As a Croatian, I'm really glad to hear these type of news. However, also as a Croatian, I don't quite buy the news. I'm sure great progress was made but it's never going to reach 100%; It's just the nature of these damn things in combination with our geography and where the frontlines were.
It means there are no known areas that are still littered with landmines, but yes, that's not a guarantee there aren't any.
Not Croatian but Bosnian, 2030 is our target for this milestone and we have to keep de-mining ~70 square kilometres every year to be able to hit that milestone.
I visited a friend in Sarajevo in 2014. Lovely small walkable city in a little valley, enjoyed the food and did some of the tours of old war sites inside the city and on the edge of the city. It boggled my mind then that the locals warned me not to go hiking through the pretty forest out of town because of land mines; it was hard to believe a country in Europe would have that problem in the 21st century!
European wars now all feel like a throwback to the 19th century. Even the maximally horrific wars of the 20th century feel outdated in light of trade being so much more efficient.
Economic aggression is a whole new kind of warfare and plenty destructive, but just saying "you stand on some dirt and we will kill you over it" is a pure waste.
People keep comparing the war in Ukraine to World War II, but they seem to imagine themselves to be Napoleon. Maybe France could have gotten richer by winning, but today that kind of attack is just lose-lose.
From America, the Yugoslavian war felt like re-fighting some Medieval grudge. I'm sure it made some kind of sense to them at the time.
I had never heard of the Zone Rouge, so thanks for sharing! I grew up in the USA in the 80s, and as a child, the first time I remember hearing of the problem of lingering landmines was in reference to countries such as Cambodia. Later I lived in Africa and eventually visited other continents. Of course I remember hearing of the war in Yugoslavia when growing up, but a dozen years ago when I visited Sarajevo, I certainly felt sad when the Bosnians told me about the ongoing problem because it felt like something I would have expected to be cleaned up by now in a developed country. Definitely a strong lesson on the long-term costs of war.
As German, I can say, as long as not someone used mines out of glass, they will rot away in some decades. We still have some woods where you could step on glass mines....
But happy to hear the news. Some years ago as I was urban exploring the airfield in Zeljava it has hit someone nearby the field. Happily I just saw the ambulance and the police.
True that. I used to work in the Netherlands, and sometimes it seemed like every other week the rail network was disrupted by a newly-discovered unexploded bomb, left over from the plastering the Allied air forces gave the Dutch railways.
Indeed. With landmines from 90's at least general areas are known, there's signage and if you're not being stupid by venturing way past signage it's all really safe to be around.
10 years is a long time, but 10 years after a war is not a long time. Damages to building still remains, mines and plenty of unexploded ordinances will remain, and psychological scars are still very strong.
Something I have really wondered is, why aren't there stronger incentives to build mines with a mechanism that disables them after a certain time has passed? There must be tactical and strategical reasons which are regarded more important, but surely the party using them for defending their own land ought to have an interest in not having to deal with this threat for decades after the war has ended, and an aggressor who wishes to take over an area should have the same incentives.
Or are the reasons technical, that it is simply too difficult to develop a reliable mechanism for disabling them?
“The Department will continue its commitment not to employ persistent landmines.
For the purposes of this policy, ‘persistent landmines’ means landmines that do not
incorporate self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features. The Department will only employ, develop, produce, or otherwise acquire landmines that are non-persistent, meaning they must possess self destruction mechanisms and self-
deactivation features.”
“ For example, all activated landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in 30 days or less after emplacement and will possess a back-up self-deactivation feature. Some landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in shorter periods of time, such as two hours or forty-eight hours.”
This distinguishes “self-destruct” where the mine blows itself up and “self-deactivation” where the mine disarms itself. The first is safer because it doesn’t leave explosive material behind, which could chemicaly detoriate and become unstable decades later. The second is used as a failsafe in case the self-destruct fails.
> Or are the reasons technical
They certainly were when the really old mines were made. Some of them are nothing more than just spring loaded pressure plates. But today modern landmines are much more sophisticated. Some of them can distinguish the seismic signature or a truck from a tank. There are also radio controlled mine fields where soldiers can remotely activate / deactivate the whole mine field as the threat evolves.
As someone else pointed out, the short story is cost. Mines are cheap, make them more advanced and they are not cheap.
That said, even if the trigger is disabled, it's still an explosive device and should still be cleared (or never placed in the first place, as the Ottawa treaty says which the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan are not a part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty)
The treaty also only covers anti-personnel mines, anti-vehicle mines are still perfectly fine (as well as other nasty shit like, anti-handling devices). The US has the right idea by mandating that all mines detonate after 30 days, even if it adds cost and complexity
Cost/manufacturing complexity. If you are country struggling to defend your self you don't think problems in 30 years if today problem is does the country exists or not. Might be difficult to put your self to a small defending countries shoes which is absolute running our of resources.
The costs of the self-destructs and failsafes exceed the cost of the rest of the landmine. One of the reason mines are used is that they are exceedingly cheap and simple to build at scale. No batteries or electronics. Even a relatively primitive industrial base can produce them.
In practice, only wealthy countries are willing to pay for mines with reliable self-destruct and target discrimination technology.
First, there should be maps and plans for all mine fields to know the exact position. But this war was insidious, and mines were planted without any method.
I'm guessing it's the latter, because you have to keep the mine-disabling mechanisms working and powered up through possible adverse weather and environmental conditions for long enough that the conflict has a fair chance of having ended.
If you wanted to design something fail safe, the best way would be to make the powered up state the danger state. So when the power fails, the device is inactive.
Just this week I talked to a person doing tree pruning/forestry, they were negotiating a job in a rural area in Croatia (wider Karlovac area).
The particular patch of land is still suspected to contain mines, although "in theory" they were all cleared out.
The client didn't want to pay for the minesweeeping tech team to ensure safety, the workers didn't want to wade into a forest that might still be mined.
I suspect this is not an isolated case. It's far from over.
Our firefighters collaborate with Croatian aerial firefighters (our neighbouring country). They say there is often pressure from politicians to drop water on wildfires in mined areas, however this is still dangerous to the planes as they have to go real low (a mine could explode spontaneously in their flight path) and after a few near misses they've adopted a policy: if it's not worth demining it's not worth saving from fire either.
On the other hand nobody except the timber industry is cutting down a random tree in the middle of the woods. If you're trimming trees on a power line cut or at the edge of a clearing you're working somewhere that has already been gone over with men and machine to make that cut or clearing. So it might be one of those "basically no chance but due to rules... blah blah licensed professionals... blah blah insurance.... blah blah" where even though everyone knows it's fine the guy who has to do the work can't just go do the work without paying someone else to take the liability, etc, etc.
But then again, it's Croatia. They're not rich enough to afford that kind of dysfunction.
Yeah this was a few trees at the edge of the forest leaning over some houses, needed clearing. "Should be fine", but they're not keen on taking the (personal, physical) risk.
