Chapter V. Achtung! Minen!
In 1992 the global run for the Prohibition of Anti-personnel Min was founded. This is an global organization founded by American social activist Jody Williams. In 1997, the organization and its founder were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their actions.
One of the effects of the organization's actions was to pass in 1997 and to sign the alleged Ottawa Treaty (Ottavian Convention) on the prohibition of the use, storage, production and transfer of anti-personnel mines and on their destruction. The Convention entered into force on 1 March 1999 after 40 countries signed. At present, more than 160 countries of the planet are signatories to the Convention, excluding Russia, the United States, China, Israel, India, North Korea and South Korea.
The Ottawa Convention includes a complete ban on the production and usage in armed conflicts of anti-personnel mines and obliges associate States to completely destruct their stocks. Within the meaning of the Convention, an anti-personnel mine is “a mine intended for explosions due to the presence, proximity or contact of a person, causing the disposal, injury or killing of 1 or more persons. Mines designed to detonate as a consequence of the presence, proximity or contact with the vehicle, but not persons equipped with manipulation devices shall not be considered anti-personnel mines due to the possession of specified devices.’ This additional reservation means that anti-personnel mines are not considered to be mines against vehicles protected from their removal.
Ukraine as a country signatory to the convention cannot usage anti-personnel mines and is constantly targeted by global organisations specified as Human Rights Watch due to their usage (although Ukraine had respective million anti-personnel mines at the time of the full-scale war, which it had not yet destroyed). Russia, which has not signed the convention, uses anti-personnel mines legally. That's what the law says. international. And leave him alone, because... Let's just leave him alone.
Being in a war-torn country exposes a man to the hazard of dealing with dangerous objects. And actually, no substance where a man is. It is known that the closer the areas covered by the armed action, the greater the chance of entertaining surprises. But besides where fighting armies do not rub their chests in the chest, there are no explosions: parts of rockets or drones.
As a substance of fact, 2 basic types of hazardous objects are distinguished in the sapper industry: unexploded and unexploded. Non-explosives are missiles which, after contact with the mark (or after missing the target) should have been torn apart. Without bursting, they endanger to detonate at any time. They didn't fire bullets that weren't fired due to their faults. Don't blow it up.
This dichotomous division includes various types of mines and mines-traps. As a civilian in the area of action, you can meet mostly unexploded and mine. First of all, soldiers deal with misfires.
While staying far from the front poses very small risk, staying close to the front and in the places where the front has passed, there is simply a alternatively crucial danger of encountering something that may detonate without notice. Therefore, being in the places where the fights were fought, 1 should keep in head that 1 can encounter traps and unexploded ones. In another words, at higher risk, you should learn to walk again. Does that sound funny? Until then. Look at the pictures below.
Photo 7. A mortar shell (without a trigger, after a fire) and most likely a mine from the OЗМ series (осколково-заградительная мина) in a case. [photo: own]
Photo 8. Such, skins after mortar cucumbers 80 mm from burnt truck with ammunition. [photo: own].
photo 9. Typical rubble after a broken house. [photo: own].While burnt shells of mortar shells do not pose a large threat, the plastic cylinder is already disturbing. most likely hid the body of the anti-personnel mine OЗМ-72, but I am not sure. Whatever – you want to live, you avoid specified objects with a wide arch. Why wide?
Most anti-personnel mines have 3 variants of explosive initiation: mechanical, force and seismic. force and seismic detonators shall act appropriately on the force straight on the mine or on the ground shocks in its vicinity. The mechanical detonation strategy is simply a celebrated “resolution”. So a wire pulled from the trigger, the pull of which causes to rip the pin (as in the grenade) and initiate the explosion. usually without any delay, due to the fact that why hold in case of a mine what it was designed for? The solution looks like this:
Photo 10. Mina ОЗМ-4 is set and armed. You can see 1 pull. [source: Internet].Weighting 5 kg of mina ОЗМ-72, which was most likely in a broken photograph box. 7. deserves separate attention. It is presently widely utilized on the Ukrainian-Russian front by both sides. It's most likely the hardest anti-personnel mine. Its lashings (threats) in the number 2 extend on other sides at dimension 15 meters on each side. This is illustrated in the following diagram:
Figure 2. strategy of the anti-personnel mine setting ОЗМ-72 [source: Internet]Mina ОЗМ-72 is called the military jargon “frog” or “a witch”. The rule of its operation is to activate 2 explosive devices consecutively after attaching a leg to a dilution (it takes about 2 kg to initiate the detonation – I know, it is “military physics”, not academic with Newtons). The first of the loads throws up the mine body with the right charge at tallness between 0.9 and 1.1 m. At this height, there is an detonation of a appropriate charge initiated by breaking a pin attached to the wire, the another end of which remains in the shell of a mine in the ground. This detonation spreads 2,400 shrapnel (metal balls or fights) within a radius of about 30 metres. The maximum amount of shrapnel is 50 meters.
In the case of detonation of the mine of ОЗМ-72 the full platoon of infantry may be infected. Actually, there's no cure for her after the explosion. Whether in standing position or lying man suffers serious injuries, which can lead to amputation of affected limbs, bleeding, infections.
This mine, due to its specificity of operation, is utilized to place dam minefields, as a single mine covers an area with a diameter of 30 meters. So, counting the plus-minus, 9 minutes is adequate to set a minefield of 1 hectare.
