The Painful Challenge of Demining Ukraine
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- čas přidán 20. 10. 2023
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Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Writer: Josi Gold
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Animator: Mike Ridolfi
Animator: Eli Prenten
Sound: Graham Haerther
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
References:
[1] www.globsec.org/sites/default...
[2] www.washingtonpost.com/world/...
[3] www.globsec.org/sites/default...
[4] cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards...
[5] web.archive.org/web/201102180...
[6] cat-uxo.com/explosive-hazards...
[7] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-62#:....
[8]www.gichd.org/fileadmin/uploa...
[9] armourersbench.com/2022/09/18...
[10]www.defense.gov/News/Releases...
[11]man.fas.org/dod-101/sys/land/...
[12]www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/C...
[13]www.researchgate.net/publicat...
[14]www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Ph...
[15] revistajaraysedal.es/en/ukrai...
[16] www.iaea.org/sites/default/fi...
[17] www.halotrust.org/where-we-wo...
[18] archives.the-monitor.org/index...
[19] www.unmas.org/en/programmes/a...
[20] www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...
[21] www.halotrust.org/latest/halo...
[22] media.defense.gov/2020/Jan/31...
[23] www.hrw.org/news/2020/02/27/q...
[24] www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...
[25] journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5...
[26] www.humanitarian-demining.org/...
[27] www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
[28] www.researchgate.net/profile/...
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Whoever looked at helicopter seeds and thought "hey that could safely touch down mines" is a real piece of work
the PFM-1 is just evil, its basically perfectly designed to kill children, it even look like a toy.
Hwat¿
@@theonlyalan731They're saying the person that took the seeds which sñowly fall after deployment, and turning them into weapons, is a real bastard.
I mean, from an practical and efficiency side, it’s a pretty good idea. And their probably pretty cheap to produce as well.
From an ethical side, maybe not, but at the end of the day, once war breaks out, ethnic goes out the window.
@@MistikCoThat is a truism, but it doesn't apply here War didn't just "break out" in this case where Russia decided to steal land and use tactics suspiciously similar to the Soviet era genocide. And these weren't developed mid war. This was someone seeing post genocide demining efforts in Cambodia and in peacetime came up with a way to make it worse for innocent civilians after the war but not significantly more effective against soldiers.
Ukraine recently came up with a fairly clever way to detect buried mines with drones. In the evening, the mines give off more radiant heat than the surrounding terrain, which enables infrared capable drones to see them to target them safely from above. Might not work for all mines, but apparently fairly effective and innovative.
If nothing else, it will help locate mine fields and their extents.
Only works for AT mines. Anti-personnel mines are significantly harder to detect.
@@stoyantodorov2133harder, but still different materials give different heat signatures
@@dakotareid1566
The problem is the size, not the material. Thermal cameras have much lower resolution, making it much harder to see details (unless you fly very low, meaning you cover a much smaller area). But that's no even the main issue. If an object is ambient temperature you don't see it on a thermal image. And small objects like anti personal mines are at ambient temperature pretty much immediately after a temperature change.
@@superdauI mean, you’re correct on half of this. However, the material construction matters a lot for thermal detection. And plastic has very low emissivity, making thermal detection difficult. Add to that the fact that they also have low mass (as you mentioned) and thermal detection of anti personnel mines is a nightmare.
This is so tragic, it makes my skin crawl to imagine not being comfortable to walk through the lands of my country. What a disgusting weapon.
US used and the Ukrainians are using Cluster munitions which are much worse and far more
just lands? that happened to my cousins. after they abandoned their home in the libyan civil war. the vagner put a trap in the house in the water well. it exploded on my cousins and injured 2 badly and the 3ed got small scratches because he was far. and lucky he was far because he was the one who took them to the hospital. imagine going to your home your bed or bathroom and one of these things is there. i am against the use of anything like that no matter the reason. it will effect the Innocent more than anyone. especially the children
@@lukmanalghdamsi3189 Lol as if thats supposed to be even close to almost the entirety of Vietnamese and laos village filled with hundreds of millions of small cluster munitions filling the entire countryside killing anyone who even dred to step in their homes backyard forget farms etc Over 300,000 were killed in laos and that's not counting the victims of agent orange( biological weapons) among the at least a million victims of vietnam war
And if you think that's not even close to s bad you might wanna check out about the Pakistani genocide of 1971 (bankrolled by USA) or in India the Kashmir Hindu exodus of 1990
Its better to be dead than endure that
@@sanskar9679 Why are you making this a trauma competition
@@sanskar9679 agent orange is a chemical weapon fwiw
I'm from Costa Rica, the only or one of the few countries with no military at all. A couple of years ago, some armed forces from Nicaragua, mandated by the Ortega dictatorship invaded to try to "regain" (it was never theirs) a small island called Isla Calero. They set many mines along the shore and inland... Which hurt many civilians. Like I said, we have no military forces, so Landmine-clearing equipment is not something we have laying around, nor is our police force trained for that. Thankfully an operation, with help from a nearby US Marines ship, helped push back the invading force and helped clearing the mines, which had maimed some locals and hurt several children. Mines are terryfing, especially if you're simply a civilian.
I wasn't aware of any intervention by the USMC in Isla Calero. Do you have an article or other resource you could point to for more information?
... why don't you have a military? Did your country learn anything from that?
@@johnflux1 consequence of civil war and deployment of military against the civilian population, among other things.
@@johnflux1 No military to throw a coup=democracy for over 70 years, in South America. Sounds like a worthy tradeoff to me.
@@johnflux1 Maybe you should learn some history buddy.
I've always been fascinated by the iron harvest of ww1 in France and Belgium. Its crazy to think of all that ordinance just left out there.
WW2 too. In France, you can find trucks who felled (military bridge) in rivers with their loads (ammo...)