Thing is, you can't narrow it down to some acceptable level of risk. Mines are by definition stealthy, the only way to reduce the risk is to eliminate it by combing over everything, which is extremely hard, tedious, expensive, etc.
I had the good fortune of going to Croatia (as an American) for work about 10 years ago, and I milked that trip hard. What a beautiful country. Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar Island, it was pretty magical.
I did some off road travelling in Croatia about 15 years ago, thanks GPS driving us into some farming roads.
Only when I got out of it, I realised how stupid idea that was to keep following the GPS, on some country side villages the markings of the war were still visible, with abandoned buildings full of bullet holes.
Naturally having mines still around was a possibility that I completly forgot about.
Think of it this way: bullet holes are where the fighting took place, while front lines have fluctuated. You don't want to mine an area that your soldiers might want to advance through. Land mines are placed when front lines have stabilised (like they are right now in Ukraine) to prevent the other side from advancing through. You only do that once your side has no intention of advancing further.
As such, land mines were usually properly documented and clearly marked as such after the war with giant skulls and red tapes, usually with some combo of words "PAZI MINE" ("beware, mines"). So while there are still rural areas that are littered with bullet holes, that does not mean those same areas were full of mines. It's also highly unlikely for a mine to be on any road, especially if it looks fairly well-maintained. You can take a road going through the minefield just fine, but you should never be one of those urban explorers that intentionally strays off of the road to look at the ruins on the side of that road.
What you can do is look at the casualty rate per year and see how it went from hundreds in the 90s post-war period, to dozens throughout 2000s, to 0-1 in recent years and calculate your likelihood. Here's that chart for Bosnia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Bosnia_and_Herze...
I lived along former front lines my entire life, I spotted some unexploded ones with my own eyes a long time ago, I'm not dead yet. That said, I am more equipped to handle such situations than you are, as I was taught how to do that since my first days in school. I firmly believe that outsiders are frequently overreacting these days, which is completely understandable, but that doesn't mean it is rational. Your odds of winning a lottery are infinitely higher than dying to a landmine in the few days you spend here. You can increase them by doing something stupid like avoiding those markings, but besides that you'll be fine.
The vast majority of all of those casualties throughout the years is the poorest rural population not being able to afford wood for heating, so they try to get some from the forests in their areas that nobody lays a claim on. You can explain pretty much every uptick by looking at how well the country's economy is doing.
Another common reason for some of the upticks are natural disasters (most frequently floods or landslides) hitting known minefields, which then makes the position more difficult to assess.
There's also a very particular type of mine that doesn't explode on the spot, but shoots ~1m into the air before exploding and sending shrapnel in a large radius which is by far the most deadly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROM-1). The reason I'm mentioning it is that there was one particular incident with 5 casualties at a scrapyard that year. That same mine is also responsible for the only casualty last year, when a 19-yo goat herder tried to get his goats back on the road.
Placing landmines is probably among the shittiest and most vile things someone can do.
Knowing that ten, twenty, maybe 50 years after a conflict ends a completely innocent and unrelated person, maybe even not born at the time you did it, might die or get permanently disabled is a sick move.
Place where I grew up is still full of landmines (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and some of the people who placed those mines are government officials today, loved by EU because of their natural resources.
My gut feeling says that landmines can be more acceptable when placed in designated areas, for example a strip along the border with proper fencing. And maybe electronics to disable them when they are no longer necessary so they can be safely removed. This is a fundamentally different type of weapon than something that is hidden and anyone can inadvertently step/drive into.
Placing mines on your own border for defense purposes is one thing. Doing an aggression in an independent country, placing mines there is completely different.
And if it is correctly mapped and the map is well managed, then it is not quite as catastrophic as warlords simply burying mines somewhere indiscriminately.
I get what you're saying, but war is evil and sometimes you have to use methods to win that you would otherwise judge from the privileged position of peace.
I can't in good conscience say that the Ukrainians are evil for laying mines well after the invasion started, even though we all know that when the fighting eventually stops it's going to be a disaster to deal with.
Now the Balkans was a different story, where mines were intentionally laid in areas to target civilians. So in the end, like any device designed to kill, it's how and why it is employed that makes the act "evil" or not.
Fair enough, I wasn't super aware of scenarios people mining their own country for defense purposes and I agree that an argument can be made there, as it will not be civilians invading a different country.
As you are aware, in the Balkans this was exclusively done in areas to harm civilians, deep into other countries. I have a plum garden that was near the enemy lines in the 90s, and it was mined. We had to arrange demining squad to go through it, and I still have childhood memories of their tools (mine detectors) being left overnight at our place. Not a memory any person should have.
> ... in the Balkans this was exclusively done in areas to harm civilians ...
It wasn’t.
While there were probably some areas that were mined with the intention of harming civilians, most of the mines were laid in places where you would expect the enemy to advance. In the section of the front where I was located, all minefields were laid with the intention of slowing down or preventing enemy infiltration (which does not exclude areas near human settlements).
There was simply no point in mining places that were under your control and where you expected your people to live after the war, unless it was necessary.
People who placed mines did it in a country which they invaded, not their own country. Again, my garden was literally mined by the aggressors in the 90s.
Also I think that if you live next to a warmongering country you certainly care more about making a military invasion the shittiest and the most vile thing for the aggressor that you can think of and landmines are cheap and effective there.
I think it's a sufficient trade off that landmines self-disable themselves in, say, 5 years or so. If the war continues you'll keep planting more and when it ends you'll just wait a few years and go collect them.
You don't just collect landmines though. The Germans in WW2 had maps which they handed over to the allies but it still killed hundreds of people clearing the landmines. Eventually they decided to use German POWs.
It is absolutely evil. Placing mines instantly puts you in the bad guy category as far as I'm concerned, no matter whom you claim you're "targetting". The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
> The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
It is entirely defensible on account of wanting to reduce risk of being invaded by Russia.
PS: Poland also exited the treaty. I entirely support use of mines on territory of mu country for purposes such as reducing risk of Russian invading Poland again. Though deployment should not be premature.
But I hope that production and stockpiling of enough mines is ongoing.
If you think that is indefensible - are you aware of how WW II went for Baltics, Poland, Belarus? In Poland about 16% of population was murdered, in Belarus about 20% of population was murdered. And Poland and Baltics got decades of occupation on top of that. Belarus still has not managed to get from Russia's boot as of 2026.
And I have no problem with position "war crimes are not OK".
War crimes are bad, but using ATP land mines is not a war crime by itself.
For example ATP land mines with reliable self-destruction used properly are OK (yes, some failure rate will exist - in case of war you rarely have 100% sunshine and rainbows solutions).
While dropping randomly land mines over city to target civilians is bad, evil, war crime and terrorism.
