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WARFARE LANDMINES The Military Show: Ukrainian Farmer Finds BIZZARE Way to Get Rid Of Russian Mines PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n98aSLFDrE8 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I am not an expert on matters military ... but I have an interest and I have a considerable understanding of a lot of military matters without being an expert. It is people like me that have given rise to the idea that amateurs are quite dangerous! This YouTube about mines in Ukraine reminds me of the several times when my own work in various aspects of 'development' bumped in to the dangerous reality of landmines. One time was in connection with some work I was to do on development planning for Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in the early 1980sI arived in the region to do some plain vanilla development planning work at exactly the same time that British military engineers were being evacuated after a major land mine accident. In this incident several soldiers lost their lives! Work I did in Africa over the years frequently carried a shadow of possible landmine risk. I don't have the statistics at hand, but far too many local people have been dying because of the lont time landmines have killing potential! The situation in Ukraine is not good ... but hopefully Ukrainian innovation will mitigate the problem to a manageable scale! Peter Burgess
Ukrainian Farmer Finds BIZZARE Way to Get Rid Of Russian Mines The Military Show 1.19M subscribers Nov 24, 2024 #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis Ukraine faces one of the largest landmine crises in history, with over 67,000 square miles littered with mines, traps, and unexploded ordnance. This video explores the creative and courageous methods Ukrainians are using to tackle the problem, from remote-controlled tractors built by farmers to advanced AI-powered drones and robotics. Discover how these efforts are saving lives, safeguarding agriculture, and restoring hope amidst the devastation caused by Russia's ongoing aggression. #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis #themilitaryshow SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/MTvUFDiS ATTRIBUTIONS: https://pastebin.com/mS48zGAL Transcript 0:00 There are now more landmines in Ukraine than almost anywhere else in the world. That is the headline that screamed from a November 2023 piece published by Vox, which went on to point out that mines are among the most underappreciated threats that Ukraine faces in its war with Russia. Red signs—marked with skulls—litter the Ukrainian landscape, warning soldiers and civilians alike that landmines are in the area. Ukraine isn’t even safe when it retakes territory from Russia. Both as a defensive ploy and to damage Ukraine’s troops as they move back in, Russia has taken to installing mines in the territory it has occupied to stifle the Ukrainian resistance. Anti-tank mines are buried in the ground, ready to trigger as they feel the weight of a tank—or, in worse cases, a bus full of civilians—riding over them. Booby traps are built into buildings and on disputed territory, with anti-personnel mines designed to maim and kill. Even at the more makeshift end of the spectrum, there are improvised explosives, cluster munitions, and unexploded artillery littering the Ukrainian landscape. How much of that landscape? About 67,180 square miles of it, an area that is roughly the size of Florida according to Vox. So, 1:05 with such a massive mine threat being presented, the question becomes simple: What is Ukraine doing to tackle the landmines that are scattered all over its territory? There are many answers—some of which we’ll dig into later—but one of the methods used is among the most novel methods of landmine clearing yet. Rather than relying on the latest and greatest technology, there is a small group of Ukrainians who are going back to using a form of technology that was never intended for clearing mines at all. Those groups have gone all the way back to the farm yards. And they’ve discovered that tractors are a surprisingly powerful tool in the war against Russian landmines. In May 2023, a U.K. newspaper called The Sun published a video on its YouTube channel. The video appears fairly innocuous, if a little weird at first, as it shows a man camped out in what appears to be an excavator’s bucket, which has been elevated off the ground. A lookout, perhaps? It’s unclear from the footage, though it’s a hint that some extremely creative everyday Ukrainians have come up with a novel way to deal with the landmine problem on their land. The footage then cuts 2:01 to a huge mechanical plow appearing to till a field. Only that footage isn’t what it appears. A shot from inside the cabin shows that the plow is unmanned and has been rigged to drive forward in a straight line with no human intervention. There is a method to the madness, of course. As the video progresses, we meet a Ukrainian farmer who tells The