Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: jpulliam@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jacqueline Pulliam)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Scatterable Minefields
Summary: Minefield Placement Shouldn't Allow "Driving Around It"
Message-ID: <14451@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 3 Mar 90 06:08:40 GMT
References: <14060@cbnews.ATT.COM> <14123@cbnews.ATT.COM> <14165@cbnews.ATT.COM> <14338@cbnews.ATT.COM> <14401@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: jpulliam@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jacqueline Pulliam)
In article <14338@cbnews.ATT.COM> nuchat!steve@uunet.UU.NET (Steve Nuchia) writes:
>If the area is such (or can be made so) that you can drive a truck
>around it in something approximating a circle, then you can drag a
>sled behind the vehicle.  The sled will follow a path inside that of
>the truck, and you should be able to spiral in to (nearly) the middle
>that way.  Then a few eccentric passes finish the job.

Actually, a properly-placed minefield (scatterable or manually
emplaced) should not able to be driven around.  The whole object of
the obstacle's placement is to tie it in to natural and other man-made
obstacles so that it must be "bulled through" or deliberately breached
(all made infinitely more effective by covering the obstacle with
direct and indirect fire).  So the clearing method described above
would only be useful in the (infrequent?) circumstance where the
obstacle location was poorly selected.  After all, why even bother
with breaching the minefield if bypass is that easy?  

The best thing the US Army has going right now is the MICLIC, as
(very accurately) described by S. Cameron in an earlier posting.  By
the way, the MICLIC is command detonated after placement, not
immediately upon impact; and in at least some major subordinate
commands (my experience is with the XVIII Airborne Corps) they are
being issued at a rate of one (trailer) per combat engineer platoon.

Finally, getting back to  the original question about the easiest way
to clear a scatterable minefield:  wait for the mines to self-detonate
(from a safe distance).  All US scatterable mines (ADAM and RAAM,
anti-personnel and anti-tank respectively) have self-destruct
built in, and I believe the Soviet versions do as well (Scott Cameron
can probably provide the definitive answer to that one).

John Pulliam