Arms control treaties are effective only if they are banning weapons that aren't useful. The problem is that landmines are incredibly useful weapons. What that means is that every country that has signed up to the Ottawa treaty either expects never to get into a major war again, is planning on relying on its allies who haven't signed the treaty to deploy landmines for them, or is planning on ignoring the treaty and using landmines anyways if it gets into another major war again.
In that vein, the Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty is commendable because they've stopped lying to everybody about what they're going to do come wartime.
> Arms control treaties are effective only if they are banning weapons that aren't useful. The problem is that landmines are incredibly useful weapons
There is not a single doubt in my mind that mines are useful. As are executions of people suspected of collaborating with the enemy. As is instituting precautionary concentration camps to round up folks who might have some bond with the enemy. The utility of dropping atom bombs on civilian centers is probably extremely high in negotiating with the enemy. But, like mines, these things are unconscionable, and when you start using these highly effective means, you should really ask yourself: "am I the good guy in this conflict?"
For me, the answer is no. I don't think we should commit war crimes, which somehow has become a controversial opinion.
War crimes are bad, but using ATP land mines is not a war crime by itself.
For example ATP land mines with reliable self-destruction used properly are OK (yes, some failure rate will exist - in case of war you rarely have 100% sunshine and rainbows solutions).
While dropping randomly land mines over city to target civilians is bad, evil, war crime and terrorism.
Yes, in case of war it is very likely that murdering soldiers of other side will become necessary. It does not make executing PoW acceptable, but guns/mines etc will be used.
One core principle behind determining whether the use of a weapon is a war crime is seeing if it can be used discriminately, i.e., if it can be targeted. So for example, the use of guns (though awful) is not a war crime, because using it requires you to point it at something and pull the trigger. You are in control of whether you shoot an enemy who is actively engaging, an enemy who is retreating, a field medic, a journalist reporting on the scene, a civilian who was not able to flee the area. With for example mustard gas, you cannot make this choice, and that's one of the two major reasons why the use of mustard gas is a war crime.
Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.
On top of that, you mention something about peppering cities with land mines not being ok (and it wouldn't be), but I'm not convinced that anyone's doing that. And still civilians make up 90% of the victims.
Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.
Pairing their war crimey nature and their low efficacy (2), I personally cannot get behind withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty.
There is much more to say about this, and much more has been said about this. I would recommend giving
a skim. They give alternative, more effective, less inhumane, solutions to the problems that mines try (and largely fail) to solve.
(1) Which is ultimately a bit of a hypothetical exercise, because the nations that left the treaty, well, left the treaty. They didn't propose an amendment allowing for temporary mines, they left the treaty. And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%. You get 1/5th of a war crime I guess.
(2) Earlier I said something to the effect of "I'm sure they're effective". At the time I hadn't read up on the actual effectiveness of mines, because to me, the effectiveness of a method plays no role in whether it should be allowed in combat. I've since read up on that part too, and I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.
Modern mines have programmable target discriminators that use multiple sensor modalities in addition to a programmable self-destruct. A cow or a goat herder usually won't set these off.
Many types of sophisticated mines cannot be trivially cleared with line charges or engineering vehicles. Soviet style mines can be cleared this way but aren't the only kind that exist.
This tech isn't sophisticated but it costs money and requires maintenance. Many militaries don't use them because they want weapons that can sit in a warehouse for 50 years with zero maintenance.
The military purpose of mines is not to kill anyone. It is to deny use of space in order to shape the battlefield and trap the adversary in areas where they are exposed to other weapons. Mines are highly effective at this purpose and will be for the foreseeable future against almost all adversaries. This is not controversial.
The "expert" in the linked article has no background in mine warfare, only EOD. This became obvious when I was reading the article because it presented an unexpectedly naive understanding of mine warfare. That perspective might make sense if your only experience is clearing old Soviet mines and IEDs but it doesn't generalize.
I wonder how those sensors detect a retreating enemy. And again, a failure rate between 6% and 20% is not acceptable. A bit of mustard gas is still mustard gas. And the baltics left the "all mines" treaty, not the "smart mines" treaty.
You are underestimating what kind of evil things people had done and will do. This was in fact done.
> Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.
Would you claim that dropping bombs from planes is also war crime? Because if mines are placed in exclusion zones or deployed directly in front on enemy charge then mines can be as discriminate as alternatives.
> Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.
In Ukraine mines were in fact effective, both against Russia and Ukraine.
> because they have ample means to dispose of them
Main benefit of using mines is slowing down enemy and forcing them to deploy means to dispose them
It drastically lowers speed of advance, even if mines harm noone in the end.
> And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%.
I heard about much better failure rates. Do you have a reliable source for that 20%? I would be happy to educate myself (and maybe change my opinion)
I did, and their claim of "Minefields can now be breached in minutes, using armoured engineering vehicles and explosive line charges." is highly misleading.
For example Russia lost piles of tanks and other combat vehicles around Vuhledar, large part of them to remotely deployed mines.
For other side, Ukrainian summer offensive failed in large part due to massive mine fields (there were also other factors like insufficient supply of armoured engineering vehicles and explosive line charges and Russian helicopters sniping ones that were trying to breach minefields).
If you restrict claim to ATP mines - they are still useful and they are nightmare to advancing military. Yes, after war they will be also horrible for civilians if not cleaned up.
Manipulation/mistake in quoted source is that any military thing can now be breached in minutes or faster, at least in some cases with proper tools deployed in proper position. The trick is that it is not reliable, you may lack this tools, you may miss window for deploying them, they may be opposed or stopped.
Yes, sometimes mines can be defeated quickly, mines are not win button, mines will not solve all problems. It does not change that mines are extremely useful and side not using them (or giving up ATP mines) is at huge handicap.
> I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.
I am not, at all, and as far as I know this is widely shared opinion among people who are actual experts in military matters. (I am not one)
In conflict between equals, landmines are the only practical way to restrict the mobility of the enemy. That's why 20% of Ukraine is contaminated by mines. If you were official and your choices would be losing and more people dying or placing more landmines that can be cleared over 20 years, what would you do?
Poland withdrew from the Ottawa Convention last month, with the aim of being able to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border.
Whether it does or not is an open-question, and while I understand it of course, the idea we're increasing the use of mines is a sad day. They're so indiscriminate and will no doubt cause injuries far into the future.
There's no border wall, just a typical bike road next to a small fence. So no, unless Poland is planning to blow up their own civilians, they won't mine their own country lol.
My wife’s part of the Family has a house with view of the border to Belarusia. It used to be a small fence just in front of a wood, but that’s long past. It’s truly a wall now.
Placing landmines systematically during peacetime by a stable government-ran military should at least make clearing mines easier, and minefields better marked for locals. So, it's not completely indiscriminate. If it decreases war-related life loss (both direct and indirect), it's net positive
I live near part of the WW1 trenches. Most mines, bombs, etc. have been removed for decades now. Still, there are patches where the ground is so polluted with e.g. lead that nothing would grow. We tend to use that ground for companies and industrial things, but no worries, its completely safe for your health, citizen.
