Army researchers building ‘smart’ landmines for future combat
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Soldiers of the 789th Ordnance Company prepare a cache of landmines, mortars and 107mm rockets to be disposed of by a high explosives charge, near Besmaya region southeast of Baghdad. Army researchers are designing smarter, safer and more mobile landmines for future operations. (Army)
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. – Army leaders see a future battlefield
with networked minefields a commander can see from across the globe
through satellite communications and that can be scattered in minutes
but also retrieved and reused when needed.
The push is an effort to keep landmines of various types in the weapons portfolio while still meeting the agreements made to get out of the old school “dumb” landmine use.
Smart mines being developed now are a way to replace some of the aging
stocks in the “Family of Scatterable Mines” run by the Army’s Program
Manager Close Combat Systems.
The program actually
runs nearly half of all munitions from non-lethals to hand grenades to
shoulder-fired rockets and counter explosives equipment.
The portfolio, its challenges and what’s happening now were laid out
for attendees at the annual National Defense Industrial Association’s
Armament Systems Forum in June.
Top of the priority lists are some simple munitions needs — more hand-grenade fuzes and better shoulder-fired weapons.
But the big ticket items that need problem solving are how to use
“terrain shaping obstacles,” or landmines, that can be delivered to
close, middle and deep distances and then controlled to avoid the
problems of scattering mines across war zones and then leaving them for
an innocent passerby to trigger years or decades later.
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Small options such as the remote activation system used for current mine emplacements relies on radio frequency transmissions.
But, as Pelino noted, in a near peer fight it’s likely that adversaries will do RF jamming.
The Army has a host of terrain-shaping obstacles, everything from the
trusty standby Claymore mine which came online in the late 1950s and saw
extensive use in the Vietnam War to the Gator system, which can be air
dropped to take out everything from an individual soldier to a tank.
They’re also the anti-personnel area denial artillery munition, or
ADAM, mine that can be launched using a 155mm round from artillery. Its
cousin, the remote anti-armor munition, or RAAM, packs a bit more of a
punch but also can be delivered from anything that fires a 155mm shell.
Both are fired to the area of the threat and then roll out multiple
mines that detonate when the appropriate level of vibration triggers
them.
Pelino described the Modular Pack Mine
System, or MOPMS, like a minefield in a suitcase. Though coming in at
165 pounds, that’s a very heavy suitcase. A single radio-control unit
can run up to 15 MOPMS on the battlefield. They can also be hardwired to
a controller.
An upside to the MOPMS is it can be recovered and reused.
On the lighter side is the M86 pursuit deterrent munition. It was
designed for special operations forces to use when being pursued by an
enemy. Think classic films where the character scatters nails or an oil
slick to slow down their chaser, except with a lot more boom.
Only instead of firing from a cannon, the soldier has to arm the device and deploy tripwires for bad guys to stumble upon.
The Volcano mine system takes more of an industrial approach. Allowing a
UH-60 Black Hawk to create a 1,000-foot minefield in less than a
minute, Pelino said.
The problem with all of those
systems is they don’t currently meet treaty obligations and many that
had about a 20-year shelf life are pushing past 30 years now.
Most will still be in stock at 2035, as the Army uses updates to keep them serviceable, Pelino said.
The newer Spider System is one that allows soldiers to put in a
porcupine-looking system that gives 360-degree coverage to deny enemy
access to an area while also networking with other systems and a common
controller.
Future systems will look a lot more
like Spider and a lot less like pressure plate mines of the World War II
era or the venerable Claymore.
The future
minefield systems must have a 2 to 300km communications capability, an
ability to be switched on and off, remotely modified self-destruct or
deactivate mechanisms, self-report status so that users will know if
they’ve been tampered with or if a mine went off.
The Army also wants the mines to be able to not just blow up when
something rumbles by but also detect, track and engage threat vehicles
for everything from tanks to engineer equipment. Oh, and it must work in
all terrain and weather conditions, be easily trained and employed,
recoverable, reusable and affordable.
The standard
kit will include between half and a full brigade’s worth of mines to
block off areas for maneuver and prevent enemy flanking.
Source: https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/07/12/army-researchers-building-smart-landmines-for-future-combat/
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