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If I had to build 1 right now. Get yourself a pickup truck, tractor, or similar. Get some bar long enough to weld to the chassis and push out say 50 feet in f
by incomingpain 5y ago
If I had to build 1 right now.
Get yourself a pickup truck, tractor, or similar.
Get some bar long enough to weld to the chassis and push out say 50 feet in front, wider than the truck by a couple feet on each side.
Get an axle to rotate so it's spinning horizontal to the ground. On the axle you weld chains. Make the chains just long enough to strike the ground with enough force to make the mines go off.
Right immediately infront of the pickup you probably want some like 1/2" steel to protect the driver.
Drive forward slowly. Let the chains whip around colliding with the ground at highish speed. Let the mines just explode. After each explosion, back up. Repair the chains as needed.
What would that cost? Nothing really in the grand scheme of things.
Could even go further and just build a big RC car. Get a Tesla that just drives forward. No driver at risk at all. If a mine is designed to not go off on the chain striking the ground, but would go off on the truck. Then all good. Much more expensive though.
- GartzenDeHaes 5y agoThis called a flail. I doubt that improvised rig you described would work due to safety, weight, lack of engine heat dissipation, etc. BTW, the chains need weights attached to the ends in order to get them to extend while spinning (otherwise they just wrap around the axle. https://twitter.com/melanierovery/status/1064918271202418689 https://twitter.com/melanierovery/status/1064918271202418689 https://www.army-technology.com/projects/mv-4-mine-clearance/ https://www.army-technology.com/projects/mv-4-mine-clearance...
- incomingpain 5y agoInteresting. Guess it makes sense they've tried it before. For some reason I imagine the current approach as laying down and slowly stabbing the ground with a bayonet.
- GartzenDeHaes 5y agoI think this is the current approach. The gadget he is holding is a mine detector that's not much different that a commercial metal detector. https://media.defense.gov/2014/Aug/12/2000810975/700/465/0/140805-M-XX999-078.JPG https://media.defense.gov/2014/Aug/12/2000810975/700/465/0/1...
- rolph 5y agothe stabbing part is part probing, and part digging out the mine that you know is there already.
- salawat 5y agoThe Flail approach does work.... You just really want to make sure you've sufficiently hardened the important parts. Explosions are not something you get many second/third/nth chances with dealing with if you undershoot the PPE required for effective protection. It's actually really cool, because once you're done demining, you get a really fancy tiller out of it. A horribly fuel inefficient one, but hey! Blades into plowshares and whatnot.