France still has WWI unexploded ordnance, and keep-out areas are still being de-mined.
This has been going on for a century now.
About 900 tons of explosives are removed each year. Completion in 700 years at the current rate.[1]
Does Australia have any landmines? I was under the impression that we had some areas with sea mines which had been swept but still weren't guaranteed safe, and that was it.
There are an estimated one to two million mines in the Korean DMZ. Emplaced by both the South and North Koreans since the 1950s. There is no possibility all those mines are mapped properly. And most of them are not the self-disabling/destroying kind. It will take generations to clear.
Genuine question, why is it very difficult even with our 21st century technology to accurately detect landmines for the purpose of destroying them after the war?
In order to be effective landmines need to be very close to the land surface thus should be easier enough to detect. Researcher in Japan has succesfully detect using low power radar sub-surface bamboo shoots since they are more expensive than bamboo shoots that are already grown over land surface.
For safe and fast detection mechanism close to the ground aerial UAV can be deploy to scan the the suspected land mine area.
Something is missing and don't add up here, perhaps someone can help explain the situations?
Can drones sniff explosives? I think that would be very expensive, they can have metal detectors, and mark suspicious sites for someone (or something, like a different digging drone) else to check.
But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.
I don't know how it works for rats, but I assume it is like with dogs. If you have already a trained dog, you make the same exercises with the trained and the untrained dog, so the untrained dog can just watch what the trained dog does and imitate it.
Poland and other countries that just abandoned the mine treaty border russia and belarus. You know, the country that launched and the country that allowed its land to launch largest war in europe since WW2.
Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?
I mean, I get it, I would be scared shitless too if I had Russia at my border. I'm not saying that Poland is bad for doing this (but I'm not saying it's good either). It's more of a general observation about this kind of treaties: (relatively) easy to get into during peacetime, hard to uphold when shit hits the fan.
From my point of view as a Finn, the convention is indeed pointless as long as Russia doesn't obey it. No point avoiding land mines in our Eastern border in case of a war, when Russia will mine any territory they capture anyway. Besides, our mines are much more likely to be marked correctly to maps, and probably will have a function that deactivates them after certain time.
> Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?
You should ask people who supported or invented this convention. I never supported it and would support exit from it also before 2014 or 2022.
More cynical answer is that in time of peace refusing to sign up gives you bad PR so you sign up and in case of war you exit it (Finland, Poland, Baltics just did it) or ignore altogether (as Ukraine did). But it just weakens commitment to other conventions and PR hit would not be so bad, so I consider it as a mistake.
but signing up to it while Russia has not even pretended to do so was absurd.
As a Croatian, I'm really glad to hear these type of news. However, also as a Croatian, I don't quite buy the news. I'm sure great progress was made but it's never going to reach 100%; It's just the nature of these damn things in combination with our geography and where the frontlines were.
It means there are no known areas that are still littered with landmines, but yes, that's not a guarantee there aren't any.
Not Croatian but Bosnian, 2030 is our target for this milestone and we have to keep de-mining ~70 square kilometres every year to be able to hit that milestone.
I visited a friend in Sarajevo in 2014. Lovely small walkable city in a little valley, enjoyed the food and did some of the tours of old war sites inside the city and on the edge of the city. It boggled my mind then that the locals warned me not to go hiking through the pretty forest out of town because of land mines; it was hard to believe a country in Europe would have that problem in the 21st century!
The war barely ended in 1995 after all, it's not surprising.
Germany still has areas you can't go to because of WWII landmines. Parts of the Huertgen Forest spring immediately to mind.
European wars now all feel like a throwback to the 19th century. Even the maximally horrific wars of the 20th century feel outdated in light of trade being so much more efficient.
Economic aggression is a whole new kind of warfare and plenty destructive, but just saying "you stand on some dirt and we will kill you over it" is a pure waste.
People keep comparing the war in Ukraine to World War II, but they seem to imagine themselves to be Napoleon. Maybe France could have gotten richer by winning, but today that kind of attack is just lose-lose.
From America, the Yugoslavian war felt like re-fighting some Medieval grudge. I'm sure it made some kind of sense to them at the time.
> it was hard to believe a country in Europe would have that problem in the 21st century!
Bless your naiveness buddy. There are still areas in France where people can't go due to mines from WWI.
Spend some time on Google reading about the Zone Rouge.
I had never heard of the Zone Rouge, so thanks for sharing! I grew up in the USA in the 80s, and as a child, the first time I remember hearing of the problem of lingering landmines was in reference to countries such as Cambodia. Later I lived in Africa and eventually visited other continents. Of course I remember hearing of the war in Yugoslavia when growing up, but a dozen years ago when I visited Sarajevo, I certainly felt sad when the Bosnians told me about the ongoing problem because it felt like something I would have expected to be cleaned up by now in a developed country. Definitely a strong lesson on the long-term costs of war.
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As German, I can say, as long as not someone used mines out of glass, they will rot away in some decades. We still have some woods where you could step on glass mines....
But happy to hear the news. Some years ago as I was urban exploring the airfield in Zeljava it has hit someone nearby the field. Happily I just saw the ambulance and the police.
TIL glass mines are a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasmine_43
How clever we are when we try to kill each other.
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Hell you still find explosives from WW2 all over. It really is difficult.
True that. I used to work in the Netherlands, and sometimes it seemed like every other week the rail network was disrupted by a newly-discovered unexploded bomb, left over from the plastering the Allied air forces gave the Dutch railways.
WW2? We're still finding explosives from WW1 in Belgium
No kink shaming but meanwhile in France : https://www.midilibre.fr/2026/02/01/il-debarque-aux-urgences...
It's also worth pointing out that the front lines in WWI didn't come anywhere close to Toulouse. XD
Just few months ago, a 1,000-pound WWII bomb was found in Hong Kong. The city had been a battlefield between Japanese and Allied forces.
https://hongkongfp.com/2025/09/19/hong-kong-to-evacuate-6000...
Indeed. With landmines from 90's at least general areas are known, there's signage and if you're not being stupid by venturing way past signage it's all really safe to be around.
I agree. It is good news for Croatia but there may be some that have escaped the net.
They just found a water mine in Rovinj.
I stayed near Dubrovnik in the summer of 2005. There was a wildfire burning on on the hills behind us.
The fire traversed the hillside, and every hour or two a landmine would explode.
This was ten years after the war.
10 years is a long time, but 10 years after a war is not a long time. Damages to building still remains, mines and plenty of unexploded ordinances will remain, and psychological scars are still very strong.
Yep, the city center in Belgrade still has dilapidated, bombed buildings, 26 years after the bombs fell.
We had some buildings like that in the center of Milan. I think that the last one has been restored in the late 90s.