Some part of Nord and Pas-de-Calais still have water polluted by nitrate but the level are not dangerous for adult (those sources are not used usually) and still have some buried bombs. A year ago, they find one in an important train maintenance workshop and they had to evacuate the zone temporarily for removing it
There's still white phosphorus being washed up in the baltic and north sea from all the munitions being dumped in there.
@@odindimartino597After world war two, the allies dumped millions of tons of ammunition into the sea, right off the german coast. That was a problem for the future but that future is almost now. All those metal casings have been rotting away for 70 years and will start to release their content. They even dumped chemical weapons.
In WWI a much higher percentage of artillery shells were duds than in later wars.
I honestly got nervous just watching the demining footage in this video, and I'm fully aware that it's on CZcams and therefore won't contain any graphic material. Can't even imagine the bravery of the people who actually have to do this.
Defusing explosives is a tough job. There's some footage from Afghanistan where you see people literally hug IEDs made from Soviet artillery shells becaused they'd rather be reliably vaporized than be maimed and have to live on with that.
@@hammerth1421 I don't doubt it whatsoever. Was thinking the same thing on the clip of the guy laying with his top face-half in line of sight of the mine he was disarming, even though it might have been in a training exercise. I would be absolutely shitting myself, even in a training exercise with a mine I knew wouldn't maim me, or best case scenario, instantly kill me.
I used to work with a woman whose husband died disarming unexploded ordinance. It wasn't in a war zone, it was a military training ground in New Zealand. It was a messed up story where he recommended that it be remote detonated due to its current condition, but he was ordered to go back in and disarm it.
the small ones are the scary ones. The larger ones are anti-tank so you don't have to be as careful with them since they're specifically meant to not go off from just personnel. The small ones are far more sensitive and harder to find...
@@sage5296except after war is over those anti-tank mines will be triggered by regular cars.
The helicopter seed mines should probably be placed under some separate arms control convention. Seems a bit too cruel.
Also the other plastic mines created to be hard for metal detectors to detect.
Im fairly certain that all use of mines has to be documented like how many of what type are in what area. Plastic mines are also illegal as far as I know.
You can use mines in war but it has to be documented and also METAL mines. More modern mines can be remote detonated or turned off so that they become safe for later clearing or friendly troops to pass by them.
A lot of mines are delivered via artillery now and both Ukraine and Russia are using them in large numbers. It's the thing about war, there is no such thing as good vs bad, just bad vs worse. Wars are rarely about what's in the interest of the people, they are almost always about power and control of those in charge.
@@nucleus691 For an unrelated project I recently read the declassified U.S manual on mine use and its pretty clear that documenting where you put your mines is secondary to their movement restriction. The manual explicitly states to remove markers if a field is going to end up in enemy control, and that mines moving from their last known location is a known and acceptable risk. In the case of air deployed, artilery deployed, or other remote mine deployment (the manual focused on the VOLCANO system) you cannot possibly know where your mines are beyond circling an area on the map and saying "Here" which isn't very helpful when it comes to demining operations.
While russia doesn't use them, its also worth noting that chemical mines exist and are still used in some nations, the U.S manual covered their use and markings which is somewhat interesting.
UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) is another very real risk that ukraine is going to have to deal with, as both U.S given cluster munitions and russian cluster munitions turn into defacto landmines with each fired, as some of the bomblettes don't always detonate. Self-defusing mines such as the ones the U.S cited their use of also can fail, but its once again deemed worth the risk for their wartime utility.
The most fucked version I've heard of were some of those helicopter mines being made out of red plastic, the goal being enticing children to pick them up.
My uncle was an RTA senior NCO. He had been through Khmer Rouge era and early stages of Southern insurgency as an engineer, a "Honorary" EOD technician and a platoon sergeant. Usually volunteered for dangerous jobs.
My grandma once joked with him saying that "You love this job so much, it's gonna get you killed." Lung cancer is what got him in the end.
Khmer Rouge er? Huh?
I was in Cambodia a while back, and was well and truly warned to stay on well beaten paths for this exact reason. Horrifying is not a strong enough word for these things.
It's not horrifying, your brain has just been rotted with anti-Western propaganda.
Actually PFM-1 is known as "Лепесток" (Petal) in Russia and Ukraine, and I've never heard other nicknames before. Most people in these countries only know it by this nickname, rather than by its official or other names. Its just strange how no1 mentions this name on any English articles. It looks more like petal, rather than butterfly too.
бај💪💪
Nothing strange. Nobody will mention cluster munitions here as well. And they are basically mines.
Could be a weird translation thing.
I think it's important to bring up the French area called the Zone Rouge, literally the Red Zone, an area that even after more than a century after World War 1, it's still uninhabitable for humans because of the damage done to the land, and the prevalence of mines. It's not just recent conflicts that have scary results with mines, it's century-old wars that still have lasting ramifications for the land
Then add to that there's the Iron Harvest in northeast France and Belgium, where farmers regularly find themselves digging up unexploded ordnance, and bring it to the side of the road to be disposed of.
i am libyan. back in the civil war, the vagner troops booby traped many civilians house roads building and more. one of this places where my uncle house. the explosion hit two of my cousins and nearly hit the eye of the third. these things should be illegal no matter what. kids are the most affect by it
😂😂 and you are living in new york, right?
@@bprogressive i live in tripoli libya. but if so. what is funny? this video is not meant to be funny
Russia should be illegal.
@@bprogressiveWhat's so funny? Hit your head or something? Drunk?
@@bprogressiveThat’s a real piece of shit comment.
