Fighting land mines with darts

There's no easy way to clear a path through a minefield. Options range from tracked vehicles pummeling the ground with whirling flails to individual soldiers gingerly poking the ground and then defusing mines one by one. The Defense Department, cognizant of the need for both speed and safety in beach landings and other operations, is looking at another alternative--masses of small darts raining down on suspect terrain.

The April edition of Popular Science offers a quick look at that laboratory project, which falls under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research. (The ONR isn't just about ships and submarines--its projects range from Humvee replacements to the biomimetic robolobster.) In this scheme, a precision-guided bomb would release 6,500 darts that would cover a 60-foot circle and penetrate two feet of sand or seven feet of water, the magazine reports. The seven-inch Venom darts would either detonate the land mines through impact or, with their coating of a compound called DETA, cause mines to essentially overheat and self-destruct.

(An undated document from the ONR project leader, Brian Almquist, offers more insights on the effort.)

The system won't be ready anytime soon, however. Backers say the military probably wouldn't deploy the system until 2015, pending further R&D and the inevitable bureaucratic back and forth.

And even then, don't count on the dart system helping out with humanitarian, postconflict demining efforts, where low-tech approaches are still the order of the day. It's bound to be far too expensive.

[densbtly]

'bureaucratic back and forth'

Would part of that 'bureaucratic back and forth' actually be 'concern' that if we explode a precision guided bomb over a 60 foot circle, and out bursts a gazilion little projectiles, (once called 'shrapnel') that can penetrate a yard of packed sand... the effect on the poor schmo that happened to walk into the 60 foot area after the bomb was deployed..... would be ????

[Whatsizface]

The poor schmo...

is probably the guy planting the mines in the first place. Turning him into a gazillion little projectiles would be a good thing, don't you think?

We know where these mine fields are. There are usually signs marking them. I'm sure that clearing a 60 foot circle of people wouldn't be an issue.

Whatsizface

[twotall610]

Now I know

Now I know where all of those "Yard Darts" are being used.

[jmetzger]

what about gpr

darts ...ouch

What about groundpenetrating radar...mounted on helicopters with a gyroscope base, or small airships????