Sun that one of his tractors ran over an anti-tank mine. That’s when he made a startling discovery. Though the mine destroyed the protective plates and much of its mechanics, the vehicle itself was safe. Those driving the tractor were unharmed—“Everyone’s alive and safe,” says the farmer—and the vehicle was quickly restored to head back out into the minefield. But the incident gave the farmer an idea. With that, the footage cuts back to a front shot of the supposed plow shown earlier, which shows that the vehicle isn’t a plow at all. Instead, it is a tractor that appears to have been jerry-rigged with improvised armor at the front, which is running back and forth across the farmer’s field on the hunt for mines. A solid metal barricade is built onto the front of the vehicle—elevated slightly on rollers to keep the tractor moving—and what appear to be two-by-fours are stacked and 3:01 tied onto its sides, assumedly to act as a shield for the tractor if it finds a landmine. Finally, we see the excavator from the start of the video again. The man still lies in position, appearing the control the tractor with some sort of mechanism installed in the excavator’s barrel. He has a small table and a chair set up, giving him a wide-open view of the field as he coordinates the tractor’s movements and turns while it’s on its minesweeping journey, all as he follows in its wake. The footage cuts back to the farmer. He explains that the reason he has built this novel anti-mine solution—outside of the unexpected discovery that it would work—is that the time has come to start sowing crops. His problem was that he couldn’t move forward with that work because of the risk that mines buried in his land posed. “The emergency services are very busy,” he explains, understandably so given the situation in Ukraine, but his important work similarly can’t wait. So, rather than sit around and hope that the emergency services could send some sort of minesweeping equipment to his farm, he uses the experience he gained watching one of his tractors survive an anti-tank explosion to create his own solutions. “We took the front metal parts from a Russian tank 4:01 that was hit on the crossroads,” he explains while talking about the unique contraption he has created. Those metal parts form the bulk of the tractor’s defenses, with the farmer previously seen in the excavator barrel then shown on the ground with a remote control in hand, guiding the tractor’s movements. In essence, the farmer has created an unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV, with little more than scraps of metal and some amazing Ukrainian ingenuity. The footage cuts away to another man, who explains the scale of the problem Ukraine’s farmers face. He says that the amount of land that they need to cover and demine is huge. “It would take years to demine this particular field by hand and to guarantee that there are no mines here,” he says before the footage cuts back to the improvised tractor. “The wireless tractor is a very good idea,” the man explains, “because there is no human inside.” The risk to the life of the mechanic is negated. That tractor also clears far more territory far faster than that same land can be cleared by hand. It’s also more reliable, at least in terms of getting rid of anti-tank mines. After all, it’s possible to miss these mines when searching by hand because they’re designed to only trigger when a heavy 5:02 weight is placed upon them. The tractor provides that weight, meaning it is guaranteed to set off an anti-tank mine if it encounters one. That same person explains the true scale of the problem. We learn that he is in Kharkiv, a region that Russia has been bombing since at least May 2024, despite assurances from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he had no interest in attacking the region. That month saw somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 soldiers cross the border between Kharkiv and Russia at two key points, according to The Guardian, and the region has been under siege ever since. More Russian men are pouring in. Kharkiv is being battered with artillery. And, as the farmers and military personnel in The Sun’s video explain, their land is now being littered with Russian landmines. “I removed around 500 anti-tank mines and numerous anti-personnel mines in this field,” claimed the man, showcasing just how difficult Russia is making it for Ukraine’s farmers to do their work. Don’t underestimate the importance of this tactic. According to Statista, agriculture accounted for 8.2% of Ukraine’s gross domestic product, or GDP, in 2022, a figure that 6:01 has likely decreased substantially with Russia littering the country’s farmland with landmines. The video ends with footage of the unique tractor driving through shelled-out areas of Kharkiv. Broken buildings line the landscape, serving as a reminder that, for as novel as the farmer’s anti-mine solution may be, he’s still living and working in a region that’s under constant threat of Russian