There was a forest near our district in Chernihiv we liked to walk in. Not anymore, despite it was checked for mines already
The real tragedy is that its not just mines, all bombs artillery shells and missiles have failure to detonate rates. bombs, shells and mortars from ww2 are found all the time.
here's the point of this being mine centric....yes all those others CAN do that, mines will regardless, they are made to.
it's not an odds game like everything else you mentioned.
lets just use random numbers, say 10 thousand artillery shells are fired but only 8 thousand went boom immediately, the remaining 2 thousand would randomly detonate over the next say 50 years and because tracking what shells go boom and which dont is impossible for even one artillery battery much less hundreds,plus the innacuracy of normal artillery and locating them without tech and luck plus time is impossible.
now take 10 thousand mines, most are placed in certain areas and depending may have more extensive records taken, all 10 thousand are guaranteed deadly untill disposed of, but finding and knowing the risk is significantly simpler vs other things.
there's more but im to tired to remember.
why is that the real tragedy lol
@@bloodlove93 can artillery shells explode spontaneously though? I thoughts that maybe due to the environment, these shells would simply become a dud with no possible way of exploding, but I could be wrong.
That thermal vision after a hot day showing mines underground is a game changer. It's pure physics. Mine can be made from plastic but the thermal conductivity will always differ from the default of the surrounding ground. Of course, for that we need high tech (enterprise) thermal vision, not the simple ones from DYI drones but I believe this will solve the problem after the war is over. (add some AI and it could mark every mine on Google Maps to be honest) - technology is there 💪
I seriously hope this greatly advances and helps them a ton with this awful problem. I hope Ukraine can get a ton of donated help in the form of these thermal technologies
From my understanding even with more advanced infrared technologies there are some serious limits. Smaller mines can still be hard to detect both because they return to ambient temperature quicker and because infrared cameras have inherently lower resolution compared to standard visible light cameras.
Infrared light has longer wavelengths so the pixels in the sensor have to be larger than the pixels of a standard camera. Mines that are buried deeper under ground can also pose a problem as they won't be as affected by the temperature changes. I'm sure the drones will still help quite a bit though.
I read a paper showing that thermal cameras were capable detect even larger mines near the ground at close distances due to temperature differences of soil poured on them while Ukraine is known to use drones with thermal sight to detect large mines that are just left on the ground but smaller mines and mines designed for reduced IR signature will be an issue that will be hard to deal with by thermal vision...
Cancelled Future Combat System's rapid deployment hybrid vehicles which promo videos you can watch on the internet had shown intent to connect vehicle's sensors to object recognition software for automated IED detection, something which Ukraine trying today but I am fairly skeptical that this would solve much because countermeasures to fool computer object recognition can be easily implemented even by kids, though they will reduce speed with which current mines can be effectively deployed on masses...
There are being developed foliage penetrating radars to deal with guerrilla forces in jungles, so some kind of phased array radar of sufficient power working on a wavelength that would be capable of penetrating upper layers of soil yet with enough resolution to recognize most of the mines is likely to be employed on drones in the near future because there is quite a demand for such thing in these days around the world, and it is something that may be interesting to develop (with help from Western subcontractors) even by civilian drone start-up from Ukraine that may not be interested in the production of killing machines, yet may be waste of human potential to use people capable to develop such game changer for frontline service when they may be more valuable for war effort by sticking to their area of expertise.
The unfortunate reality is, that mines already got a head start in the form of a counter, as most modern mines did not wait until somebody steps upon them but work as compact hard to spot fixed autonomous drones capable send alarms when they detect the target and attack it with a ranged weapon like a grenade or guided missile launcher, which also means that some of these are fully capable attack even low flying aircraft like drones and helicopters and with solar power battery re-charging and high grass may be quite pain to deal with considering that they can report enemy contacts back to the enemy that can send curious cats some arty barrage welcome party.
80 years later we in germany havent found all the unexploded bombs.... i cant imagine the how long its gonna take ukraine to clear all of the mines even if the war would end today
mostly they are found when digging fundaments or similar, we seem to have accepted the existence of the stuff in DE and don´t actively seek it. Near my hometown Augsburg 25000 (iirc) had to be evacuated when a big one was found.
One silver lining is the bombs used in the 2nd world war dug them self deep so that’s the reason why they are so difficult to find mines are rarely more than 6”deep so they can with a lot of work been mostly completely removed
Last summer in Ukraine, many mines would heat up during the day due to the hot sun, making them easily visible through thermal imaging cameras in the evening and at night. I thought that was pretty clever.
Ukrainian’s are always Clever 🇺🇦:)
Thank you for raising this! It is hard even to deliver humanitarian help.
I want to thank UK and US volunteers who already demine our land 🙏
Thank you! You are heroes!
Just read " OPERATION BARREL ROLL " on wikipedia and you wont thank USA ever again. It dropped 260 million bombs on LAOS over a period of 9 years, the most heavily bombed country till today. Out of which 80 million bombs left unexploded from which 20,000 people have died or injured and are dying every year as we speak from those leftover bombs.
It's going to take 750 years and Russia will definitely be the one doing most of it after a year.
Mines suck. The biggest issue with them is they are too damn effective, as also seen in Ukraine. They are literally the most effective use of your military budget. The world really needs an anti-mine autonomous robot (Roomba), but dealing with complicate terrain is the hardest part of robotics. we could also use an alternative, but the only thing I can think of that could replace them is a pop-up AI-controlled gun turret.
the problem is giving vision to a robot to find a plastic death toy who can or not be buried on the ground without any further clues
@@giovane_Diaz That is a hard. However, you don't necessarily need to even search for them with vision. Like the flails, you can design a robot so it triggers any it passes over. This means the engineer can focus on it covering a large area with limited human interaction. Searching for deep mines can be a secondary step with specialized equipment.
@@squarewheels2491 The problem is, then a mine is designed that has a delay, so that when a tank or deminer rolls over it, it instead explodes as the main part of the vehicle passes over it, thereby being much more likely to kill the vehicle and the crew. (These already exist and are being used in Ukraine atm)
You either watch too many sci fi movies or play too many military video games. The things you are speaking about are over the top. 😂😂
Theoretically - yeah. Practically - we kinda have "perfect" mine searches - dogs, rats, etc.
Some may say this is animal cruelty. Maybe. But i say that those animals can save life of thousands other animals, including humans.
The longtime costs and risks are enormous. I'm from Germany and we still have bombs from WW II everywhere. It is pretty common that train stations, roads and cities are evacuated when a bomb has been found. And this will go on for decades. Thankfully usually no one is harmed anymore.
