Page images
PDF
EPUB

Also,

example, we have used the Canadian engineer mine guide that they developed for their UN mission in the former Yugoslavia. we are borrowing certain pieces of allied countermining and force protection equipment to see if we can gain even marginal improvement in the sets of specific countermine "solutions."

We have examined the countermine problem in a holistic manner, drawing talent and ideas from a diverse countermine community. The Engineer School is the primary combat developer with help from the Infantry, the Armor, and the Ordnance Missile & Munitions schools. The Army Materiel Command is the materiel developer with its executive agent, the Project Manager for Mines, Countermines, and Demolitions. Various Army labs participate in countermine initiatives as well as the testing community.

We feel that we have excellent flexibility to do whatever has to be done to protect our soldiers from the mine threat in Bosnia. Our basic thesis is that there is no single doctrine solution, no single training solution, nor organizational improvement, nor single piece of countermine equipment that will meet all countermine requirements. Any countermine measure touted as "the solution" is pure fantasy. In the long term, we believe that the United States needs to enhance funding for countermine programs in order to speed the fielding of promising

systems.

We have recognized the particular challenge of the countermine challenge of Bosnia as well as other possible scenarios.

The most promising new technology currently in development is the stand-off minefield detection system or STAMIDS. STAMIDS will provide near real time locations of surface laid or scattered minefields and buried pattern minefields and, when combined with the Global Positioning System and an automated database, will provide accurate information critical to maneuver planning. The three variants of STAMIDS are based on platforms of aircraft or drone, ground vehicle mount, and hand-held.

Engineers, by virtue of their science-based profession, are practical men and women. While we strive for break-throughs, we identify barriers in technology, organization, and funding.

From a detection perspective, the optimum technology would be the ability to make the earth transparent to the depth of any mine and to give 100% assurance of the benign or malignant identity of any object buried in the earth or laid on the surface. And to determine all this from a distance that does

not compromise the safety or security of the soldier employing such a system.

Mr. WELDON. Colonel Barlow.

STATEMENT OF COL. DENNIS BARLOW, USA, DIRECTOR FOR POLICY AND PLANS, HUMANITARIAN AND REFUGEE AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR SPECIAL OPERATIONS/LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Colonel BARLOW. Good afternoon, sir. It is great to be here.

The heart of the testimony today is going to be the technology. But we also realize that you have a question about the basic use of the U.S. military forces to do this operation. I am the Director of Policy for the Office of Humanitarian and Refugee Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

My oversight responsibilities pertain to humanitarian assistance programs and operations, transportation of nonlethal DOD excess property, migrant and refugee issues, emergency relief operations, certain arms control negotiations and humanitarian demining.

The United States policy for humanitarian demining in Bosnia is reflected within the Dayton agreement. Each of the parties is responsible for demining activities within its territory. These programs will be augmented by the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs, which will facilitate the effective coordination of civilian humanitarian demining efforts. Thus, humanitarian demining in Bosnia will be overseen by the civilian United Nations [U.N.] hierarchy there.

IFOR has involvement in humanitarian demining in three ways: All operational and tactical mine clearing will be done to area clearing standards approaching 100-percent effectiveness, a degree of safety often associated with humanitarian demining, vice the military breaching standards of 80 percent. Two, all information on mine locations collected by IFOR will be made available to agencies and organizations involved in humanitarian demining. Three, selected units or detachments may support mine awareness efforts. Based on the information provided above, we do not anticipate using the IFOR to conduct humanitarian demining operations or training for host nation personnel.

That concludes my statement, sir.
Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Colonel.

We will begin questioning. Let me begin by just generally asking you-my experience in looking at these kinds of situations goes back to Kuwait, when I was in the country a week after the liberation of Kuwait and the entire city was just loaded with mines and the French were taking a lead role there. From my understanding, there were some very crude mines that were put there by Saddam's forces.

Mr. Reeder, would you start off by explaining the operation of some of the mines? You have a little show and tell there. I know there are some that pop up and then explode that do more damage. Just kind of explain the way they operate for us. I want to go to the whole issue of nonmetallic mines, so perhaps you could begin and discuss that also in some of your explanations of the types of

mines.

Mr. REEDER. OK, Mr. Chairman.

Just to sort of start off, in general, antipersonnel mines have a variety of effects. And when we talk about effects, what we mean are that lethal element that translates between the mine and its target.

In general, most antipersonnel mines have between 100 and 200 grams of Trinitratoluene [TNT] in them, and the mines in the former Republic of Yugoslavia pretty much follow that thought process. They range from a simple pressure-fused mine where just downward pressure of about 5 kilograms would set the mine off, to a variety of different types of stake-mounted mines, often with dual fuses, pressure and trip wire as well.