attack. Reporting on the same farmer in May 2023, Reuters is able to offer more details. It names the farmer as Oleksandr Krystov, who is the general manager of his own agricultural company. Krystov lives in Hrakove, a village that Russia managed to occupy during the early months of the war before a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed the war’s frontlines back and gave Krystov a chance to continue his work. The report also quotes Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who claims that the problem Krystov faces is far from unique: Russia has planted mines in about 30% of Ukraine’s territory. Shmyhal says that Ukraine is working hard to demine its agricultural land, likely with the goal of getting its agricultural sector back up and running, even in a faltering capacity. But the scope of the work is enormous. Other farmers face similar problems. In June 2023, 7:05 The Guardian similarly ran a report on the farmers and their unique solution to the Russian mine problem. It pointed out that farmland has been a clear target for Russia since the war’s beginning. For instance, it spoke to one farmer who said that, in the weeks that Russia occupied the Husarivka dairy farm, they slaughtered 2,500 heads of cattle. Most died due to artillery fire or the Russians simply using them as target practice. The farm’s deputy manager, Serhii Vorobyov, claims that the cows that weren’t killed were instead starved. The farmers were forced to abandon their land when the Russians came, with Vorobyov noting that some of his cows became so hungry that they started to eat their own tails for sustenance. Now, he says, “They are just like soldiers who’ve been on the frontline. They are scared if you just go near them.” When his farm was finally liberated by Ukrainian soldiers, Vorobyov claims, there were cow carcasses for as far as the eye could see. And even with Russian soldiers gone, he now faces the same problem as so many other Ukrainian farmers—mines in his land. The farm’s 230 surviving cows can’t be put out to pasture 8:02 because of the mines, as they could theoretically trigger them. Plus, with so many buildings ruined, it’s likely that Vorobyov’s farm will never be the same again. When we mentioned that the threat of Russia’s mines often goes underappreciated at the beginning of the video, this is what we meant. Obviously, landmines present a clear risk to soldiers when attacking fortified locations, as well as to Ukrainian tanks and vehicles. Russia is using them in that capacity – somewhat expected for such a large war. But it’s through this secondary strategy of laying mines on farmland that Russia can terrorize Ukrainian civilians even long after they’ve been pushed out of territory they’d previously taken. Russia is trying to ruin Ukraine’s agricultural industry, all while potentially killing civilians whose only “crime” would be to return to the land that was previously taken from them. All of this brings us to a question: Just how is Russia using landmines to hurt Ukraine? We’ve covered some of the basics already, but it’s clear that these attacks on agricultural lands aren’t accidental. They’re a defined tactic—one that The Halo Trust says is extremely effective. The Halo Trust is an anti-landmine charity that focuses on 9:03 clearing mines and similar explosives to help countries rebound after they’ve experienced armed conflict. Of course, the trust has been extremely active in Ukraine since the beginning of Putin’s “special military operation,” with its Head of Region in Europe, Mike Newton, noting that Russia’s use of landmines on agricultural ground is a definite strategy. “A large part of the economy of Ukraine has collapsed,” Newton says, echoing the previous statistic about how agriculture makes up 8.2% of the country’s GDP. “Ukraine is traditionally one of the breadbaskets of the world, but the country’s prime agricultural land has been decimated by bombs, artillery shells, and landmines,” he says. Those landmines have to be removed if Ukraine is to be rebuilt. The Halo Trust believes that is a gargantuan task – beyond the sheer amount of land that these mines have been installed into, it believes there may be up to two million of the explosives dotted around Ukraine. For all of its hard work, The Halo Trust has barely put a dent in that number. Its highly-trained deminers have been scouring Ukraine by hand, 10:00 with that slow and steady effort leading to the clearing of just 19,000 landmines and similar unexploded munitions. Their work is currently focused on more built-up areas, with schoolyards, pathways, housing estates, and fields combining to form the majority of The Halo Trust’s work. The mere mention of schoolyards there should give you pause for thought – the trust is clearing mines away from locations that are meant for children. Human Rights Watch, or HRW, delves into even more detail. In June 2023, it published a report covering the full use of landmines in Ukraine. It notes that the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty prohibits the use of antipersonnel mines that are capable of killing or injuring people – a ban Russia is clearly violating. Of course, it’s also worth noting that Russia never signed the treaty, with China, the U.S., and over 20 other nations also not being signatories. HRW says that Russia is known to have used at least 13 types of anti-personnel mines in Ukraine since the war began, though Ukraine isn’t innocent in breaking the act either. It’s using rocket launchers to fire PFM antipersonnel blast mines, 11:01 meaning it’s essentially fighting fire with fire in its war against Russia. Ukraine, by the way, is a signatory of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. On top of this, Russia is using at least six types of anti-vehicle mines—allowed under the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty—as well as several types of improvised booby traps that are typically set up in places that Russia had fortified before being driven away. The majority of the antipersonnel mines Russia uses are fragmentation mines, meaning they explode in such a way as to shrapnel flying in multiple directions. A couple—including the PFM-1, PMN-2, and PMN-4—are blast mines designed to cause severe injury or death to a single person, typically when that person places pressure on the mine. Rather than adapting to meet Ukrainian resilience head-on, Russia's response has been to escalate the use of increasingly inhumane tactics. This so-called 'creativity' in their landmine usage only highlights Putin’s desperation in the face of Ukraine’s unyielding strength. In February 2024, NBC News reported on the landmine situation 12:01 in Ukraine, noting that Russia has started using a “deadly new type of antipersonnel mine” called the POM-3. In addition to detonating when pressure is placed upon it—much like a traditional mine—the POM-3 is equipped with seismic sensors that can recognize vibrations in the ground. Those vibrations could be caused by soldiers marching, vehicles driving, or simply farmers attempting to prepare their land for planting. These seismic sensors make the mines much more difficult to both locate and disarm as they’re designed to explode before a person actually touches them. When the POM-3 detects vibrations in the ground, it fires an explosive—about the size of a soft drink can—into the air. This explosive releases metal fragments, firing them far and wide to take out any people in the vicinity. It's a terrifying weapon. And it shows just how far Russia is willing to go to hurt Ukrainians—any Ukrainians—in its effort to complete Putin’s “special military operation.” Hurting Ukrainians is exactly what these mines have achieved. Landmines have been a problem in Ukraine even before the “special military operation” began. Between 2014—the 13:04 same year Russia annexed Crimea—and 2020, Ukraine experienced 1,190 casualties related to landmines, amounting to about 170 casualties per year. That number has increased markedly since the beginning of the war, with the period between February 2022 and July 2023 resulting in 298 civilian casualties, with 22 of those being children. That’s on top of 632 civilian injuries and without mentioning the many more soldiers that have been caught by landmines or Russia’s improvised booby traps. Worst of all, The Halo Trust believes that the civilian numbers are massively underreported, meaning it’s very possible that hundreds more Ukrainians have died to Russian mines. Statista breaks down the numbers and offers some more interesting details to illustrate just how widespread landmine usage has become since the beginning of the Ukraine war. It suggests that the period between April and December 2014 saw 40 Ukrainian civilians killed and another 40 injured by mines. Those numbers rose considerably in 2015—in the immediate aftermath of the Crimean 14:03 annexation—to 123 killed and 240 injured. The next two years also saw significant landmine deaths, with 122 deaths and 361 injuries between 2016 and 2017. The numbers taper off from around 2018 through to 2022, though Ukraine still hit double-digit mine-related deaths in all of those years. Then, 2022 saw the numbers rocket back up to 223 deaths and 374 injuries from landmines. The numbers for 2023 were just as bad, with 116 deaths and 383 injuries. And remember, as The Halo Trust points out, these are just the reported numbers. There are likely many more civilians dead, not to mention the many soldiers that have likely been caught up by Russia’s explosive traps. Suddenly, the farmer’s innovative remote-controlled tractor seems less like a novelty, and more of a necessity. A war for that farmer to protect himself and his workers from the scourge of landmines that have been laid in his fields. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’re going to see fleets of remote-controlled tractors patrolling the fields and countryside of Ukraine any time 15:03 soon – that’s impractical and requires hundreds of people to demonstrate the same ingenuity that Oleksandr Krystov displayed. That’s not to mention the sheer number of tractors required, as well as the luck of running across a destroyed Russian tank. So, what other methods is Ukraine using to tackle its landmine problem? Many, as it happens, with most of them being far more technologically advanced than the armored tractor Krystov has created. For instance, Putin’s “special military operation” marks the first time that artificial intelligence, or AI, has been used to detect landmines. In April 2024, IEEE Spectrum reported on a startup company called Safe Pro AI. That company was called to a 25-hectare field—the same size as 62 American football fields—to test a new drone-based technology it had developed. The task was simple—the U.N. would spread between 50 and 100 inert mines across the field. Safe Pro AI then had to use its drones, which are powered by the company’s machine learning software, to detect as many of those mines as possible in 72 hours. The drones took just five hours. By the end, they’d gathered over 15,000 images, all later 16:03 used to further train the machine learning model that powers them. A further two hours of coding led to that model crunching through the visual data. Sadly, the model wasn’t capable of producing a map with precise coordinates for each suspected landmine. So, Safe Pro AI adapted and instead had it create a map highlighting the general suspected locations of each mine. An imperfect solution, perhaps, but one that would certainly be useful to Ukrainians in their efforts to disarm mines or to simply keep people away from areas believed to contain the weapons. Finally, Safe Pro AI successfully identified the general locations of 74 mines and was invited back by the U.N. to conduct more tests. It’s not the only AI company that is using its technology to help clear landmines in Ukraine. In June 2024, AI Magazine ran a piece on Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which has teamed up with the previously mentioned Halo Trust to work on ways to use AI and machine learning to identify mines in Ukraine. AWS has invested $4 million into the project, which has seen The Halo Trust take a similar approach to Safe Pro AI in using drones to 17:03 scan the Ukrainian landscape. In this case, the landmine clearing organization has a fleet of 542 drones, which have collectively captured around 11 terabytes of high-resolution images to be fed into the AWS machine learning models to help it detect landmines. The Halo Trust is also using AWS models to examine satellite imagery to locate damaged buildings—with that damage also being a possible indicator of landmines in a location. Neither of these technologies is a finished product, by the way. But just as Russia is building landmines that contain seismic sensors—using modern technology to make their landmines more dangerous than ever—so are other organizations using even more advanced technology to detect those new mines. Still, the widespread use of AI to find mines is something that we may not see until later in the war. What about the other things that Ukraine is doing to find the mines in its territory? Metal detectors are still the most common method for finding mines, along with landmine probes and animals that are capable of sniffing out explosives. That’s according to Tim Bechtel, who’s a geophysicist at Pennsylvania’s Franklin and Marshall College. 18:03 He’s working alongside NATO scientists to develop a new form of metal detector—a fleet of autonomous robots that can handle the detection part for humans so that they only have to put themselves at risk while deactivating the mines. Bechtel says, “The most common anti-vehicle mine is the TM 62 M. It’s got a metal casing, so it’s very easily found with a metal detector. Anti-personnel mines are a lot smaller, but most of the Russian mines, even if they have plastic casings, still contain significant metal.” Using metal detectors to find these mines is risky, even when robots are thrown into the mix. And, of course, four robots can’t cover the massive territory in which Russia has installed mines in Ukraine. Still, it’s one more solution adding to the ever-growing pile. Another comes back to drones. The Smithsonian Magazine says that a 17-year-old engineer named Igor Klymenko has cooked up his own drone-based solution to dealing with landmines. The outbreak of the Ukraine war caused him to revisit a passion project from his past, resulting in him creating a drone capable of not only detecting unexploded landmines, but sending their precise coordinates 19:03 to the user. The result was his Quadcopter Mines Detector—a project on which he worked with programmers and scientists while finishing his senior year of high school—which now has a pair of patents and two working prototypes. The prototypes earned Klymenko the Chegg.org Global Student Prize—which comes with a $100,000 prize—for making an impact on the lives of his peers. The drone combines traditional metal-detecting methods with drone technology. Using an F5 PRO quadcopter as the base, Klymenko essentially strapped a metal detector to the bottom, which hangs suspended underneath as the drone flies. From there, the drone can stay suspended for up to 30 minutes and travel up to 5 miles, picking up on landmines as it goes. More investments and refined technology solutions could improve both of those limitations in time. But as it stands, Klymenko’s drone is yet another example of the ingenuity of the Ukrainian people in the face of Russia’s mine threat. Then, there are the mine-clearing monsters. That’s what Real Clear Defense calls a host of Western devices that have been sent into Ukraine to help it combat the scourge of mines in its territory. 