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The United States military is exploring new methods of detecting and neutralising landmines as the devices continue to play a significant role in the combat between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Europe.
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The US Army has begun testing to disable and destroy landmines at stand-off distances and creating a passable vehicle wide lane while reducing risk to any follow-up breaching force. One method, involving a Ground Obstacle Breaching Lane Neutralizer (GOBLN), utilises a mortar-based launcher system integrated on a vehicle platform, a small unmanned aerial system hosted detection system, and a neutralising munition to allow remote detection and destruction. Using this method, the testing teams have already fired more than 250 mortars at targets.
During initial testing at Yuma Test Center, a wide area was laid out with six lanes of high explosive mines containing inert fuses comprised of both US M-15 and foreign TM-62M anti-tank blast mines. In addition, mines were strategically placed atop a tarp to track how the mortar shrapnel hit each mine and the surrounding area.
“What we are looking at is not what the gun is doing, it is what is it doing on the other end. What are the effects on the mines we are shooting at?“ said YTC Test Officer Brett Bowman.
“We are getting the observer data to know where they impacted, then after each sequence, we go out and do inspections to see the damage on targets and access how we did.
“They were originally going to have one mine lane, we shoot, go out, inspect, and come back. We can’t do that because of the wait times. So, what I did was set this one up so we can have multiple mine lanes, fire multiple engagements at a time, then that way we can go out and inspect them after the certain amount of wait times.”
Information collected from the tests is expected to inform US DEVCOM Armaments Center personnel about modelling of down range effects with real-world shot data.
“When we go out and assess, we mark each target, so when we fire on them again, we know which ones it hit on the first time and we will know the difference between the first time and the second,” said GOBLN Test Lead Raj Nattanmai at the US Army’s DEVCOM Armaments Center.
“We want the shrapnel to come in and pierce the mines so that it damages either the fuse or sets it off. The other possibility is that it creates a reaction and causes it to burn.
“That one (a TM62 mine) didn’t blow up, it burned. It set on fire and charred up basically. That’s the ideal neutralisation. That’s what we want all the targets to do.”
The GOBLN is one of the many solutions the Army is testing to see which the most effective solutions are to meet modern threats, according to US Army Futures Command Capabilities Developer Shawn Anders.
“In the concept of the future, we are not talking about what we can do today. What we are trying to do the next 10 years, 20 years down the road and have that forecast. So today is just our baseline of multiple systems for consideration for the future. And like Major Thomas Fite said, ‘Breaching ain’t easy’.”