In Ukraine, we have WW2 mines as well(
before 2022 every year someone got injured/killed
but yeah, that was nothing compared to the current situation with mines(
As a Ukrainian, I am VERY GREATFUL to you. Thank you. Such initiatives are common among us, but seeing western youtubers like you taking part warms my heart
Glory to Ukraine! Keep defending the truth!
He inspired me to also donate to the Halo trust.
I hope the best for your people.
Slava Ukrayini.
@@Wonders_of_Reality Ukraine is a garbage liberal place which is the only reason our country is defending them
It's going to take 750 years and Russia will definitely be the one doing most of it after a year.
The reconstruction of Ukraine will take decades. Demining, too. It took 30 years to clear mines from most villages and farming areas in Cambodia but forgotten minefields still lurk in fields and in the jungle.
The butterfly mine is easily the worst. It literally looks like a toy.
Works like one too
Thanks for bringing this topic up man! It's hard to hear about such things...
Those butterfly mines are diabolical
The Butterfly mine really reminds one of the german shoebox mine of ww2. An undetectable amount of metal in a wooden box designed to blow peoples feet of.
They even had 100% glass mines
The Australian military has attachments for the front of bushmasters and other military vehicles like dozers and the like. They are like a road roller, the one with many small wheels.. it rolls out front and sets off the mines, it’s full of hydraulics to soak up the explosion.. I don’t know the exact ins and outs how they work, I have just seen them at work when we have worked the them servicing the engines.
A very clear explanation of the breadth and depth of the problem. Thanks!
I have so much respect for the work you do and for this channel. Thank you for the monumental effort you put into educating and inspiring people. Mythbusters sparked a generation of engineers and scientists, I have no doubt that your channel is (and has been) doing the same.
Anyone with military experience will know that Kyiv must be using about as many Mines as the other side. Mines delivered from the US military industrial complex, that has flooded the world with war for a century
And this video mentioning the US mostly as an anti-Mine researcher is a shill for the US military industrial complex
Russia started using them 1st, whats your point?
Russia is the one that has majorly used landmines.
And if the Ukrainians deploy mines, they have their own mines their own engineers can clear them.
@@tomcluny8423I guess the opposite... Russia is defending occupied territories for about a year, before that there were attempts to continue offensive, so there were no need to use mines
And yes, now Russian just fills with mines everything...
First time I regret watching one of your fantastic videos. Knowing that such a thing as a helicopter seed exists deeply saddens me. Def one of those wish I had stayed in the cave moments.
PFM-1 carried by crows in Kharkiv region
drones with infrared cameras can also spot mines in the evening during warm weather as the mines will glow hotter than surrounding soil . that needs to be combined with a gps map and a way of recording all this so a detailed map can be made that shows the exact location of mines. perhaps some fixed beacons can be added to an area for more detailed locations down to the inch.
Only works if the mine isnt underground
Yes, drones seem like a good way of clearing mines. Equipping them with ground penetrating radar should be fairly cheap and help spot more mines.
Sad to imagine losing a loved one or having them maimed due to this conflict. I know I happens in other parts of the world too..
This is a Russian imperialistic war against Ukraine, please call it correctly
They should take every single one of those mines that their "neighbor" placed in their country, dig it up, and relocate it to some field in the neighboring country.
Maybe if farmers there suddenly started to go boom, someone would wake up and think twice about littering in their country
Oh well. This war would have been over before it began, if Zelensky didn't tease Russia with joining NATO, now wouldn't it?
@@TheRealBillBob Dude that comment is a bit silly.
First of all, you dont get to attack your neighbor if he decides to join a club that you dislike.
Second, Ukraine was nowhere near to being a member of NATO.
I would even argue that the chance of them to be able to join NATO has increased significantly because of the attack on them.
@@TheRealBillBobUkraine was neutral by Constitution before Moscow invaded in 2014, occupied Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, killed thousands.
You claim we "would be safer if we don't call police".
I’m currently studying with the Halo Trust in Ukraine to work in Mykolaiv and let me tell you-it’s hell. Searching for trip wires under air raid alarms and explosions is a nightmare. Children die and lose limbs almost daily in civilian areas because of russian mines.
Thank you so much to Real Engineering for supporting The Halo Trust, it does really make a difference ❤
Good luck out there friend.
o7
Thank you for bringing up this important topic
Different tone to this video, thank you for making it. It opened my eyes to things I didn't know.
An unmentioned cause of injuries and death is unexploded ordnance or UXOs. These can be any explosive. The biggest problem is UXOs from cluster bombs, which drop hundreds or thousands of bomblets per weapon. Even with self-disabling mechanisms, about 2.5-5% remain, which still creates a major hazard to everyone, including friendly forces.
Cool story.
Russia is laying antipersonnel mines all over the place and has fired millions of mortars, artillery and autocannon rounds wherever they go. LOTS of UXOs. Cluster bomb duds are mostly irrelevant.
the US was responsible for a hell of a lot of this in Vietnam and Laos
@@gloverelaxisyep
Worse if your cluster munitions have a high dud rate, such as... 30% or so in some cases for russian munitions.
@@Destroyer_V0 And all that shit only because of some moron Putin has a Napoleon complex. All of the excuses he brings are inferior to what the reality is - he wants more land for his tiny country. Everything else is hubris. Putin wants himself a big statue like his long dead predecessors.
As Ukrainian I'm very grateful to you for this video and your donation. I'm also grateful to people from all over the world for any help to people of Ukraine.
I’m so sorry what muscovy has done to Your country this is deeply depressing.
@@ssg9officalAfter over a year of constant air-raid sirens I'm now scared of even mildly loud noises and buzzing. Today someone was using lawn mower and I thought it was yet another kamikaze drone...
@@Serhii_Diemientieiev This is devastating and heartbreaking to hear putin and russia must pay for the suffering and trauma they caused.
