Has Ukraine Found A Key To The Minefield Barrier?

Ukrainian military innovators have found that mines that have been heated by the sun during the day, become bright targets at night when they are displayed on screens showing images from aerial drones with thermal cameras.

The contrast is greatest at dusk or dawn.

The scale of the de-mining task is enormous: according to official Ukrainian estimates, Russian forces rigged more than 180,000 square kilometres with explosives, and there are often up to five explosive devices per square metre.

The Ukrainian government reports that about?116,000 square miles?of land — or a third of the country — may be contaminated with explosives.

Special charges are used to blow up the mines so that the army can move through the area.

While it is not a precise science, it is a big help in seeing an invisible enemy.

Anton of part of Ukraine’s 15th National Guard Brigade admitted that “There have been many scary moments. Every time you go to work you step over your fear. Because who else will do it? Nobody. If someone else goes and gets hurt, you can’t forgive yourself.”

A leading Ukrainian medical officer said that mines are?now second only to artillery as a cause of injury to Ukraine’s troops.

The chief medical officer at the Mechnikov hospital in the southeastern city of Dnipro, Serhiy Ryzhenko, stated that mines are now the second-worst contributor to the 40–50 people he sees every day. Thus far he treated 21,000 people: “Among these 21,000 soldiers, 2,000 were missing limbs.”

The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, called the density of Russia’s mines “insane” earlier this month. There are up to five mines per square meter. Instead of relying on Western equipment, Ukrainian units are doing the job on foot in many parts of the frontline, mostly at night.

Normally mine-clearing rollers can withstand up to four explosions, but the density now is too great for that limit. Often, the Russians lay mines on top of each other.

And Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, affirmed that Ukraine was now the world’s most heavily mined country.

Ukrainian units have largely abandoned the aggressive tactics they were trained by Western allies to deploy in the offensive, and were instead resorting to seeking to wear Russia down with artillery and missile barrages and advances by smaller units.

Defence experts warned however there is no “silver bullet piece of equipment” that will solve the problem of mines. Dr Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: “It’s about the sustainability of equipment they have, and then it’s about their training and ability to use this equipment in combination. It’s not the mines that are a problem, it’s the combination of mines covered by fire…Russians are mining everywhere they can and there is little pattern to how they are mining, so it’s difficult to assess.”

Last month, Lithuanian Defense Minister announced that it would be?forming?a coalition to support Ukraine’s demining initiatives. Around the same time, members of Ukraine’s State Emergency Service?met?with Cambodian demining experts in Poland to receive demining training.

In-country solutions are being perfected: a Ukrainian-made demining machine has recently been certified. It is being produced by manufacturers based in Kharkiv and can handle antipersonnel and antitank landmines. Manufacturers can currently produce two such machines per month. Ukraine operates 20 demining machines, with three located in Kharkiv Oblast, and has approximately 3,000 demining specialists.

However, these capacities are inadequate to accelerate the clearance of the country’s territory from mines and explosives, the ministry said.

The Ukrainian government is actively working on establishing the production of necessary demining equipment within the country’s territory, the ministry added.

Croatian manufacturer DOK-ING and Danish company HYDREMA are expected to launch the production of demining equipment in Ukraine, according to the ministry.

But Ukrainians have not been waiting for others to solve their problems for them.

Igor Klymenko?was 17 years old when the Russians invaded Ukraine. He and his family fled Kyiv to the countryside, and sheltered in a basement.

He came across information about the global land mine crisis. As many as?110 million land mines?may be buried in about 60 countries, and for every 5,000 successfully removed land mines, one person is killed and two are injured. Something different was required.

He says, “I just started thinking that I can’t give up. I should go ahead, because this problem is becoming more relevant than in 2014. My people are defending Ukraine, my country, me, my family, and I should also help them.”

Klymenko worked with scientists and programmers to hone a new invention: the Quadcopter Mines Detector. He now has two working prototypes of the device and two Ukrainian patents. Just this week, at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Klymenko was awarded the?Chegg.org Global Student Prize, a $100,000 award for a student making an impact on society, learning and the lives of their peers.

