pakistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

Manufacturers

The ICBL has identified the following countries as manufacturing landmines as of August 2004. None are signatories of the Ottawa Treaty. ^*

• Cuba ^*
• Iraq (although production had presumably ceased since the invasion of 2003)^*
• Iran ^*
• India ^*
• Myanmar ^*
• Nepal ^*
• North Korea ^*
• Pakistan ^*
• Russian Federation ^*
• Singapore ^*
• Vietnam ^*

Of other states which are thought to have manufactured landmines recently:

• Turkey is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty.^*
• Serbia and Montenegro is now a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty.^*
• Egypt has unofficially stated that production ceased in 1988. ^*
• The United States has not manufactured anti-personnel mines since 1997, but a government statement in February 2004 stated that, "The United States will continue to develop non-persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines." ^*
• South Korea has stated that no mines have been produced since 2000. ^*
• An official from China stated in September 2003 that production has ceased there, since they have an ample stockpile. ^*
• In March 2004, a Libyan official stated that the country has never produced anti-personnel mines, but is known to have laid landmines in the 1970s and 1980s ^*
• A United Nations assessment mission to Peru reported that production of landmines in the country ceased in January 1999. Peru was one of the original signatories and to the treaty came into force for them in March 1999. ^*

The Soviet Union was accused of using mines specifically-designed to look like toys (to target children) in its conflict with Afghanistan. Some of the Soviet mines used were small, green, made from plastic and winged so that they could be deployed from planes, with the result that children often mistook them for toys, but others were allegedly manufactured of red and white plastic in the shape of toy trucks.

Trivia

• Ironically, the laying of land mines inadvertently proved a positive development in Argentina and The Falkland Islands. This is because the mine fields, laid by the sea during the Falklands War have proved favorite places for penguins. They are too light to set off the explosives and took advantage to breed in areas where humans would not dare enter. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that there has been some effort to avoid having the mines removed by offering to finance mine removal in regions where mines are a persistent danger such as in Cambodia. Planet Ark

See also

• List of landmines
• Demining
• Mine clearance agencies
• Improvised explosive device
• Cluster bomb
• Naval mine

Mine-clearing organizations:

• HALO Trust
• Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
• United Nations

Anti-mine organizations:

• Roots of Peace
• International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL)
• ICBL landmine monitor: http://www.icbl.org/lm/
• War Child International

Controversy articles:

• Land mine controversy of Afghanistan

References