20:02 These devices—of which there are about 100—take one of two forms. There’s a plow-clearing machine, which is somewhat similar to the jerry-rigged tractor solution, that plows the land to uproot mines. One example of the American M1150, which has the same chassis as an Abrams tank and is capable of throwing down M58 MICLIC explosive lines up to 328 feet in front of itself to clear a path. Unfortunately, these plow machines are loud and bulky—the M1150 weighs over 70 tons—making them easy targets for Russian missiles and artillery. The other mine-clearing monster uses flails, with Germany’s WiSNET 1 being a prime example. Like the M1150, it’s built using a tank chassis—a Leopard instead of an Abrams, this time—but it’s lighter at 44 tons and uses a series of flails to whip the ground and explode any mines it finds. Ukraine has 56 of these WiSNET 1s, which can move at top speeds of 31 miles per hour. Unfortunately, they also offer an imperfect solution, as they only have a typical clearance rate of between 50% and 60% of mines in an area. 21:00 Still, they are yet more tools Ukraine can add to its de-mining arsenal. And if all of that doesn’t work, the country can take another approach: if you can’t beat them, join them. Given that Russia is peppering Ukraine’s landscape with mines to take out vehicles and tanks, Ukraine has taken to using the same tactic. In February 2023, Forbes writer David Axe reported that Ukrainian soldiers have started relaying mines in old minefields that Russia’s soldiers have previously cleared, essentially creating a field of fresh mines ready to explode when Russia attempts to cross. This leads to a pattern wherein a lead Russian vehicle will get taken out by a mine the Russians believed they’d cleared, with the vehicle dramatically exploding. The rest of the tank column ends up scattering, with some attempting to go around the lead vehicle while others go in different directions, only to run into more mines. Even a retreat is made more challenging as there could be more mines that have been re-laid behind the tanks after they’d progressed. Add the scattering of more mines into these old fields from the air and you have a dangerous combination that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Russian soldiers so far. Still, it’s a tactic that only makes the 22:00 issue of landmines in Ukraine worse, even if the Ukrainians know where these fresh mines are being placed. Where does all of this leave us? Russia clearly sees landmines—both anti-personnel and anti-tank—as a key way to not only fight against Ukraine’s soldiers but to wreak havoc among its civilian population. That tactic has forced levels of ingenuity rarely seen in times of war. Of course, there are the more militaristic and technological methods being developed to take out these mines. AI is slowly proving itself useful in detection, though it requires further development. And with the mine-clearing monsters coming in from the West, Ukraine at least has a handful of machines that are capable of clearing mines faster than can be done by hand with traditional metal detectors. But it is the everyday citizens who are coming up with their own solutions that are most impressive. Some of those solutions combine modern technology with traditional mine-clearing techniques, such as we see with Igor Klymenko’s metal-detecting drones. But even in the absence of that technology, people like Oleksandr Krystov are figuring out ways to use what they have available to make their land a little safer. His combination of a tractor, old Russian tank armor, 23:01 and an impressive remote-control system means that he’s able to detect mines on his land, get rid of them, and start working again within an agricultural sector that is on its knees due to Russia’s invasion. Perhaps we’ll see variations of his tractor in wider use in the future. But for now, we want to hear your opinions. What do you think about Ukraine’s mine-detecting tractor and how much of a role do you think mines will play both during and after the Ukraine war? Share your thoughts in the comments and thank you for watching this video. Now go check out Chinese Soldier Fighting For Russia EXPOSES Putin's INCOMPETENCE! or click this other video instead!

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