@@Serhii_Diemientieiev 🤣
@@ftk2589 Wow, I can't live a normal life anymore. How funny.
Excellent vid-documentary, really great info.
OTOH there's _loads_ of drones available now for low-level unmanned overflight: I think that there's scope for mine detection with foliage-color (near-IR + green) detection as used for crop health and archaeology surveys, and with RF resonance tuned to specific mine models. False positives aren't much of a problem if you're not putting someone in harm's way to re-check it with a better, more expensive drone.
Kinda yes. Kinda not. What you mentioned, isn't cheap. Not *that* expensive but still. There may be *millions* of mines just in single field. Even at near perfect conditions, its going to take weeks, months or even years to demine.
From a grunt's perspective here. We train in how to navigate minefields or suspected minefields, civilians don't have that training. Don't quote me on this because I can't find the source, but something along the lines of 97% of people wounded or killed by mines are civilians, and the vast majority are children. Let's not even start talking about UXOs.
this will probably be learned at school and kindergarten in Ukraine beside the regular stuff, sad reality but necessary. Small children not yet in any institution or clueless are forever endangerd. I hope russia will be punished ....
@@thingamabob3902Yes it is. Saddest thing that at some point we think about this: "This won't happen with me/classmates." That actually scares me. *We got used to something we should have never ever get used to*
And pussia... It won't be really punished. Unfortunately. Just yet again regime change, new name, tada, no consequences whatsoever
I was thinking that a great start to clear a field of anti-personel mines would be to send up a drone with a good camera to search for the uniform shapes of mines, there's some *really* good algorithms out there. Glad to hear that's somewhat already going on and they're working on making it less manual.
I'm a Mechanical Engineer and drones are probably my favorite thing when I'm not creating or fixing random shit, I'd love to work on something like this, helping clean up from the wars instead of fueling them.
This comment has reminded me that I'm behind on creating random shit, time to boot up fusion 360
Big metal mines also a glowing in IR spectrum, but smaller with plastic case not so strong
lower wave lengths might have a better shot at piercing the ground and detect patterns common specifically for mines, but they need to be closer to the ground to be reliable as far as I can tell. almost like a hovering drone model just grazing the land
There is a company in Australia that developed a drone shark detection system that has ai and cameras configured in ways that can spot them in conditions that humans couldn't. I know it wouldn't be the same, but l wonder if they could help with the development of a landmine detection system for those butterfly mines. Determining a shape from messy data seems similar to both, even if the conditions seem rather different.
This man's use of reference is absolutely brilliant ,well done 👍
"The heart of man is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it"
US used and the Ukrainians are using Cluster munitions which are much worse and far more
mines are genius weapons for large scale warfare. i dont think ppl are gonna stop using them even if they were banned
It's really amazing the naivety of people who think you can stop something by "banning" it.
@@steven-el3sw exactly cause who tha hell is gonna enforce it?
@@steven-el3sw Most of the countries of the world have agreed to the ban on antipersonnel mines, and the US's specific reservation allowing for their use is only for Korea. Outside of that theater, the US does not use antipersonnel mines.
It seems that's somewhat effective, if it can get one of the world's great powers to mostly stop using them?
@@VioIetShift don't be naive. The us doesn't use Anti-Personnel mines because they don't need to. I guarantee you if they got into a fight with a near peer, and it got even a little desperate the mines, gas, napalm and every other warcrime will fly.
@@VioIetShift You make a valid point although I would respectfully counter that your conclusion is not without its qualifications: *somewhat* effective, only *one* of the great powers, *mostly* stop using them. Not exactly a slam dunk as to the effectiveness of bans.
Furthermore, I would argue the use of mines represents a classic case of "the prisoner's dilemma" where the only "rational" course of action is to defect from the ban and use them. As OP pointed out, they're just too effective to not be utilised.
At any rate, considering we are most likely headed for some WW3-type global conflict (think Ukraine, Gaza), I guess we won't have to wait too long to see if the ban on landmines works or not.
Wint work with the Maim Mines but I watched news where in the summer they let the sun heat the regular ones up and at night picked them up on FLIR
I imagine one of the challenges is knowing which areas have been thoroughly scanned and which haven't been, leading one to never really be sure, and not knowing where to focus de-mining efforts. Perhaps networked photogrammetry solutions could play a role in building a distributed mapping of the terrain as people scan the ground inch by inch. If the scanners had a relatively cheap solution similar to Meta Quest VR headset's photogrammetry so that the data is uplinked to the cloud, it could help eliminate some of the recurring fog of war (or fog of post-war some day when it's over, hopefully). Someone should get a hold of the Zuck and convince him to apply their work to this kind of humanitarian effort 🙂
Thank you very much for bringing ot light this awful challenge of ours. Probably quite a lot demining will be necessary here too in Crimea after deoccupation and this video gave a bit of inspiration to look into developping/training CV algorithm to detect at least the surface once
You will NEVER get Crimea back. It's rightfully Russian
Not right thing but, As VietNamese:"First time?"
A long time ago, I heard about detectors based on quadratic NMR for detecting nitrogen rich materials, like explosives. You are not mentioning this technic. Has it been abandoned ?
thank you so much for posting this
"Curious is the trapmaker's art - his efficacy unwitnessed by his own eyes."
Дякую, від всього Українського народу!
Thanks for your work RE and Halo!
i remember seeing "danger landmines" signs at a beach in the uk as a kid
me and my dad played a game of throwing stones past the warning fence
did you ever hit one?
What if we make a huge steel metal roller like made out of solid steel or concrete inside. The cylinder would be the size of a truck or house, constantly roll the field. If it explodes, it wont damage the cylinder that much. Put it infront of tractors or military vehicles. Other mines will trigger or just be flattened making them inert. I know there are these things called mine rollers but most I see are the size of a regular tire. Maybe it would be more effective if its size is larger? Just my two cents
The problem isn't having the technology for cearing an open field. Mine flails can do that quite effectively and reasonably fast. It's mostly a question of ressources and their allocation.
