Land mine detection methods and technologies

¶ … 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 mines in existent. 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 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 mines in existent. To that end, scientists are feverishly working to produce equipment that is low-cost, efficient, and safe to use.

Besides the high cost of creating and distributing such equipment, traditional landmine instruments are also extremely dangerous and time consuming. A simple and inexpensive landmine detection system that the Netherlands is working on involves developing a radar system, similar to the X-ray backscatter technology, that can see through solid earth and be used to safely and cheaply clear vast tracts of earth of landmines.

A single landmine may cost as little as a dollar to clear using traditional methods, but the actual task of arduously locating it and making it safe (that can create complications to human life whilst doing so) can raise the cost of labor to $1,000 and beyond. As van Genderen and Yarovoy of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Delft University point out, this exorbitant price multiplied 100 million times over and infinitely makes this a horrendous predicament. Innovative technologies such as the X-ray backscatter technology mentioned above may be effective but are, likewise, costly to use. Researchers in the Netherlands are, therefore, working at a ultra-wideband radar that whilst being just as effective may be crucially less costly to employ (Science Daily, 2007).