Ukraine produces special vehicles to speed up demining work

After an exercise, Vitaliy shows the dents caused in the armored vehicle that this Ukrainian adapted to locate mines and remove them from a distance. The damage is limited despite the power of the explosives: the device has just been tested on five anti-tank mines.

In the war-torn regions of Ukraine, the surface is littered with mines, forcing residents to get creative to avoid casualties.

Vitaliy, who says he cannot give his surname or title, shows his prototype, based on a Hitachi excavator, at a military training camp in the southeast of the country. Ukraine. The vehicle can be guided remotely or driven by a driver.

“Ukraine It’s so full of mines that rescuers are terrified. There are mines upon mines,” he points out.

He claims to have been contacted by the military administration of the city of Kryvyi Rig to prepare the demining of the liberated areas in the Kherson and Kharkov regions.

When leaving these occupied territories, the Russians left mines “which prevent us from launching an effective counter-offensive”, laments the Ukrainian, who financed the project through his company.

Bombs and missiles

The machine, designed with the help of a military man, is equipped with a large protective shield and heavy chains that hit the surface with the force of one ton each, causing the mines to explode or destroy them.

The concept is not new – it was used in World War II – but Vitaliy hopes the government will choose to support local production to avoid costly imports.

In addition to the mines laid by Russian soldiers before their withdrawal, Ukrainian surfaces also contain bombs and missiles that did not explode but remain dangerous.

Cleaning it up could take years, according to those responsible.

Last week, Vitaliy’s homemade vehicle managed to destroy ten anti-personnel mines and five anti-tank mines in tests carried out by military institutions.

The device only had easily repairable damage, according to him, mainly with regard to the chains.

Additional

During tests on anti-personnel mines, a driver was on board. “Of course there were no volunteers for anti-tank mines,” says Vitaliy.

The team used a remote control system.

If authorized by the Army, the vehicle could be used for rescue operations, but not in combat zones, due to a lack of armor, according to Vitaliy.

He thinks it could, on the contrary, be very useful for large spaces, which specialized teams take several days to explore.

“Demining here must be done at a speed of 2 km per hour. There are 9 thousand square meters per hour, no one can demine this surface”, he says.

Denys Nagovitsyne, from the State Emergency Situations Service of Ukraine (DSNS), believes that this type of vehicle “will help”, but can only be complementary to human work.

“Machines can’t go everywhere or see everything,” says the head of a pyrotechnics unit.

“But if there is a large space, a machine will cover it more quickly and, in principle, very well,” he says.

Denys Nagovitsyne knows that his team, who work on foot, are at risk of stepping on landmines at all times.

“It’s like a lottery,” he says.

Several of his colleagues died in the south of the Kherson region. They found anti-tank mines that appeared to be inactive, but it was a trap and the last one exploded.

Very slowly?

Raising public awareness is also a big part of his work.

The inhabitants look for firewood for heating and blacksmithing, sometimes with their children, says Denys Nagovitsyne, with frustration.

His team sometimes sees farmers working in fields that have not yet been deforested and alerts them to the danger, which does not stop them from sometimes seeing their tractors burned.

Denys Nagovitsyne thinks that demining vehicles like the one designed by Vitaliy could also slip or get stuck in swampy terrain due to their weight.

Even more so when these vehicles do not always detect the so-called “butterfly” mines, which are small, according to him.

A local farmer, Oleksandre Ryabinine, is not convinced. After the Russian withdrawal, the army and the Ukrainian Service for Emergency Situations demined their camps.

The machines have “low productivity”, he says, and around “3,500 hectares of previously occupied territory must be deforested”.

Source: Elcomercio

jack

I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.