The difference between these two devices is pretty straightforward. A contact mine causes damage basically to the absolute immediate area around the mine. A fragmentation mine, or a bounding fragmentation mine operates in a similar manner but jumps up to an optimum height to disperse fragments have lethal radiuses between 15 and 30 meters, depending on the weight of the mine. These are pretty heavy weight as far as these categories go. They are about 20 to 25 meter lethal radiuses.

On antitank mines, basically, you have two main lethal mechanisms. In the former Yugoslavia, the vast majority are similar to this one in that they are blast, about 6 kilograms of TNT.

There are a much lesser number of antitank mines that have a warhead that forms on that explosive effect and actually flies towards a target. TMRP-6 is what was considered by the UNPROFOR forces the most dangerous antitank mine in the region. Simply, it is a belly attack antitank mine. When you either roll over it with pressure or you function the tilt rod, a mild steel plate is formed that actually flies up through the belly, and this will defeat any tank fielded in the world today.

More importantly, because this has a flier plate, you can take this mine and mount it sideways in an embankment and use either the tilt rod or a trip wire to launch this flier right out into a roadway area. So in other words, it can attack from the side.

An important point to keep in mind with the former republic of Yugoslavia, because they had such a wide variety of special devices, booby trap devices, and demolition devices, is that basically they are all compatible with each other. You can take a simple mine fuse and put it in an explosive block, which this is a replica of, and you now have either a trip wire fuse, or in this case you have got a device that can be ratcheted up under a stair tread, and if you step on the stair, just a 12 millimeter deflection would set this block of explosive off.

So as you can see, there is quite a wide range of devices available.

As far as detectability goes, probably 75 percent of the buried antipersonnel mines are difficult to detect, and what we did isMr. WELDON. Excuse me. Is that because they are nonmetallic? Mr. REEDER. Well, basically, you have to be cautious here. Many mines nowadays are made out of plastic material, so from an appearance point of view they appear to be nonmetallic. What is really important, though, is the amount of metal components within the fuse itself. It is rather difficult to see in this cross-section, but you can see that underneath this fuse itself there is a thin cylinder.

I have a sample one in my hand. Basically, this is about a 1gram cylinder of aluminum. It is equivalent to what you might call a blasting cap or a detonator, and the other standard size is less than half of that, about four-tenths of a gram. In many of these mines, that is the range of the metal content that you have. That is below the threshold that we have established several years back. It makes these a category we describe as difficult to detect.

All of these mines that are used over there have some amounts of metal in them, and they vary anywhere from four-tenths of a gram up to mines like this that quite obviously have a tremendous amount of metal in them.

The difficulty with a low-metallic-content mine is that often you can detect it but you have to be very cognizant of your procedures, the amount of training that a man has had, his mental alertness, the terrain conditions, snow cover, grass or shrub growth. So, in other words, you really have to be extremely cautious with all of your procedures. And as I said, many of the mines in this country are in that category, where you have to really stay on top of your procedures.

The good news is that under the right conditions, they are all detectable mines.

Are there any other points, Mr. Chairman, before I get too carried away describing these mines?

Mr. WELDON. We received information that the Army did some testing this past year on a hand-held system that was primarily designed for low metallic or perhaps plastic mines, and that it had an effective rate of somewhere around 70 percent.

Is that true? My understanding is that it was not-it is not being deployed in Bosnia because the level of reliability is not higher than 70 percent. Is that in fact the case, and at what level would, in fact, we deploy something like a hand-held system?

Mr. REEDER. I would really have to defer the total answer on that because for this reason: As a technical analyst in landmines, it is my mission to identify those things that need to be considered by our military planners, by our doctrine people and our equipment developers. So we have highlighted the situation with the landmines. Now it is up to our laboratory systems and our engineer folks to actually run tests, and they can describe more fully the tests and the results they have run, based on the situation with the mines.

Mr. WELDON. I will ask that same question, the technical part, but, General Gill, do you have any comments on that from the requirements standpoint?

General GILL. I would tell you that 70 percent is not good enough; that there is nothing over there now that they have not chosen the command has not chosen to accept something with that kind of a level of resolution. But we are working very hard on those kinds of technologies that will bring that stuff to fruition.

So, again, we are back to this-this suite of solutions that use our metallic mine detectors and all the things that we can put in a soldier's head to make him alert and aware.

Mr. WELDON. What would be an acceptable level, up in the 90percent range or 100 percent range, from a requirement standpoint?

« PreviousContinue »