Once you found an open field to be contaminated, you can "just" call in a flail and plow the field from one end to the other. Problem here is scale. There's so many square kilomteres of fields that COULD be contaminated and just so many flails or rollers - and especialy personel to operate them. So you first have to identyfiy the contaminated ares, as there's just too many fields and not enough clearing ressources to just plow every field as a matter of cause. At lest not in the short run.
The other problem comes with rougher terrain. Most of those area-clearing systems just don't work in forrests, rocky terrian, or built-up areas.
another problem is that however thick you make it, some mines employ HEAT shaped charges and those charges can penetrate 500mm and more of armor grade steel. So after a certain time your massive mine roller will be deformed and pitted with holes making it either unreliable or blocks movement. The smaller mine rollers share the same fate but are quickly replaced.
How are you going to transport a piece of solid steel the size of a house from place to place?
That jack Russell is officially THEgoodest boy
I think drones with IR and color cameras that detect color variations may be useful in combination with machine learning/AI, also to use AI to read signals from metal detectors attached to evicale or robots like SPOT (Bostondynamics).
Excellent work, my man.
There really is not a good tactical or strategic reason to make antipersonnel mines so damn hard to detect. Militaries have tools to get through minefields anyway. Harder detection just makes it harder to get area 100% demined after.
For us who have Russia as a neighbor this conflict has reminded how effective weapons especially cluster munitions are. Very easy to justify their usage if dud rate is made as small as possible. Of course even your own usage of antipersonnel mines is easier to start if your enemy already litters your country with them.
It mines were easy to detect, then they would be practically useless on the battlefield. Second, not every military has the necessary tools to demine, especially when they are being bombarded by enemy fire. Then the effect of demining falls to 0%. You shouldn't comment on things you are clueless about. 🙄🙄
Naive.
Plastic mines are lighter = easier to transport = better logistics.
Remotely deployable mines are have to be light so you can shoot them further.
Plastic doesnt rust. you don't need to worry that your minefield will disintegrate on its own.
Plastic mines DO slow down demining process for your enemy, since there are plenty of situations where you can't bring heavy demining equipment.
27 likes for this? lol
Military History Visualized just did a video about this. Anti-mine vehicles have a lot of weaknesses, and when you are on the front lines, you can't afford to stand out too much, especially with how surveillance drones are everywhere and there are thousands of artillery pieces just waiting for a target. Even in Western modern MBT chassis vehicles that are designed for much higher crew survival rates compared to Soviet and Russian designs, you don't want to catch an artillery barrage or an anti-tank RPG.
In an all out large scale war, the only thing that matters is the return on investment. Plastic is cheap to use, so it's going to be used. Human lives are just another resource like anything else. Modern Western armor tends to favor crew survivability because a well trained and experienced crew is worth a lot due to thier effectiveness and efficiency. Russia isn't exactly in the game to win the hearts and minds of others, so they don't really think about the long term cost of cheaping out in the short term.
What sheltered lives many people live to forget that human lives have an actual value when you peel back the veil of societal norms.
I'm sure we'll be able to develop some form of drone based surveyor using either or both a magnetometer and a ground penetrating radar.
Couple that with some machine learning and you might have yourself a pretty good mine mapper.
thanks for showing this!
That 30 day auto-detonation thing sounds interesting
PFM-1 mine wich was in video hast 7 day selfdestruction, but in not work everytime
They using chemical reaction to self desrtruct themselfs
can you imagine a world where people put such dedication and ingenuity NOT to kill other people or make them suffer? imitating helicopter seeds for destruction... disgusting
US used and the Ukrainians are using Cluster munitions which are much worse and far more
That would be a world without humanity
@@icantthinkofaname4265 you really can't imagine a world where people are kind towards each other? instead of destructive?
Well, many technological advancements are a result of war or the preparation of war. So, a world without war, is one that might have technological stagnation or at the very least, one that is a bit less technologically advanced as our current world.
As for the helicopter death mines, ignoring ethnics, they are pretty cost efficient and easy to produce and spread, in other words a very efficient weapon. And in war, efficiency is all that matters for a weapon.
@@WillDa713We already live in a world where people are kind to each other, they just aren’t ONLY kind to each other. In a world with Billions of humans with different motivations and goals with limited land and resources, conflicts will arise. Until perhaps the resources of space can be accessed, conflict on Earth will never disappear. Even if we did have unlimited land and resources, people would likely still find other reasons to fight.
This is a very good use of your reach. Thank you.
About 15 years ago, there was a project by the UK government to build a fairly low flying airship (dirigible) with ground penetrating radar to help identify landmines. However, later nothing much came of this effort.
for anyone wondering howm long it can take to clear mines the danish west coast was one of the most heavily mined areas of the nazi atlantic wall even tho ww2 ended in 1945 the danish beaches werent officially declared mine free until 2012 and even then there are still reports of suspected mines each year during high tourist season
It’s the same here to a lesser extent in london with unexploded bombs records were kept and all the bad ones were removed but they are always being found during construction
10:15 This kind of voluntary anti-mine treaty is never going to work. 🤷 Mines are simply too damn cheap and effective as a weapon of war. Medically treating crippled mine victims (as they're deliberately designed to maim instead of kill for maximum fear & financial impact) and performing mine clearing operations are both HUUUUGE financial burdens on an enemy power in exchange for an extremely minimal output cost to actually make and lay the mines in the first place.
Until something comes along that radically changes that cost/benefit calculus, mines will continue to remain a CRITICAL component of modern warfare. 🤷
unfortunate truth, I agree... There's no better way to control a piece of land when it comes to cost in manpower and munitions. At least newer AP mines are designed to disarm themselves after a period of time. For the USA it's not more than 30 days OR they must be able to be disarmed remotely.
That's horrible and sadistic. But also level headed as an explanation.
This is going to be such a huge problem for such a long time to come. I hope the advances in AI and Automation make a difference in clearing them out.
