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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2026
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An idea I have had for land mines are making them with an expiery date.
I don't mean with electronics, I mean that there should be a slow chemicam process breaking down the explosives material over time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPD_series_of_mines
There's landmine donated by french gov to Ukraine.
I expected a longer duration than 30 days, this seems too short, no?
Depends on the kind of war you want to use them for. Ideally the front isn't stalled and you use mines to temporarily block some area/routes which you'll be using for your own offensives in a couple of weeks.
...and the other case...?
Not worth the risk of eventual harm to citizens.
And sane government should be taking that into account.
Yeah, exactly
... it would be better if the mines were stable over the long term and could keep the restricted area secure for as long as possible. There are now even “self-healing minefields” in which adjacent mines can move into gaps left by cleared mines. From a humanitarian perspective, however, such long-term, non-self-neutralizing minefields are problematic, since the maps detailing where, when, and how many mines were laid are often lost in the chaos of war and continue to pose a danger to the civilian population for decades after the conflict ends.
I think two factors may be at play here, which is why Ukraine received self-neutralizing mines:
I just don't think it would be better. From a tactical perspective it is comforting to be able to write off that area as protected from a (in this case) tank advance, but strategically I don't agree there ever is a good argument for mines to remain indefinitely. Ever.
It’s not even the case that you can simply mark a mined area as “secured.” After all, defensive measures must always be kept under your own surveillance or within your own area of control so that the enemy cannot clear them. A minefield, a tank barrier, or a barbed-wire entanglement without protection against clearance won’t hold up any army for long.
I think we’re on the same page.
That's just an argument against mines, I was more inquiring about when you would them to remain indefinitely
I don't know if there's any case where you'd want them to remain active indefinetly. Only case that comes to my mind are permanent no-acess zones like the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Not a new idea. There has been work done on mines that deactivate themselves since the early '90s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mine
I could swear there are mines like this already in use (IIRC it was mines delivered via mine-laying vehicles), but I can't find any examples right now. Still, as mentioned in the above article, no system - mechanical, chemical, electronic - will ever be 100% reliable, so at best, it'll only reduce the long-term risk of mines to civilians, not eliminate it entirely.
I doubt there's a safe way to make explosives degrade.
There definitely is, but there is no doubt a challenging engineering problem to make something that will release as high energy as possible over short time with intent to destroy also disarm and dissapate harmless energy over long time with intent to preserve ;)
A very noble effort to take on, though.
I'm an absolute layperson in chemistry, but I'm reminded of something from Ryan McBeth's earlier content. It was around the start of the war in Ukraine, and someone had asked him about self-destruct explosives on personnel or personnel carriers. His answer was dismissive on the grounds that manufacturing, handling, and more importantly combat application of explosives always carries a combination of unreliability, both to explode and not to explode. Basically, the failsafes needed to safely and reliably implement self-destruction on a large scale will eventually result in troops getting blown up by their own equipment.
My take from this, is that if you would manufacture degrading mines in huge numbers, the degradation mechanism might very well make some mines a random time bomb, simply because of the inherent properties of explosives. I can't argue for or against the plausibility of chemically engineering a safe and reliable temporary mine, but I would only take expert opinions into consideration.
The internet has a tendency to enable laypeople to act as if they're entitled to be given the same consideration as an expert in any given field. This is why I think taking a big step back from this question is the right thing to do for me and for those who I think are no more qualified to make statements on this than I am. But it's good to be hopeful.
Well duh, that's why we're still distributing the Nobel Prize