Posted on 07/11/2002 7:15:07 PM PDT by Have Ruck - Will Travel
An armoured car fitted with powerful laser beam designed to blast landmines and cluster bomblets from the battlefield will shortly begin testing at an army proving ground near Waynesville, Missouri.
The US Army is developing the laser-based de-mining method, dubbed Zeus, as a way of clearing mines left on airfields and roads during battles or by retreating enemy forces. The trials will be the first chance for the Army's de-mining experts to see if the technique works as planned.
The idea is to clear the numerous devices that modern warfare leaves strewn around on the ground. Small mines are often scattered from helicopters and trucks, and cluster bombs spray out hundreds of smaller bomblets, many of which fail to explode on impact.
"When dropped on soft ground, you can get dud rates of 30 per cent," says Owen Hofer of Sparta, the firm based in Huntsville, Alabama, that is developing Zeus for the Army.
Green beam
The laser is mounted in a turret on top of one of the Army's all-purpose armoured "Humvees". A soldier sitting at a console inside the jeep uses a joystick to point a low-power green laser beam at the target.
They then switch on a more powerful solid-state infrared laser of the type used for industrial cutting and welding, which delivers between 500 and 2000 watts through the same optical system as the green targeting beam.
When the beam strikes a mine, the heat burns off the explosive or detonates it. Sparta says its own tests on dummy munitions show Zeus should work on mines with metal or plastic cases, as well as unexploded artillery shells and bombs.
It reckons the laser will be able to destroy landmines and bomblets from between 25 and 250 metres away. Laser beams cannot penetrate soil, so it won't work against buried mines.
Total clearance
One of the challenges of building Zeus is preventing it from overheating. Industrial lasers are usually cooled by a continuous flow of water, but that luxury is not available on the battlefield, so Sparta has had to develop a closed-cycle cooling system.
But however well Zeus serves the military, it is unlikely to meet the needs of civilian de-mining organisations, says Harry Thomas of the humanitarian de-mining programme at Warwick University. De-mining during military action is a very different business from clearing up after a conflict, he says.
The laser would doubtless miss some mines, and while armies expect casualties, civilian farmers do not. They want their land cleared completely. And even if it cleared all surface mines, that would still leave buried mines or others that had become covered by dust, sand or vegetation.
Ruck
Most mines will have a primary means of detonation and 2 secondary ports for additional anti-tamper devices such as the M5 mouse trap ect ect. When you cook a mine it will burn like a flare till it hits one of those detonators. It does/did work well at the time....(late 89 early 90)
In my experience "finding" the mines is the problem as most have less ferrous metal in em that a filling in yer tooth. They are easily rendered safe by professionals versus the locals who work for pennies a day whapping the ground in front of em with a bamboo pole aka Bugs Bunny style.....
Granted plowing up Europe or Kuwait is gonna be tough but then its gainful employment :o) ......
Stay Safe !
That kind of employment I will gladly and gratefully leave to you professionals. I like my pucker factor just the way it is and do not need it readjusted to 0.0mm on a routine basis.
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