WW2 and in some cases even WW1 bombs are still being found every now and then. Considering how long ago that was you can only imagine for how long this problem could plague Ukraine.
Mines are cheap and **super effective** at slowing down advances so it's no wonder they're being deployed in huge numbers. Sadly they'll be claiming innocent victims for decades to come.
This is the military focused content I like to see on your channel.
Unmentioned kind of landmines - those that trigger when they sense a magnetic field of metal detectors.
ooh thats scary effective.
Thank you for sharing the story about war in Ukraine. For whatever reason, most popular science channels decided to ignore this topic.
As Ukrainian, I can assure you that this is as important or even more important now, 600 days in this inhumane war, as it was a year or two ago.
9 years
Thank you for covering the topic and helping out my beloved neighbor in this difficult time. Lots of love from Poland
Has anyone seen the finale episode of Mythbusters? It would actually be super useful here
They tested the myth that a hovercraft can pass over a minefield unscathed. It was one of the best-working experiments they ever tried.
The idea:
Get hovercraft
Attach net with weights to the back
Drag it around a large area
The weights will detonate any personnel mines well after the hovercraft passes over, presuming the net is long enough
Hovercrafts can go extremely quickly, and can drastically speed up the de-mining process
I seriously misread the title as "deniming" and thought that diagonal pattern represented the texture of blue jeans.
ukrainian civilian here, thank you for talking about this problem!
Butterfly mines have to be the most negligent and evil thing to ever be created for war. Russia just leaving all of this just shows how badly they got humiliated.
Allegedly Ukraine was the one deploying them the most, to the point the HRW was "urging Ukraine to probe its use of banned mines"
I believe the first versions of this were used by the Nazis. They have the same name.
Butterfly mines where originally american and got copied during the Vietnam war
@@noname-wo9yy Incorrect. World War 2 they were used by the Nazis against the Allies in Europe. World War 2 started 1933. The Vietnam war was in 1945. Where did you get this false information?
@heideknight9122 blu 43 dragon tooth. Wow it took a 10 second Google search.
@Real Engineering I think that there may have been a typo on the date that the Kakhovka dam was destroyed 😜
Seismic "Thumpers"? ... Those mobile setups where they raise heavily weighted masses, (steel & concrete weighing several tons), up to 10 to 20 metres high above the ground, then letting it freefall downwards, landing with a heavy thump, allowing sensitive measurements of the underlying strata of the surrounding area. Could the use of these possibly help in the search & destruction of some types of land mines?
I understand people denouncing the use of land mines. They’re a horrific weapon for a civilian population after the war. But, from a military perspective, it’s hard to not use victim detonated mines. If you don’t use them, you risk defeat to fast moving assaults. Minefields slow assaults, allowing for them to be more easily repelled. This means that, no matter which side you are on, you almost need to use them. In Ukraine’s case, the government has to deploy mines on its own soil to avoid the genocide that would come with defeat. The only realistic way to avoid having land mines from plaguing areas where combat took place is to avoid fighting any wars. But, sometimes, war is forced upon you. This is Ukraine’s fate.
well most professional armies will record the placement of minefields and the usage of explosive ordinance ... I doubt russia puts in the slightest effort to do that or simply doesn´t care and will never give information where they laid mines out of spite.
@@thingamabob3902Sadly, but you definitely right.
Ukraine has signed the ban on anti-personnel mines though; anti-tank mines are far less problematic than anti-personnel mines. Would their defense of their country have been notably more effective if they hadn't agreed to the anti-personnel mine ban?
@@VioIetShiftbit anyway they are using cluster munitions and ap mines
@@karaluv_ravenovich Cluster munitions yes - the ban on those was never that politically popular. The AP mines they use are command detonated Claymores or equivalents, which are not covered by the ban.
Great video, as ususal!!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Kakhovka dam was destroyed in early 2023, not 2022.
yep. 06/06/2023
@ 14:05 is that an anti-handling device going off after he yanked the mine off of it!?
I guess he lays like that so his giant steel balls protect all the vital organs.
Truly horrifying stuff. But great video!
farm fields will be the easiest. rollers and flails to essentially add a pre-plowing/disking/planting operation. just have to go over teh field one extra time with a demining attachment.
still risky, but they have to cover every square inch of land anyways, and they are going to plow/plant teh land afterwards anyways so who care if you brute force it a bit. They can demine a large area relatively quickly.
But this still leaves tree lines, foot paths, yards, playgrounds, dirt roads, forests, etc.
Unfortunately, not specialized vehicles would be and practically are destroyed with the first antitank mine that they found. Worse than that there's already several fatal incidents among farmers, why tries to demine their land driving the tractor.
@@vladyslavkarpenko9372 Speaking as a combat engineer who specialized in finding and destorying such things in actual combat.....
"not specialized vehicles would be and practically are destroyed with the first antitank mine that they found."
......this is false.
yes, a bad design will get destroyed, but a good design will not. A good design uses sacrificial elements extended off the front of the demining vehicle with a blast shield. We have used many experimental solutions in combat, and modified them, and even made our own in the field with success. don't underestimate a mechanically inclined farmer.
Just becasue some people have died, doesn't mean it can't be done. How many of those farmers weren't trying to demine and were actually just trying to farm and hit a mine? those don't count as failed demining attempts.
@@SoloRenegade Thank you for clarifying your statement. The farmers that I had mentioned, engineered some minimal guard and not tried to de-mine just by wheels of the tractor itself, but made a mistake about their expectations of mine explosion power.
That's a good idea to collaborate with real combat engineers, at least to check the farmer's idea. That will help to prevent fatal mistakes.
P. S. Farmers who killed or get injured by mines during land work counted separately. I understand that this is the other situation.
