Landmines and the Geneva convention (from the MOS thread)

JaegerWolf08

JaegerWolf08

Active member
[Admin: split this one from the MOS thread, that's why this first post may seem a bit weird...]

Enemy soldiers are the best way to diffuse mines, mua ha ha. But I heard it was against something called the Geneva Convention, or whatever that thing is. If anyone else has heard of it, let me know.










Joking
 
Yea I was wondering about that too. Are landmines outlawed? Do any countries still use them anyway? They must (Iraq as I recall, from GWI anyway), or we wouldn't have so many nifty toys to get rid of them. When were they outlawed? Anyone know about this?
 
Well we still use the M18 Claymore AP mine, but it's a remotely triggered mine rather than a bury and forget one, I don't know if that makes a difference.

Of course, this is getting a little off-topic, but I doubt this is going to spark a full-on discussion :lol: .
 
implaced anti-personnel landmines were banned by an international treaty not signed by the US. but yes a claymore is not covered because it is command detonated.
 
Anti-personnel mines were banned by the Ottawa Treaty - unsigned, I think, by the US, Russia and China, which means that you're going to find them in any operation theatre. Still, anti-tank mines are still fully legal.

A Claymore can be set to detonate through a tripwire, so it would be banned for the treaty...
 
The claymore charge itself is not banned.
We use a similar fragmentation charges (?), both anti-personell and vehicles, which is remotely detonated.
When it is detonated by command it is regarded as a one-shot weapon.

But when you put a tripwire on it, then it becomes a mine, and it is banned...
 
Yes we do still use landmines. The Geneva convention states that any landmines used must be command operated (i.e. remote detonation), and not personnell activated. This is for obvious reasons, but no, landmines are not banned, and are used mainly for things like area protection and ambushes especially ;)
 
Ben said:
Yes we do still use landmines. The Geneva convention states that any landmines used must be command operated (i.e. remote detonation), and not personnell activated. This is for obvious reasons, but no, landmines are not banned, and are used mainly for things like area protection and ambushes especially ;)
Click to expand...

Then it's not a landmine, but a weapon.. ;)

Anti-tank mines are still allowed.
 
Well in bosnia canada was demining and lost 6 men so now there making the serbs demine meanwial then "superwise"
 
Bosnia and minefields, hmmm :? :?

Here's a couple of photos I took in bosnia...
Minefields everywhere... :(
http://www.home.no/novasuper/FN_NATO/Bosnia/bilder/minefelt.jpg
http://www.home.no/novasuper/FN_NATO/Bosnia/bilder/minefelt2.JPG
And here's one from Lebanon.
http://www.home.no/novasuper/FN_NATO/libanon/bilder/Ny A2B.JPG
It's a picture from one of our patrol routes.
Engineers had cleared the paths, everything outside the sticks is considered minefields. (we could see mines sticking out of the ground several places...)

It took weeks after I got back to Norway before I felt comfortable with walking on soft ground again...
Everything outside hard ground down there (Bosnia and Lebanon) was considered unsafe (and in most of the cases it was), so we did never step outside the roads.
 
Heck, in Bosnia I grew tired of opening fields like these. :D

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/landmine.asp?lang=e&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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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