How on earth would we ever get rid of these damn things if they just keep repositioning themselves?
http://www.darpa.mil/ato/programs/SHM/index.html
Watch the flash. Of course, it all looks like a game when it’s virtual.
weird
Damn, I was really hoping that would be about mines that have a time limit on them, so that kids don’t keep on losing limbs in former warzones.
Interesting. We’re several steps closer to the self-intelligent autonomous weapons that science fiction writers wrote about in the 1950s (Philip K. Dick’s Second Variety, Robert Sheckley’s Killbird, etc.) So we know the next step – when we make them too intelligent, the mines know how to avoid and to blow up the minesweepers on our side. Then they come out lookin’ for a fight…
One point worth noting is that they say they can deploy an effective anti-tank minefield without having to intersperse anti-personnel mines to stop the disposal guys. Once the fighting is over then this kind of mindfield would be much less dangerous to unsuspecting civilians.
Not that I don’t find the idea of a minefield wandering around the battlefield all by itself looking for a fight a little disturbing.
I find it more than troubling and oxymoronic that the word “healing” appears in the same phrase as “minefield.”
Seems weird. Wouldn’t the fact that the minefield “pours” into gaps make it that much easier to breach? Run a single pass through the field and wait while the mines obediently fill in the gap. Rinse and repeat. Depending on how thickly they lay them you would wind up with gaps forming in the areas the replacement come from and that would lead to more filling in. Sounds like it could collapse the mine field completely.
The problem, Grey, is that while you’re repeatedly breaching the some minefield, your minesweepers are getting fired-up by indirect and maybe direct fire, and dying in job lots. Meanwhile, your forces sit bottled up behind the minefield, sitting ducks for pretty much anything that wants to take a crack at them…
Any minefield without fire cover is vulnerable to being breached by any engineer unit that comes along. Now, let’s say you left your self-fixing minefield without cover… Your enemy’s engineers come along and blow a big hole in it, and the lead units roll through. Bad, but what happens next? As the engineers roll along right behind the lead assault element, the minefield fixes itself behind them. Now the engineers are going the wrong way (away from the minefield), and the follow-on units and logistics elements are now cut off behind a newly effective barrier. So what to do? Your enemy can either send his lead forces forwards without engineer support, or they can halt while the engineers go back and deal with the minefield a second, and third, or maybe even more times.
What are you doing while this is happening? Anhiliating the lead elements, repositioning your forces to meet the threat, blasting away at the stalled combat units and logistics train, or all the above…
'tis a nasty weapon vs. vehicles, and is somewhat less dangerous to civilians.
How long before this goes tragically wrong? You can’t possibly expect a perfect deployment every time. In a system as complex as the one they are proposing you are just ASKING for accidents to happen. And didn’t the US agree to stop with the whole anti-tank mine thing years ago?
They look to be surface mines instead oif the buried ones so people won’t accidently walk on them.