In German cities bomb evacuation still happens several times per year. That's >80 years after. War sucks.
Ukraine is going to be absolutely covered in fiber optic wire and drone parts.
And unexploded lost drones that might look like toys to children.
Sounds like the cheapest way to remove mines from land.
It is not reliable though, so you still have to de-mine it the traditional way.
Something I have really wondered is, why aren't there stronger incentives to build mines with a mechanism that disables them after a certain time has passed? There must be tactical and strategical reasons which are regarded more important, but surely the party using them for defending their own land ought to have an interest in not having to deal with this threat for decades after the war has ended, and an aggressor who wishes to take over an area should have the same incentives.
Or are the reasons technical, that it is simply too difficult to develop a reliable mechanism for disabling them?
Modern landmines do have safety features like what you describe.
For example consider this Department of Defence policy from 2020: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jan/31/2002242359/-1/-1/1/DOD...
“The Department will continue its commitment not to employ persistent landmines. For the purposes of this policy, ‘persistent landmines’ means landmines that do not incorporate self-destruction mechanisms and self-deactivation features. The Department will only employ, develop, produce, or otherwise acquire landmines that are non-persistent, meaning they must possess self destruction mechanisms and self- deactivation features.”
“ For example, all activated landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in 30 days or less after emplacement and will possess a back-up self-deactivation feature. Some landmines, regardless of whether they are remotely delivered or not, will be designed and constructed to self-destruct in shorter periods of time, such as two hours or forty-eight hours.”
This distinguishes “self-destruct” where the mine blows itself up and “self-deactivation” where the mine disarms itself. The first is safer because it doesn’t leave explosive material behind, which could chemicaly detoriate and become unstable decades later. The second is used as a failsafe in case the self-destruct fails.
> Or are the reasons technical
They certainly were when the really old mines were made. Some of them are nothing more than just spring loaded pressure plates. But today modern landmines are much more sophisticated. Some of them can distinguish the seismic signature or a truck from a tank. There are also radio controlled mine fields where soldiers can remotely activate / deactivate the whole mine field as the threat evolves.
I thought it would be longer than 30 days.
They aren't 100% reliable either, nothing is.
As someone else pointed out, the short story is cost. Mines are cheap, make them more advanced and they are not cheap.
That said, even if the trigger is disabled, it's still an explosive device and should still be cleared (or never placed in the first place, as the Ottawa treaty says which the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan are not a part of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty)
Due to Russian invasion of Ukraine some neighbors exited the treaty.
Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland exited.
Ukraine has not officially withdrawn from the treaty, but ignored it. Last year they officially announced withdrawal.
Unfortunately anti-personnel mines are highly useful in case of war, especially for defender.
The treaty also only covers anti-personnel mines, anti-vehicle mines are still perfectly fine (as well as other nasty shit like, anti-handling devices). The US has the right idea by mandating that all mines detonate after 30 days, even if it adds cost and complexity
Cost/manufacturing complexity. If you are country struggling to defend your self you don't think problems in 30 years if today problem is does the country exists or not. Might be difficult to put your self to a small defending countries shoes which is absolute running our of resources.
I get it, I don’t think a timer really adds that much cost and complexity. "If he wanted to, he would" scenario.
The costs of the self-destructs and failsafes exceed the cost of the rest of the landmine. One of the reason mines are used is that they are exceedingly cheap and simple to build at scale. No batteries or electronics. Even a relatively primitive industrial base can produce them.
In practice, only wealthy countries are willing to pay for mines with reliable self-destruct and target discrimination technology.
First, there should be maps and plans for all mine fields to know the exact position. But this war was insidious, and mines were planted without any method.
There is always the option to use battery (some modern mines use this),for example RAAMS.
The problem is of the enemy know you use only mines that work for max n hours or m days they just wait for n + 1 hours or m + 1 days.
There is a lot more to say about this, but there are probably people way more qualified than be here to explain it.
There are tons of possible options in between n hours and 3 decades
That is exactly how modern mines work
I'm guessing it's the latter, because you have to keep the mine-disabling mechanisms working and powered up through possible adverse weather and environmental conditions for long enough that the conflict has a fair chance of having ended.
If you wanted to design something fail safe, the best way would be to make the powered up state the danger state. So when the power fails, the device is inactive.
> a reliable mechanism for disabling
Note that the bar is pretty high for reliable here. Say 1 in a thousand isn't disarmed or destroyed.
Would you encourage your child to play in an area where ten thousand mines were dropped? A thousand? Five hundred?
Someone who was raised in such an area talks about their experiences elsethread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47194668
Just this week I talked to a person doing tree pruning/forestry, they were negotiating a job in a rural area in Croatia (wider Karlovac area).
The particular patch of land is still suspected to contain mines, although "in theory" they were all cleared out.
The client didn't want to pay for the minesweeeping tech team to ensure safety, the workers didn't want to wade into a forest that might still be mined.
I suspect this is not an isolated case. It's far from over.
Our firefighters collaborate with Croatian aerial firefighters (our neighbouring country). They say there is often pressure from politicians to drop water on wildfires in mined areas, however this is still dangerous to the planes as they have to go real low (a mine could explode spontaneously in their flight path) and after a few near misses they've adopted a policy: if it's not worth demining it's not worth saving from fire either.
Guess they will have more work now
IDK man.
On one hand it might be a real risk.
On the other hand nobody except the timber industry is cutting down a random tree in the middle of the woods. If you're trimming trees on a power line cut or at the edge of a clearing you're working somewhere that has already been gone over with men and machine to make that cut or clearing. So it might be one of those "basically no chance but due to rules... blah blah licensed professionals... blah blah insurance.... blah blah" where even though everyone knows it's fine the guy who has to do the work can't just go do the work without paying someone else to take the liability, etc, etc.
But then again, it's Croatia. They're not rich enough to afford that kind of dysfunction.
Turtles all the way down.
Yeah this was a few trees at the edge of the forest leaning over some houses, needed clearing. "Should be fine", but they're not keen on taking the (personal, physical) risk.
Thing is, you can't narrow it down to some acceptable level of risk. Mines are by definition stealthy, the only way to reduce the risk is to eliminate it by combing over everything, which is extremely hard, tedious, expensive, etc.
I had the good fortune of going to Croatia (as an American) for work about 10 years ago, and I milked that trip hard. What a beautiful country. Dubrovnik, Split, Hvar Island, it was pretty magical.
Conflict zones are the most beautiful places
They make me immediately go “oh I get it”
What a strange and sweeping comment. There’s a conflict going on in Darfur. Does Darfur make you go “oh I get it”?
IIRC most of the fighting is happening over the southern, fertile lands.
A lot of conflicts are over mountainous zones which tend to be beautiful. Kashmir and Chechnya would be two cases in point.
I did some off road travelling in Croatia about 15 years ago, thanks GPS driving us into some farming roads.
