The full-scale invasion of Russian troops and their proxies on the territory of Ukraine at the end of February 2022 turned into the largest war on the European continent since the end of the Second World War. The high intensity of hostilities, the use of conventional weapons and weapons prohibited by international agreements by the Russian military, the variety of forces and means of fire damage, mining, communication, radio-electronic warfare created new challenges for military specialists. The team of developers and experts of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Defense Technologies set themselves the task of giving a confident answer to some of them.
This war has no precedents for the richness of the use of all types of weapons.
All types of weapons are involved, except weapons of mass destruction. In addition, weapons systems of several generations and hundreds of manufacturers from different countries are involved. Many weapons and ammunition systems are being used for the first time in history in real combat operations, and not always in the standard mode established during development and design.
Given the massive use of obsolete ammunition and even those that have exceeded the parameters of serviceability, we constantly observe their unpredictable behavior. A large number of munitions equipped with old electronic components behave unpredictably even after being dropped and failed. They are triggered after a long period of time, which can lead to a whole complex of factors that cannot be predicted.
There are attempts to modernize heavy ammunition by changing the properties of standard explosives, increasing the power of the ammunition with the help of new chemical components. Therefore, various levels of instability of the explosive substance are found. Equipping the combat units of the old ammunition park with new control devices that have not passed a full cycle of tests also introduces unpredictability into the behavior of this or that ammunition in the event of its failure.
It should also be taken into account that a number of ammunition and weapons systems were not previously designed for use in this climate, so it is also impossible to predict their behavior in the event of failure.
As a separate point, it is worth noting the fact that in any war, military personnel of the warring parties, showing their own initiative or using previously acquired experience, interfere with the work of nodes, mechanisms and control systems of various ammunition and products, which leads to undocumented capabilities and non-standard behavior explosive devices. Actually, this phenomenon can be called "mining folklore", and each military conflict adds its own peculiarities and subtleties to it.
All the factors listed above should lead to NEW requirements for the professionalism of humanitarian demining specialists. The specialist must possess not only the knowledge prescribed in mine action documents and regulatory documentation, but also have access to a certain Knowledge Base and qualified consultants who know and study the current "folklore".
Any detection of landmines and munitions prohibited by international conventions is part of the painstaking work of thousands of specialists in documenting violations of the customs and methods of warfare. In other words, a modern demining specialist is a specialist with new knowledge, capabilities and skills. The moral and ethical aspect is also important, namely the control of access to special skills and knowledge, accounting of specialists and the spectrum of their competences, preventing their spillover into the shadow sphere not controlled by the state.
The full-scale invasion of Russian troops and their proxies on the territory of Ukraine at the end of February 2022 turned into the largest war on the European continent since the end of the Second World War. The high intensity of hostilities, the use of conventional weapons and weapons prohibited by international agreements by the Russian military, the variety of forces and means of fire damage, mining, communication, radio-electronic warfare created new challenges for military specialists. The team of developers and experts of the Ukrainian Research Institute of Defense Technologies set themselves the task of giving a confident answer to some of them.
This war has no precedents for the richness of the use of all types of weapons.
All types of weapons are involved, except weapons of mass destruction. In addition, weapons systems of several generations and hundreds of manufacturers from different countries are involved. Many weapons and ammunition systems are being used for the first time in history in real combat operations, and not always in the standard mode established during development and design.
Given the massive use of obsolete ammunition and even those that have exceeded the parameters of serviceability, we constantly observe their unpredictable behavior. A large number of munitions equipped with old electronic components behave unpredictably even after being dropped and failed. They are triggered after a long period of time, which can lead to a whole complex of factors that cannot be predicted.
There are attempts to modernize heavy ammunition by changing the properties of standard explosives, increasing the power of the ammunition with the help of new chemical components. Therefore, various levels of instability of the explosive substance are found. Equipping the combat units of the old ammunition park with new control devices that have not passed a full cycle of tests also introduces unpredictability into the behavior of this or that ammunition in the event of its failure.
It should also be taken into account that a number of ammunition and weapons systems were not previously designed for use in this climate, so it is also impossible to predict their behavior in the event of failure.
As a separate point, it is worth noting the fact that in any war, military personnel of the warring parties, showing their own initiative or using previously acquired experience, interfere with the work of nodes, mechanisms and control systems of various ammunition and products, which leads to undocumented capabilities and non-standard behavior explosive devices. Actually, this phenomenon can be called "mining folklore", and each military conflict adds its own peculiarities and subtleties to it.
All the factors listed above should lead to NEW requirements for the professionalism of humanitarian demining specialists. The specialist must possess not only the knowledge prescribed in mine action documents and regulatory documentation, but also have access to a certain Knowledge Base and qualified consultants who know and study the current "folklore".
Any detection of landmines and munitions prohibited by international conventions is part of the painstaking work of thousands of specialists in documenting violations of the customs and methods of warfare. In other words, a modern demining specialist is a specialist with new knowledge, capabilities and skills. The moral and ethical aspect is also important, namely the control of access to special skills and knowledge, accounting of specialists and the spectrum of their competences, preventing their spillover into the shadow sphere not controlled by the state.