The device uses an F5 PRO quadcopter with a metal detector Klymenko designed suspended underneath it. A built-in gyroscope detects the effect of wind on the drone.

The mine detector can fly for 20 to 30 minutes over distance of up to five miles.

After takeoff, as soon it detects encounters a mine, it sends an infrared signal to a phototransistor held by the user. The board executes a code that Klymenko that calculates the coordinates of the mine relative to the start of the run; this calculation is then translated into GPS coordinates within two centimeters of accuracy.

Altogether, it takes the drone about two to three weeks to scan a square kilometer of land and calculate land mine coordinates. Klymenko tested his device’s ability to locate both anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in the lab as well as outside in low grass and slow wind.

Now a computer science and mathematics student at the University of Alberta in Canada, Klymenko is also working part-time towards a degree in machine building at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. He’s continuing to refine his device with the goal of creating a minimum viable product by the end of this year.

“I think it can not only save lives, but also I can inspire students,” Klymenko says, adding that his story can show others that no matter what challenges they face they should persevere.

“Because it can change the world,” he says.

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We have referenced before the ability of small-scale innovators in Ukraine to come up with new solutions, like the aerial and sea drones that have been making a strategic difference in the war.

If Ukraine has no air support, and is hitting a wall with a direct attack, it would seem to call out for a switch to something far less conventional: the isolation and destruction of the Russian forces using drones alone.

Millions of drones.

This is a field where Ukraine excels.

They were forced into this approach because they had no options if they wanted to wage a three-dimensional war; Russian jets owned the air otherwise.

Now, Ukrainian drones are attacking Russian tanks, troops in trenches and foxholes, semi-autonomous attack drones and counter-drone weapons endowed with AI.

Swarms of drones are the future of war,?forecasts Erich Schmidt, former Executive Chairman and CEO of Google and formerly with the Defence Innovation Board, who now runs the Special Competitive Technologies project, and think-tank on national security.

The Ukrainians cannot get through the mine fields, machine guns and artillery, he says. “The Russians are using 60,000 shells a day; world production in the West can accommodate about 5,000 a day…today this is a WW1 artillery war.”

He points out that the American doctrine is that you always clear the way with air power — which the Ukrainians don’t have. Which brings us back to drones.

The Ukrainian forces are using several hundred thousand drones a year. “The Ukrainians are building a completely new theory of war.”

Drones are a targeted and inexpensive solution that can break the Russian lines, he adds. The Ukrainians have some 60 companies building drones in an enthusiastic atmosphere of start-up companies.

“What’s interesting to me, is that this is a broadband war but its also a technology war in the sense that it is innovative…The Ukrainians set up their drone operations outside the military.”

Drones could be used to cut off Russians supply lines for the entire battlefield, or to segment specific areas for control.

They are being used logistically by Ukraine, to destroy oil depots and ammunition dumps.

They are being used within Russia itself, to cripple the Russian invasion machine.

Already, the Crimean peninsula has been effectively almost shut down due to drone attacks on the bridges.

Ukrainian sea drones are taking the war to Russian ships in the Black Sea.

This is a new level of asymmetric war: it costs Ukraine a few hundred thousand dollars to sink a multi-million dollar naval ship or grain carrier.

Citizens of Moscow are also experiencing a bit of the punishment that Ukraine has been feeling, as Ukrainian drones have started to fall near Putin himself.

And perhaps now, with the introduction of other innovative technology to the land battle and the clearing of mines, Ukraine will be able to regain the offensive. The day of the rule of the land-mine may be numbered, and we will see a new star rising: drone-led detection by image and by sensors.

Either way, the speed of what Ukraine is accomplishing is breath-taking. Once the war is over, Ukraine will be all set to act quickly in a world where innovation counts for 80% of economic growth!

Ukraine has a foot in the future, and a weapon at hand.