Only when I got out of it, I realised how stupid idea that was to keep following the GPS, on some country side villages the markings of the war were still visible, with abandoned buildings full of bullet holes.
Naturally having mines still around was a possibility that I completly forgot about.
Bullet hole areas != land mine areas.
Think of it this way: bullet holes are where the fighting took place, while front lines have fluctuated. You don't want to mine an area that your soldiers might want to advance through. Land mines are placed when front lines have stabilised (like they are right now in Ukraine) to prevent the other side from advancing through. You only do that once your side has no intention of advancing further.
As such, land mines were usually properly documented and clearly marked as such after the war with giant skulls and red tapes, usually with some combo of words "PAZI MINE" ("beware, mines"). So while there are still rural areas that are littered with bullet holes, that does not mean those same areas were full of mines. It's also highly unlikely for a mine to be on any road, especially if it looks fairly well-maintained. You can take a road going through the minefield just fine, but you should never be one of those urban explorers that intentionally strays off of the road to look at the ruins on the side of that road.
Might be the case, however one cannot assert 100% guarantee.
What you can do is look at the casualty rate per year and see how it went from hundreds in the 90s post-war period, to dozens throughout 2000s, to 0-1 in recent years and calculate your likelihood. Here's that chart for Bosnia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Bosnia_and_Herze...
I lived along former front lines my entire life, I spotted some unexploded ones with my own eyes a long time ago, I'm not dead yet. That said, I am more equipped to handle such situations than you are, as I was taught how to do that since my first days in school. I firmly believe that outsiders are frequently overreacting these days, which is completely understandable, but that doesn't mean it is rational. Your odds of winning a lottery are infinitely higher than dying to a landmine in the few days you spend here. You can increase them by doing something stupid like avoiding those markings, but besides that you'll be fine.
> Here's that chart for Bosnia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Bosnia_and_Herze...
What caused the sudden uptick in 2008?
The vast majority of all of those casualties throughout the years is the poorest rural population not being able to afford wood for heating, so they try to get some from the forests in their areas that nobody lays a claim on. You can explain pretty much every uptick by looking at how well the country's economy is doing.
Another common reason for some of the upticks are natural disasters (most frequently floods or landslides) hitting known minefields, which then makes the position more difficult to assess.
There's also a very particular type of mine that doesn't explode on the spot, but shoots ~1m into the air before exploding and sending shrapnel in a large radius which is by far the most deadly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROM-1). The reason I'm mentioning it is that there was one particular incident with 5 casualties at a scrapyard that year. That same mine is also responsible for the only casualty last year, when a 19-yo goat herder tried to get his goats back on the road.
Placing landmines is probably among the shittiest and most vile things someone can do.
Knowing that ten, twenty, maybe 50 years after a conflict ends a completely innocent and unrelated person, maybe even not born at the time you did it, might die or get permanently disabled is a sick move.
Place where I grew up is still full of landmines (Bosnia and Herzegovina), and some of the people who placed those mines are government officials today, loved by EU because of their natural resources.
When it's a choice between existence and annihilation it's not so difficult a choice.
For example, Finland has a program that will mine the entire border with Russia in just hours if Russia invades.
My gut feeling says that landmines can be more acceptable when placed in designated areas, for example a strip along the border with proper fencing. And maybe electronics to disable them when they are no longer necessary so they can be safely removed. This is a fundamentally different type of weapon than something that is hidden and anyone can inadvertently step/drive into.
Placing mines on your own border for defense purposes is one thing. Doing an aggression in an independent country, placing mines there is completely different.
And if it is correctly mapped and the map is well managed, then it is not quite as catastrophic as warlords simply burying mines somewhere indiscriminately.
I get what you're saying, but war is evil and sometimes you have to use methods to win that you would otherwise judge from the privileged position of peace.
I can't in good conscience say that the Ukrainians are evil for laying mines well after the invasion started, even though we all know that when the fighting eventually stops it's going to be a disaster to deal with.
Now the Balkans was a different story, where mines were intentionally laid in areas to target civilians. So in the end, like any device designed to kill, it's how and why it is employed that makes the act "evil" or not.
Fair enough, I wasn't super aware of scenarios people mining their own country for defense purposes and I agree that an argument can be made there, as it will not be civilians invading a different country.
As you are aware, in the Balkans this was exclusively done in areas to harm civilians, deep into other countries. I have a plum garden that was near the enemy lines in the 90s, and it was mined. We had to arrange demining squad to go through it, and I still have childhood memories of their tools (mine detectors) being left overnight at our place. Not a memory any person should have.
> ... in the Balkans this was exclusively done in areas to harm civilians ...
It wasn’t.
While there were probably some areas that were mined with the intention of harming civilians, most of the mines were laid in places where you would expect the enemy to advance. In the section of the front where I was located, all minefields were laid with the intention of slowing down or preventing enemy infiltration (which does not exclude areas near human settlements).
There was simply no point in mining places that were under your control and where you expected your people to live after the war, unless it was necessary.
People who placed mines did it in a country which they invaded, not their own country. Again, my garden was literally mined by the aggressors in the 90s.
Agreed.
Also I think that if you live next to a warmongering country you certainly care more about making a military invasion the shittiest and the most vile thing for the aggressor that you can think of and landmines are cheap and effective there.
I think it's a sufficient trade off that landmines self-disable themselves in, say, 5 years or so. If the war continues you'll keep planting more and when it ends you'll just wait a few years and go collect them.
You don't just collect landmines though. The Germans in WW2 had maps which they handed over to the allies but it still killed hundreds of people clearing the landmines. Eventually they decided to use German POWs.
It is absolutely evil. Placing mines instantly puts you in the bad guy category as far as I'm concerned, no matter whom you claim you're "targetting". The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
> The Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty was an absolute disgrace. Indefensible.
It is entirely defensible on account of wanting to reduce risk of being invaded by Russia.
PS: Poland also exited the treaty. I entirely support use of mines on territory of mu country for purposes such as reducing risk of Russian invading Poland again. Though deployment should not be premature.
But I hope that production and stockpiling of enough mines is ongoing.
If you think that is indefensible - are you aware of how WW II went for Baltics, Poland, Belarus? In Poland about 16% of population was murdered, in Belarus about 20% of population was murdered. And Poland and Baltics got decades of occupation on top of that. Belarus still has not managed to get from Russia's boot as of 2026.
The idea that all means, including war crimes, are warranted in defending one's territory is one that I cannot accept.
And I have no problem with position "war crimes are not OK".
War crimes are bad, but using ATP land mines is not a war crime by itself.
For example ATP land mines with reliable self-destruction used properly are OK (yes, some failure rate will exist - in case of war you rarely have 100% sunshine and rainbows solutions).
While dropping randomly land mines over city to target civilians is bad, evil, war crime and terrorism.
