Saturday, November 28, 2009

Here is a recent post I made in response to the latest No Agenda Podcast on their forums page.

I can only speculate on why the USA has not signed the Land Mine Ban Treaty but here is my guess.

The US Army doctrine on the use of land mines includes mapping where the land mines are and retrieving, disarming or destroying them when the mission is complete. In many cases the land mine fields are marked. Land mies are used to channelize or delay the enemy. The mine field will make the enemy slow own and if they try to disarm, mark or destroy the mines this allows the defender to target direct fire or indirect fire weapons o the enemy to destroy them or make them withdraw. Land mines that are not individually placed but are spread by use of artillery shells or aircraft have self destruct mechanisms that will neutralize the mine after a defined time period, usually in 12 to 24 hours.

Other countries tend to use land mines in a different way. The use them as area denial and terror weapons. They spread the mies out on roads and in fields to deny their use by their enemies. They do not mark or map where they place the mines and have no intention of retrieving or destroying the mines. They just want to deny the use of the fields by farmers and the roads by people and opposing soldiers.

Thus the US Army does not want to be denied the use of a valuable force multiplier that they use judiciously just because other countries use the same weapons indiscriminately not so much as a force multiplier but as a weapon of terror.