Demining
CERAD recognizes that modern warfare leaves landscapes contaminated with a variety of dormant explosives. These explosive remnants of war (ERW) alongside landmines prevent access to land, endanger civilians, and costmillions of dollars in clearance efforts.
Landmines
Today, over 60 million people live in areas occupied by mines. Even three decades ago, surveys found over 110 million landmines seeded across 64 countries. Each year, landmines wound or kill thousands of civilians, about 50% of which children.
Abandoned Ordnance (AXO)
During war, stagnant frontlines, combat in urban areas, and long distance bombing capabilities can result in abandoned vehicles and shelters, creating stockpiles of abandoned ordnance. The accumulation of stockpiles increases the likelihood of sudden, large detonations. Incidents like seasonal wildfires can lead to detonations, causing injuries to crews, equipment damage, and an exacerbation of already volatile conditions.
Not all explosives detonate when they should. Partial detonations and failed detonations result in landscapes littered with unexploded ordnance. Time and weather can leave them more sensitive to impact, increasing the risk to civilians. With older ordnance, dud rates reach upwards of 20%.
Unexploded Ordnance (UXO)
Quick and efficient removal of explosives after war restores access to land, protects civilians, and aids in rapid economic recovery. But, by overlooking ecological variables, conventional demining practices can exacerbate the environmental toll of war, potentially causing lasting impact to agricultural soil, and ultimately human livelihoods. These impacts translate to heightened risks of food insecurity, increased vulnerability to natural disasters, aggravated climate change impacts, and the depletion of the soil’s capacity as a carbon sink. We believe this cost-of-war can be mitigated.
Operator safety, cost, speed, and effectiveness are the priorities of demining operations.
CERAD uses methods that allow research on environmental impacts to run parallel to ongoing demining operations. We believe research needs to keep pace with real-world events, and that learning can be done without undermining the cost, safety, or efficiency of operations.
Best practices are recommended,
but they’re not the only ones being used. We are focused on understanding the environmental impacts of the methods operators are actually employing.
Procedures don’t just change over night and there are often good reasons operators don’t use best practice. For instance, we all know that low-order detonations aren’t environmentally ideal, but they are nonetheless used in disposal. Understanding the ramifications of all methods, not just “best practices” will allow us to predict what conditions to expect after land is cleared, and how to customize soil remediation to real-life conditions.
We’re starting with a focus on BIP methods in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, mine clearance teams have identified over 14 types of antipersonnel mines and 23 types of anti-vehicle mines, along with various boobytraps and modifications. Alterations to systems like the S-300 and artillery shells have created increasingly complex clearance issues. This, combined with the high dud rates of Soviet munitions hinders the removal of explosives and necessitates an increasing reliance on blow-in-place (BIP) methods.
A few notes:
CERAD includes experts and organizations from across the agricultural, soil, explosives, and demining sectors. We’re proud to have people invested in every stage of demining and remediation.
While some of our members are innovators in landmine detection, crater mapping, and remote sensing, that is not the consortium’s focus.
Likewise, cutting-edge demining and EOD methods are currently under extensive research by academia, military, and industry. Most research focuses on unmanned detectors, robot deminers, and field-expedient disposal techniques. Although these technologies hold promise for the future, they currently constitute a minority of the methods employed by deminers due to their high cost, susceptibility to damage, and untested effectiveness.