Arms control treaties are effective only if they are banning weapons that aren't useful. The problem is that landmines are incredibly useful weapons. What that means is that every country that has signed up to the Ottawa treaty either expects never to get into a major war again, is planning on relying on its allies who haven't signed the treaty to deploy landmines for them, or is planning on ignoring the treaty and using landmines anyways if it gets into another major war again.
In that vein, the Baltics withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty is commendable because they've stopped lying to everybody about what they're going to do come wartime.
> Arms control treaties are effective only if they are banning weapons that aren't useful. The problem is that landmines are incredibly useful weapons
There is not a single doubt in my mind that mines are useful. As are executions of people suspected of collaborating with the enemy. As is instituting precautionary concentration camps to round up folks who might have some bond with the enemy. The utility of dropping atom bombs on civilian centers is probably extremely high in negotiating with the enemy. But, like mines, these things are unconscionable, and when you start using these highly effective means, you should really ask yourself: "am I the good guy in this conflict?"
For me, the answer is no. I don't think we should commit war crimes, which somehow has become a controversial opinion.
War crimes are bad, but using ATP land mines is not a war crime by itself.
For example ATP land mines with reliable self-destruction used properly are OK (yes, some failure rate will exist - in case of war you rarely have 100% sunshine and rainbows solutions).
While dropping randomly land mines over city to target civilians is bad, evil, war crime and terrorism.
Yes, in case of war it is very likely that murdering soldiers of other side will become necessary. It does not make executing PoW acceptable, but guns/mines etc will be used.
One core principle behind determining whether the use of a weapon is a war crime is seeing if it can be used discriminately, i.e., if it can be targeted. So for example, the use of guns (though awful) is not a war crime, because using it requires you to point it at something and pull the trigger. You are in control of whether you shoot an enemy who is actively engaging, an enemy who is retreating, a field medic, a journalist reporting on the scene, a civilian who was not able to flee the area. With for example mustard gas, you cannot make this choice, and that's one of the two major reasons why the use of mustard gas is a war crime.
Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.
On top of that, you mention something about peppering cities with land mines not being ok (and it wouldn't be), but I'm not convinced that anyone's doing that. And still civilians make up 90% of the victims.
Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.
Pairing their war crimey nature and their low efficacy (2), I personally cannot get behind withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty.
There is much more to say about this, and much more has been said about this. I would recommend giving
https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/landmines-can-no-lo...
a skim. They give alternative, more effective, less inhumane, solutions to the problems that mines try (and largely fail) to solve.
(1) Which is ultimately a bit of a hypothetical exercise, because the nations that left the treaty, well, left the treaty. They didn't propose an amendment allowing for temporary mines, they left the treaty. And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%. You get 1/5th of a war crime I guess.
(2) Earlier I said something to the effect of "I'm sure they're effective". At the time I hadn't read up on the actual effectiveness of mines, because to me, the effectiveness of a method plays no role in whether it should be allowed in combat. I've since read up on that part too, and I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.
Modern mines have programmable target discriminators that use multiple sensor modalities in addition to a programmable self-destruct. A cow or a goat herder usually won't set these off.
Many types of sophisticated mines cannot be trivially cleared with line charges or engineering vehicles. Soviet style mines can be cleared this way but aren't the only kind that exist.
This tech isn't sophisticated but it costs money and requires maintenance. Many militaries don't use them because they want weapons that can sit in a warehouse for 50 years with zero maintenance.
The military purpose of mines is not to kill anyone. It is to deny use of space in order to shape the battlefield and trap the adversary in areas where they are exposed to other weapons. Mines are highly effective at this purpose and will be for the foreseeable future against almost all adversaries. This is not controversial.
The "expert" in the linked article has no background in mine warfare, only EOD. This became obvious when I was reading the article because it presented an unexpectedly naive understanding of mine warfare. That perspective might make sense if your only experience is clearing old Soviet mines and IEDs but it doesn't generalize.
I wonder how those sensors detect a retreating enemy. And again, a failure rate between 6% and 20% is not acceptable. A bit of mustard gas is still mustard gas. And the baltics left the "all mines" treaty, not the "smart mines" treaty.
> but I'm not convinced that anyone's doing that.
You are underestimating what kind of evil things people had done and will do. This was in fact done.
> Even if you build in a self destruction mechanism to landmines(1), this indiscriminate nature remains.
Would you claim that dropping bombs from planes is also war crime? Because if mines are placed in exclusion zones or deployed directly in front on enemy charge then mines can be as discriminate as alternatives.
> Of course, there's another thing playing into that 90% figure, which is that, by and large, mines are not very effective against military tartgets because they have ample means to dispose of them. Given the fact that our target here is Russia, and not some poorly funded guerilla outfit, I think this should be taken into consideration.
In Ukraine mines were in fact effective, both against Russia and Ukraine.
> because they have ample means to dispose of them
Main benefit of using mines is slowing down enemy and forcing them to deploy means to dispose them
It drastically lowers speed of advance, even if mines harm noone in the end.
> And on top of that the failure rate for such smart mines is like 20%.
I heard about much better failure rates. Do you have a reliable source for that 20%? I would be happy to educate myself (and maybe change my opinion)
> I would recommend giving > https://www.humanity-inclusion.org.uk/en/landmines-can-no-lo... > a skim
I did, and their claim of "Minefields can now be breached in minutes, using armoured engineering vehicles and explosive line charges." is highly misleading.
For example Russia lost piles of tanks and other combat vehicles around Vuhledar, large part of them to remotely deployed mines.
For other side, Ukrainian summer offensive failed in large part due to massive mine fields (there were also other factors like insufficient supply of armoured engineering vehicles and explosive line charges and Russian helicopters sniping ones that were trying to breach minefields).
If you restrict claim to ATP mines - they are still useful and they are nightmare to advancing military. Yes, after war they will be also horrible for civilians if not cleaned up.
Manipulation/mistake in quoted source is that any military thing can now be breached in minutes or faster, at least in some cases with proper tools deployed in proper position. The trick is that it is not reliable, you may lack this tools, you may miss window for deploying them, they may be opposed or stopped.
Yes, sometimes mines can be defeated quickly, mines are not win button, mines will not solve all problems. It does not change that mines are extremely useful and side not using them (or giving up ATP mines) is at huge handicap.
> I'm reasonably convinced they're not very effective in our current context.
I am not, at all, and as far as I know this is widely shared opinion among people who are actual experts in military matters. (I am not one)
The real disgrace is the russian invasion. Can't blame Baltics states for trying to defend themselves.
And don't forget, russians are completely fine with usage of all kind of mines as well as targeting civil critical infrastructure.
Placing anti-personnel mines is also not very effective in a pitched conflict.
The enemy will lose a few soldiers, but will then clear a marked path. The long term effects far outweigh any short-term advantage.
Have some empathy, do you think landmines are placed for fun?