Love to see a fellow countryman doing well
A friend of mine is building a demining robot for Ukraine. We could use some help in sizing a motor correctly. Please reach out if you want to help.
i suggest contacting some Ukrainian officials, not CZcams comments.
you'll probably get a lot further.
assuming they want whatever you have vs everything they use,you'll find out only by asking them,but don't worry, considering all the begging and pleading they've done from day one im sure they'll accept it....if you pay shipping.
The plastic personnel-targeting mines are a special kind of evil that I didn't know existed
I love you. For the quality of your video, and now for donating proceeds to this good cause.
One really depressing thing is that Russian minefields are laid at much higher densities than would typically be used by the US (according to their doctrine). So much higher that it's ridiculous. You can determine the likelihood of someone being able to walk through a minefield by looking at the mine-density, the depth of the minefield. This can give you the odds of making it from one side to the other without encountering a mine.
US Doctrine works under the assumption that minefields work in conjunction with active defense (artillery, entrenched machine guns, etc.). Because of this, US minefields can be surprisingly low density. You only need to slow an enemy down rather than get every single person with a mine. While this absolutely does not make US minefields safe, it does lend a level of control and makes clean up far easier.
Russian minefields by contrast are designed to be able to slow or halt an advance without active defense. As such they're designed to be deep and absolutely chock full of landmines. This makes clean up FAR FAR harder as they use orders of magnitude more mines.
Russia as a nation has always been pure evil.
Tell me another joke.
They should add electronic sensors that detect the density of common VOCs from mines to the minesweeper.
Seeing underground is hard to do. That is why they do it the way that they do it.
The organics you'd want to detect, like for example TNT, aren't all that volatile. You'd have to have very sensitive equipment and that would probably give you constant false positives because of all the general "war dust" hanging around the area.
I wonder would it be possible to use drones / helicopters / other vehicles equipped with lasers to help with this? Scan an area with machine vision and mark positions. Then later try to cook the ground where there may potentially be mines.
I wonder if microwave frequencies could be used for better penetration and to target and detonate specifically the compounds used in the explosives?
Obviously videos about the iron beam system have captured my imagination
WW2 was almost 100 years ago and in Germany you still have to be careful in some areas walking around forests because of mines/bombs that didn't explode on impact. Every once in a while some areas have to be evacuated because they found an old bomb (but I haven't heard of any exploding badly in recent times)
goddamn
I wonder if sonar can be used to detect mines. Mines are standardised objects, so if you measure examples of them perhaps you could recognise their shapes in the signal return of a sonar probe placed underground. Maybe even train AI to do it, AI has been really good at accurately interpreting signals in the past (think AI cancer detection from medical scans).
I think for demining there was not much effort or money put in the science. Cynically said who cared about cambodia or afghanistan. Maybe this time it will lead to a flood of new technology. Ive seen mentions of microwave application to detonate mines and AI controlled drones with magnetic sensor arrays to "do a roomba" over a field ... hope the "mine business" will flourish
What about using Lidar to detect them. It detects ancient buildings in forest.
It can detect where the ground was disturbed ages ago in fields and towns
not ground disturbed
yes radiation bouncing off harder objects
Lidar uses light which cannot penetrare ground.
oh realy@@dennispremoli7950 ok
I don’t think LiDAR has that kind of resolution
@@Gvozd111yeah iirc you're right on that one. It's a blurred grey scale display that needs a technician to read it properly
I had a thought for what I think could be a really good mine clearing tool, based on a children's toy. The first step is to build a giant, mostly solid concrete cylinder, with a metal pipe in the axis, similar to a steam roller. Then, build a device that will spin up this cylinder to a high RPM, and then release it, sending it rolling forward up to hundreds of feet on stored rotational momentum. My hope would be that its large weight would set off mines that it passes over, and while it would destroy trees and damage crops and such, it wouldn't cause much permanent damage. If it did set off a mine, it wouldn't likely cause that much damage to the concrete roller, and that damage could be patched relatively cheaply. All the moving parts would stay safely back on the sidelines.
The problem with that is that it would only work on a completely flat terrain. You have to touch the surface venly everywhere and it's practically impossible.
@@Makrangoncias If it's heavy enough, that shouldn't be a huge problem, but also they could use alternating layers to it to give it some play.
6:37 princess Diana had one of those
Imagine being blown up by 7.5kg of tnt because you are Eddie hall and weigh 175kg
If we can't prevent military superpowers from developing/deploying mines, we should at least mandate that anyone deploying mines should bear the responsibility of keeping track of where they are and clearing them when their intended window of use has expired. Also nightmare fuel that Russia effectively has Widow Mines.
It is mandated. But we also mandate that they don't commit warcrimes but that doesn't seem to matter much. Definitely dosnt matter to the dictator in Moskow.
And how do you suggest we make that happen?
@@jukebox_heroperson3994 you dont have to have a solution to understand that there is a problem.
Not that many starcraft 2 players left XD
@@ralphwarom2514 I was hoping someone would understand my reference
already have a nebula account, but I recently got a mail for anual subscription. does the same donation work there as well?
Can you make a video on a carrier strike group?
Don't get why it hasn't been done yet but... Rough over-view map that to scale as possible. Drone with re-charge platform, that detects metal. And just notes down each location and transfers the information back. Sending it back and forth. You can scan vast regions a lot faster, you can restrict how high up it flies. And potentially, with a claw-grip drone, you can drop rocks/stones on suspicious mine locations to explode them. Since gravity does its trick.
Should be faster and more viable than human resources once enemy forces have retreated.
You can't detect metal from those distances. You need to get the coil really close. I think light, ground-based robots are a good idea.
10 000 000 small peaces of metal like shell casings , link , fragmentation , bits of wire , metal packaging scattered around on the battlefield, oh and there are also 16 mines in their someplace
As you said you dont get it.
I am glad you came up with something that satisfies you. Sadly it does not satisfy their needs.
Firstly a drone with propellers will make a lot of electrical noise and mess with a metal detector. Also ground is not flat and most drones do not have the ability to measure their distance from the ground.
A ground based drone could work but they would be destroyed by anti personnel mines regularly.