Heck, in Bosnia I grew tired of opening fields like these.

There was a kind of Eastern mine, whose denomination I do not remember, that was so sensible that Serbian engineers didn't dare to remove the safety lock, and you found them with it locked. It was a cilinder with a ring around, and if the ring moved it exploded...

Wow. Sounds like an amazing piece of equipment .

And those pictures are insane, Redleg, I don't envy either of you that experience at all. Ever seen that movie "Behind Enemy Lines?" It's about this U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Bosnia while on a recon flight. It kind of turned into a joke at the end, but the minefields in it were insane, anything like reality?

The movie itself was a joke, but unfortunatelly the minefields were not...
Bosnia itself is a minefield...
Some of the fields has been cleared, but it's estimated that there are about 1 million mines and an unknown amount (maybe millions) of UXOs left , in over 18,000 minefields and different risk areas, and there are still a lot of unregistered minefields (as much as 40% can still be undiscovered..).
Here's a Bosnian minefield report from 2003
http://www.icbl.org/lm/2003/bosnia.htm
and here's one from the red cross:
http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/57JP32

Is this the mine you are talking about Sapper, TM-83?
http://ndmic-cidnm.forces.gc.ca/land...LandmineID=293
When did you serve in Bosnia?
I was there in the spring 1999, in Modrica.

There was a lot of "interesting" minefields down there.
on several occasions our engineers discovered AT mines stacked on top of eachother (could be as many as 7!).
The reason for laying mines like that was that the mineplows would just get the first 3-4 and drive over the remaning mines....
On one occasion they did find several AT mines stacked (I think it was about 5), but with an anti-personel mine on top of them....
A minetrap like that could easily wipe out an entire platoon if they walked close together...
Each one of those AT mines contains 5-7kgs of explosives.
Not exactly following the geneva convention there...

What the hell were those people thinking? It's like they weren't even planning to win, just to kill. What were their plans if they had succeeded? Spend the next 50 years cleaning up after themselves? I've heard that Cambodia actually has even more landmines around than the Balkans.

Ever seen the Bosnian movie "No Man's Land?" It is excellent, but highly depressing.

I went to Mostar in autumn-winter 2000. Cold as hell...

http://ndmic-cidnm.forces.gc.ca/land...LandmineID=104
This was the mine

http://ndmic-cidnm.forces.gc.ca/land...LandmineID=315
And this the controller. This one was often locked, as the Serbian didn't dare to walk away from it safely.

Ouch....

What's the use of a mine no one dares to activate..

Landmines are forbidden but its easy to rename them and use them lawfully in other ways, as in protection mines. Same thing as a landmine but its used defensiely instead of offensively. Like securing a base etc

And they stay there long after the actualy war is over...

So in other words....kills people even after the armys are gone lol

http://www.gichd.ch/pdf/mbc/text_sta...on_English.pdf

The convetion of prohibiting the use of mines.

http://www.gichd.ch/pdf/mbc/text_sta...n_1april04.pdf

Countries who have accepted the treathy.
USA have never approved the Human Rights convention along with Somalia.

If catapults are outlawed only the outlaws will have catapults.

The US isn't going to lay giant minefields in foreign countries where civilians are going to live in 5-10 years (we're the good guys). But if we need them, we have them.