In conflict between equals, landmines are the only practical way to restrict the mobility of the enemy. That's why 20% of Ukraine is contaminated by mines. If you were official and your choices would be losing and more people dying or placing more landmines that can be cleared over 20 years, what would you do?
They can’t and haven’t
I wonder how long it will take in Ukraine.
Actually at the rate we're going, there will still be active minefield defenses for most of our lifespans.
Poland withdrew from the Ottawa Convention last month, with the aim of being able to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border.
Whether it does or not is an open-question, and while I understand it of course, the idea we're increasing the use of mines is a sad day. They're so indiscriminate and will no doubt cause injuries far into the future.
No one is going to build minefields, too populated area, too many wild animals. It's mostly about automatic mining - https://www.hsw.pl/produkty/pojazd-minowania-narzutowego-bao...
> The BAOBAB-K Mine Laying Vehicle allows the laying of minefields of various sizes, mine densities, and self-clearance times.
The self-clearing is interesting and I hindsight auch an obvious thing to implement.
There's no border wall, just a typical bike road next to a small fence. So no, unless Poland is planning to blow up their own civilians, they won't mine their own country lol.
My wife’s part of the Family has a house with view of the border to Belarusia. It used to be a small fence just in front of a wood, but that’s long past. It’s truly a wall now.
Placing landmines systematically during peacetime by a stable government-ran military should at least make clearing mines easier, and minefields better marked for locals. So, it's not completely indiscriminate. If it decreases war-related life loss (both direct and indirect), it's net positive
I seen estimates that are much more pessimistic.
https://www.osw.waw.pl/pl/publikacje/komentarze-osw/2023-11-... mentions optimistic estimate of 70 years, and other statistics give estimated cleanup time of 740 years.
And in months since then more mines were placed.
Putin’s war, bro. It’s aaall Putin laying the mines.
I live near part of the WW1 trenches. Most mines, bombs, etc. have been removed for decades now. Still, there are patches where the ground is so polluted with e.g. lead that nothing would grow. We tend to use that ground for companies and industrial things, but no worries, its completely safe for your health, citizen.
I wonder when/if places like vietnam will ever achieve this.
Hell, Australia still has WW2 mines.
France still has WWI unexploded ordnance, and keep-out areas are still being de-mined. This has been going on for a century now. About 900 tons of explosives are removed each year. Completion in 700 years at the current rate.[1]
[1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/the-red-zone-la...
That is mind blowing, no pun intended.
Does Australia have any landmines? I was under the impression that we had some areas with sea mines which had been swept but still weren't guaranteed safe, and that was it.
There are an estimated one to two million mines in the Korean DMZ. Emplaced by both the South and North Koreans since the 1950s. There is no possibility all those mines are mapped properly. And most of them are not the self-disabling/destroying kind. It will take generations to clear.
I imagine a lot has to do with motivation. Canada has UXO that it doesn't clean up as land is abundant.
Is that actual land mines or generic lost explosives and unexploded bombs?
Cause the latter is pretty common in Europe too, but I'm surprised you have actually minefields which haven't been cleared up in Australia.
This feels like a perfect use case for AI.
how AI would help?
Robots or drones with ground penetrating radar?
I visited Vientiane in Laos a couple years ago. One of the more depressing places to visit there is the COPE Center.
It's a group that provides prosthetics to people who have lost body parts due to landmines left over from the Vietnam War.
Even decades later, there are areas in Laos that have so many unexploded bomblets, it's dangerous to do stuff there, or even build.
Genuine question, why is it very difficult even with our 21st century technology to accurately detect landmines for the purpose of destroying them after the war?
In order to be effective landmines need to be very close to the land surface thus should be easier enough to detect. Researcher in Japan has succesfully detect using low power radar sub-surface bamboo shoots since they are more expensive than bamboo shoots that are already grown over land surface.
For safe and fast detection mechanism close to the ground aerial UAV can be deploy to scan the the suspected land mine area.
Something is missing and don't add up here, perhaps someone can help explain the situations?
If anyone is looking for a good book on this topic, Aftermath: The Remnants of War is a good one: https://a.co/d/05fqBBK5
They apparently also made a documentary about it, but I’ve never watched it.
How do they know? (Serious question)
Because
> all known minefields have been cleared
When clearing minefields, one does not miss mines, because that would be lethal! Every cube inch is carefully mapped. It is extremely hard work.
Is it possible there are mine fields that are not known yet?
Is it wise to issue such a declaration? Its great that they've gotten rid of so many, but shouldn't people still exercise caution on untrod ground?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minefields_in_Croatia
Oof, only 90% survival rate for deminers.
Drones can help these days
Can drones sniff explosives? I think that would be very expensive, they can have metal detectors, and mark suspicious sites for someone (or something, like a different digging drone) else to check.
But rats can sniff explosives and do so succesfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magawa
The flying ones can use thermal cameras. The mines and surrounding areas change temperature differently.
Then the ground ones do the actual demining.
But this only works for mines not or only lightly covered by earth I assume?
There has been lots of rain falling from the sky, moving earth, since the mines were laid.
> He spent a number of weeks mentoring 20 newly-recruited rats
How does that work for a rat? Sounds interesting.
I don't know how it works for rats, but I assume it is like with dogs. If you have already a trained dog, you make the same exercises with the trained and the untrained dog, so the untrained dog can just watch what the trained dog does and imitate it.
That's not how you would typically train a working dog.
I imagine it depends on the work?
I am not an expert here, but am a bit familiar with how rescue dogs are trained and this is a method in use.
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Huge and great news. Sri Lanka is hoping to get certification later this year too.
Way to jinx it.
Meanwhile.... Poland.
Poland and other countries that just abandoned the mine treaty border russia and belarus. You know, the country that launched and the country that allowed its land to launch largest war in europe since WW2.
Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?
I mean, I get it, I would be scared shitless too if I had Russia at my border. I'm not saying that Poland is bad for doing this (but I'm not saying it's good either). It's more of a general observation about this kind of treaties: (relatively) easy to get into during peacetime, hard to uphold when shit hits the fan.
From my point of view as a Finn, the convention is indeed pointless as long as Russia doesn't obey it. No point avoiding land mines in our Eastern border in case of a war, when Russia will mine any territory they capture anyway. Besides, our mines are much more likely to be marked correctly to maps, and probably will have a function that deactivates them after certain time.
> Yes. But the what's the point of a convention about weapons that you only observe during peacetime and abandon as soon as war is at your gates?
You should ask people who supported or invented this convention. I never supported it and would support exit from it also before 2014 or 2022.
More cynical answer is that in time of peace refusing to sign up gives you bad PR so you sign up and in case of war you exit it (Finland, Poland, Baltics just did it) or ignore altogether (as Ukraine did). But it just weakens commitment to other conventions and PR hit would not be so bad, so I consider it as a mistake.
but signing up to it while Russia has not even pretended to do so was absurd.
good news!
just intime to place new ones for WW3