¶ … underground location of landmines complicate detection? Landmines are notoriously difficult to detect due to being buried underground and often-in hostile environments. Contrary to 'above ground' investigation of weapons or bombs that, given their miniscule size, are in themselves challenging to discover, they, at least, can be sniffed out by thoroughly trained and vigilant dogs. Concealed explosives can be detected at limits that are as low as a few ppb (parts per billion) since the detectors search for insignificant and infinitival molecules. These searches, however, occur to objects that are 'above ground' and the searches take place in countries that seek to obliterate terrorism. Landmines, on the other hand, pose far more of a threat since they may be anywhere underground and are usually existent in hostile environments. We, therefore, have approximately 100 million landmines that go untreated on planet earth, and just as several are dealt with, tenfold more reappear elsewhere.

Niemann and colleagues (2000) calculate that the inherent problems impeding us from detecting and removing the landmines are reducible to three components:

(a). The deposition of new mines; (b) the very limited technology that we posses that enables us to detect mines, and (c the very limited funding that enables us to create the needed new technology and the expense of creating this technology on a sufficiently massive scale to deal with the numerous...

To compound the situation, no detector exists that can detect mines under all circumstances and at sufficiently high inspection speed.
On the other hand, and on a more optimistic note, technology is producing increasingly more complicated and state-of -- the -- art instruments such as the YXLON International X-Ray GmbH. X-ray backscatter technology which differs from other detection methods in that it is a direct imaging technique. The scatter signal is directly proportional to the material density of the irradiated volume and as such has a high detection probability and a reduced potential for false alarms. It is a far improvement over the famous mine-probe, which is still commonly used, but it is extremely dangerous as well as immensely time-consuming. Metal detectors, another method, were likewise problematic for the user in hat hey were dangerous and provided a high rate of false alarms. X-ray backscatter technology is a huge improvement. Nonetheless, even though a trained operator is able to identify landmines almost immediately, success is best on friendly grounds. On hostile grounds, when landmines are the property of terrorist-friendly nations, such technology may be more clumsy and difficult to use (due to socio-political circumstances) and there are still physical limitations.

What effect does new technology have on the cost of removing landmines?

One of the problems as stated with creating new technology is…