In an incredible, bittersweet success story, Croatia has announced it has freed itself from the scourge of landmines, 31 years after the country’s civil war.

  • tal@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    It sounds like there’s a variant of the PFM-1, the small “butterfly” mine, that does self-destruct (the PFM-1S). I don’t believe that the larger ones generally do, though, and if so, a search doesn’t turn up material on them.

    My understanding is that the mine designs that Russia (and Ukraine) have in inventory tend to date to the Cold War, too.

    EDIT: And to be clear, even that mine is apparently on a maximum 40 hour timer. That is, that variant is going to be something used when you specifically want fairly short-term area denial, which isn’t going to be what most of the fortifications built are going to have set up.