Land Mine Prohibition To End

[tomahawk6]

Friday the Administration is to announce and end to the prohibition  of land mines outside of Korea. I am not sure if this necessary as we haven't use them in 30 years. During Vietnam much of our use of mines were anti-personnel which are defensive weapons. With modern air droppable bombs and stand off weapons we don't really need minefields IMO.

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Friday the Administration is to announce and end to the prohibition  of land mines outside of Korea. I am not sure if this necessary as we haven't use them in 30 years. During Vietnam much of our use of mines were anti-personnel which are defensive weapons. With modern air droppable bombs and stand off weapons we don't really need minefields IMO.

You say that until you get bogged down in a big defensive battle against a peer enemy.

All those standoff weapons should be sighted on the obstacles you create, which includes minefields.

 

[FJAG]

Just to be accurate, the Ottawa Treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction) as its more formal name indicates, only applies to anti-personnel mines. There is no treaty as such restricting the use of anti-tank or vehicle mines.

Further, the US was never a signatory to the Ottawa Treaty but voluntarily decided to restrict production of and the use of anti-personnel mines outside Korea since Sept 23rd, 2014.

I'm not sure what is driving the need to rescind this commitment unless it's another example of undoing everything the Obama administration has done. While Mattis had a study conducted in 2017 concluded that prohibiting anti-personnel mine use outside of Korea “increased risk to mission success” and could increase U.S. casualties most nations are convinced that the proliferation of anti-personnel mines harms far more innocent people than it adds to the value of a defensive position. While there is a risk, the proportionality argument far outweighs the military risk one.

:cheers:

 

[Colin Parkinson]

It means the US Army can now add and practice using Land mines. NATO and the US have pretty strict guidelines on minefields, laying, marking, recording and removal. It's countries that sow them without a plan as to placement and removal that is the real issue.

 

[FJAG]

It means the US Army can now add and practice using Land mines. NATO and the US have pretty strict guidelines on minefields, laying, marking, recording and removal. It's countries that sow them without a plan as to placement and removal that is the real issue.

I think you overestimate the effort that "educated" militaries put into clearing the mines that they sow. Much of it depends on the tactical situation. A force driven out of their positions will not come back to clean them up later or leave the records behind. Fields should be marked but frequently those markings disappear.

Estimates from Vietnam are that somewhere between 100,000 to 200,000 have been killed by UXOs since the end of the war. Records as to how many are American v Vietnamese; bombs v mines are sketchy at best but the US used mines in vast quantities.

I think what is key here is to determine what conflict you see where anti-personnel mines add value. Remember that you can still sow all the anti-materiel mines that you might need. You can still use command detonated anti-personnel mines. They are both exempt from the Ottawa treaty. What's banned are the old type of sown anti-personnel mines which were effective in a dismounted infantry battle where there was something in the nature of a front line. With widely dispersed, fast moving mechanized forces, the value of sown anti-personnel mines is limited and, just as important, are most unlikely to be recovered during a fluid battle.

I'm not arguing that such anti-personnel mines have absolutely no effectiveness. I expect they will inflict some casualties on an enemy but doubt as to whether the scale of casualties or delay imposed (if any when one considers modern mineclearing plows, rollers, etc) outweighs the human price to be paid by generations of innocent civilians afterwards.

:cheers:

 

[tomahawk6]

You say that until you get bogged down in a big defensive battle against a peer enemy.

All those standoff weapons should be sighted on the obstacles you create, which includes minefields.

Human wave attacks that will overwhelm defenders saw the use of the claymore mine,napalm and fougasse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_fougasse

 

[tomahawk6]

Official announcement of policy change.

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-authorizes-wider-use-of-landmines-in-new-policy-1.617091

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday canceled a 2014 policy by former President Barack Obama that restricted the use of landmines to the Korean Peninsula.

“The Department of Defense has determined that restrictions imposed on American forces by the Obama administration’s policy could place them at a severe disadvantage during a conflict against our adversaries. The president is unwilling to accept this risk to our troops,” the White House said in a statement.

The change would authorize combatant commanders in “exceptional circumstances” – without specifying what those circumstances could be — to use “advanced, non-persistent landmines” that are designed to reduced unintended harm to civilians and allies.

 

[daftandbarmy]

“advanced, non-persistent landmines” that are designed to reduced unintended harm to civilians and allies.

What exactly is this type of land mine?

The good old fashioned kind that you dig in by hand/mine layer, then remove from the ground later if you need to?

I assume it does not include FASCAM, and similar air/munition delivered mines.

 

[FJAG]

FASCAM is dealt with under the appropriate provisions of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The US is one of a number of countries that have not become parties to the convention.

The term Non-persistent landmine is a bit of a word of art thing but basically means mines that will either self destruct or self deactivate. They're sometimes called "smart mines" Here's the US DoD Policy on Landmines that has just been issued:

https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jan/31/2002242359/-1/-1/1/DOD-POLICY-ON-LANDMINES.PDF

The problem with these, as with cluster bomblets before them, is the reliability/defect rate. That said, it's a lot better than leaving hundreds of thousands of little mushroom shaped toe-poppers scattered around the fields of Vietnam.

:cheers:

 

[Cloud Cover]

It’s hard to get a firm number on remaining land mines in Vietnam, but they estimate 400,000- 800,000 tons of UXO remain to be dealt with. It seems landlines were used more extensively in wars between Vietnam and China, Cambodia and others than with the USA (which in itself is a depressing and shockingly high number of scatter mines - numbering in the millions).