Theoretically, the ОЗМ-72 mines are removable “Enough” to remove the lashings, twist the fuse and remove the mine from the ground in which it was embedded. Unfortunately, the advanced sensitivity of any models of the detonator makes the face virtually “unmoveable”. In addition, there is another tiny “but”. In the case of this mine it is “but” the anticipation of placing an additional mine-trap with a force trigger underneath it. In this case, an effort to remove a five-kilogram ОЗМ-72 causes activation of an additional mine lying below it and an detonation of both mines. Well, it can always be counted that the devoid of the trigger of ОЗМ-72 will no longer participate in the explosion, but mediocre is comfort. This tiny nuance, making the mine a ОЗМ-72 charge indelible, makes working on clearing specified minefields without demining “machine” highly dangerous.
Mina ОЗМ-72 can besides be equipped with a force trigger, or a seismic trigger, or even can be fired remotely by connecting the fuse with an electrical cable to the detonator device that activates the soldier operator. The force trigger is simply a simple mechanical device that causes a mine to detonate if you exert force of 2 to 5 kg on it. A seismic light is already a somewhat more complex device, powered from batteries that will break the face erstwhile it senses a passing man or animal on the basis of the ground shocks caused by them.
For the sake of reportery reliability, it should be noted that in the Russian arsenal there are presently the following anti-personnel mines with a force detonator: ПМД-6, ПМД-6M, ПМН-2, ПМН-3, ПМН-4, ПФМ-1 and ПФМ-1С (described below) ПМП, УМ-1, УМ-1. In addition to them, we can encounter anti-personnel mines with the detonator of the kind “retractor”: ПОМЗ-2, ПОМЗ-2M, a series of dam mins ОЗМ-3, ОЗМ-4, ОЗМ-72, ПОМ-1, ПОМ-1С, ПОМ-2, ПОМ-2Р, ПОБ, МИБ, МИБ. Additionally anti-personnel mines of distant detonation: ОЗМ-160, ОЗМ з УВК, МОН-50, МОН-90, МОН-100, МОН-200, ПОМ-3, НВУ-П, НВУ-П2.
Do not forget the mines-traps that can be mounted in various unusual places (e.g. in the washing device – but it will be alternatively a trap on Russian soldiers from the state who are celebrated for looting rather a wide scope of household appliances): МС-3, МС-4, МС-5, МС-6Щ, МС-6М, МЛ-1, МЛ-2, МЛ-7, МЛ-8.
In addition, we have a wide spectrum of anti-tank, anti-transport, object, smoke and signal mines. Hmm... I think this list is adequate to make her want to walk for a long time after the fishy territory.
And now look at photograph 9, depicting the rubble after the destroyed detonation of the house. How hard do you think it is to hide a mine-frog with a force detonator? You decision your leg like a bigger part of concrete or a fewer bricks and... boom.
The general regulation of ground movement is that you effort to walk mostly on paved pavements or asphalt. Bitty roads without any digging marks can be. However, attention should be paid to whether a suspicious wire is stretched across specified a road.
Walking on the grass especially advanced is simply a athletics of higher risk. There is virtually no chance in specified a area to announcement a well-masked dilution. Well, I guess to decision at very small speed. And that doesn't give you any warrant you won't get caught.
In addition, in the grass, debris, leaves and loose garbage, mechanical means of damaging the staff, specified as caltropy, can be found. In the image below the Roman version (yes, yes – from the times of ancient Rome).
Photo 10. Roman caltrop [source: Internet].
Now imagine that you're following up on any variant of this spike, which has been utilized militarily for 2,500 years with a weak foot, or you drive a car on it. It's sad, isn't it? Besides, you don't request sophisticated blacksmith structures. A masked nailboard torn off from the pallet will besides do his job...
At the very end of this bomb squad I want to draw your attention to the overhead mines of ПФМ-1 and ПФМ-1С. They disagree only due to the fact that ПФМ-1 does not have a self-destructive mechanism, ПФМ-1С is equipped with 1 that, as reported by well-informed sources, disposes only about 80% of the mines, so 20% remains dangerous “forever”. Externally, to the eye, both variants cannot be distinguished. The only distinguishing component is the letter “C” applied to the body of the mina ПФМ-1. These mines are affectionately referred to as “flakes” (“pliers”, ros. лепестки), or “mutilations” (“tubs”, ros. бабочки). And they look like this:
Photo 11. ПФМ-1 overhead mine (противопехотная фугасная мина (ru.), anti-personnel shrapnel mine) [source: internet, https://sappers.com.ua/dovidnyk/mines/protypihotni-natysknoyi-diyi/pfm-1-i-pfm-1s]
Photo 12. ПФМ-1 overhead mine lying on the sidewalk [source: Internet, https://kanaldim.tv/ru/chto-takoe-miny-visettes-i-kto-ih-razbrasyvaet-po-netek-intervyu-s-pavlom-lisyanski/]As you can see, it's a very tiny face. Its size is 12 x 6 x 2 cm and the weight is 80 g. Activation of the mine occurs by force (apparently 1 kg) on the plastic body (its thicker part) filled with liquid explosive. I don't think Mina's deadly, but she's a good foot.
The mining of ПФМ-1 and ПФМ-1С is carried out solely by the sipping method from peculiar cassettes. Cassettes can be fired manually or fired from very different systems: from the “Hurgan” rocket launcher, helicopters, fighters. 1 volley full loaded “Hurgana” is 4,992 mines in 16 rockets. The full loaded chopper strategy is 7,424 mines in 116 cassettes. Quick, efficient, deadly. Mines of ПФМ-1 and ПФМ-1С are indelibly (indisposable), they are detonated on site, or collected and transported in peculiar containers to the place of detonation.
