LANDMINE POLICY WHITE PAPER

On Friday, February 27, 2004, the Administration announced a new United 

States policy on landmines. This policy is a significant departure from past 

approaches to landmines. It will ensure protection for both military forces 

and civilians alike, and will continue U.S. leadership in humanitarian mine 

action – those activities that contribute most directly toward eliminating the 

landmine problem.

Background - The Humanitarian Landmine Problem

Landmines have been a major humanitarian problem around the world for 

two reasons:

• First, their persistence. Mines are the only conventional weapons which, 

when functioning as designed, are lethal for a period of time after 

activation. This is their military purpose: to hinder or influence 

adversary movement or maneuver for a period of time. But if their 

lethality persists after the combat has ended, they become not military 

assets but humanitarian liabilities. Most landmine types in use around 

the world remain lethal for an indefinite period of time.

• Second, many have been hard to detect because of their nonmetallic or 

low-metallic construction. The primary tool for mine detection has long 

been a metal detector similar to that used by beachcombers. If a mine is 

made with less than about 8 grams of iron or the equivalent, it is 

magnetically indistinguishable from the soil in which it is emplaced and 

so is not detectable by these devices. Non-detectability immensely 

compounds the post-combat landmine hazard to civilians, and it renders 

mine clearance far more expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous.

Complicating the hazards posed by persistent, non-detectable landmines has 

been their employment by unprofessional, untrained and undisciplined 

militant groups that have often used landmines not as a weapon of war, but 

as a weapon of terror. Professional militaries operating in accordance with 

customary international practice and/or generally accepted tenets of the laws 

of war (e.g., the Amended Mines Protocol of the Convention on 

Conventional Weapons - CCW) are required to record the locations of those 

areas in which they emplace persistent mines and must also clearly mark and 

monitor these areas in the field. This practice drastically reduces the risk 
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posed to civilians. Sadly, in the last thirty years rebel groups, terrorists, and 

unscrupulous governments have deliberately used mines against civilian 

populations. This new U.S. policy continues the process of stigmatizing 

such abhorrent practices and calls for more stringent restrictions on the trade 

in persistent landmines than any found in any existing treaties today. 

The argument that only so-called "anti-personnel” mines pose a 

humanitarian problem is incomplete and fails to take into account the 

tremendous secondary impacts caused by persistent anti-vehicle mines. 

Persistent anti-vehicle mines are primarily designed for use against armored 

military vehicles, such as tanks or personnel carriers. However, they also 

destroy automobiles, trucks, buses, tractors, and the people in them, creating 

unique (or additional) socio-economic impacts beyond those associated with 

persistent anti-personnel mines. By blocking civilian use of certain roads, 

these devices prevent refugees from returning to their homes, food from 

coming to market and humanitarian assistance from being delivered to those 

who urgently need it. This policy directly addresses the pressing 

humanitarian problems created by persistent anti-vehicle mines.

Elements of the new policy

To reduce these humanitarian hazards to the lowest possible level, while at 

the same time protecting our ground forces and the civilians they may be 

sent to defend, the United States will now implement the following policy:

• Persistence. After the year 2010 the United States will no longer use 

persistent landmines of any type, anti-personnel or anti-vehicle. Every 

landmine we use will meet or exceed the specifications for selfdestruction and self-deactivation of the Amended Mines Protocol to the 

Convention on Conventional Weapons (AMP/CCW).

• Alternatives to Persistent Landmines. The U.S. will develop alternatives 

to current persistent landmines, both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle, that 

incorporate enhanced self-destructing/self-deactivating (SD/SDA) 

technologies.

• Non-detectable mines. After one year the United States will no longer 

use non-metallic or low-metallic landmines of any type, anti-vehicle or 

anti-personnel. This completes a process the United States started years 

earlier, by converting non-detectable anti-personnel landmines into 
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detectable ones. Every landmine we use will meet or exceed the 

specifications for detectability in the CCW's Amended Mines Protocol.

• Increase funding for Humanitarian Mine Action: The new policy will 

increase the funds available to support the State Department’s portion of 

the U.S. Humanitarian Mine Action Program by an additional 50% over 

FY 03 baseline levels to $70 million annually. 

• Sale or export: In implementing this policy, the United States will seek 

an international agreement that prohibits the sale or export of landmines 

that do not self-destruct. Consistent with existing U.S. obligations, we 

will seek appropriate limited exceptions for training personnel engaged in 

demining or countermining operations. This initiative complements 

existing provisions in the Amended Mines Protocol that already prohibit 

the transfer of non-detectable anti-personnel mines as well as remotely 

delivered mines that do not self-destruct and self-deactivate. In a 

separate effort, we are pursuing a protocol in the CCW that would, 

among other things, ban the use of non-detectable anti-vehicle landmines.

Significance of the New Policy 

• These commitments do not depend on any future contingencies. This 

policy recognizes that persistent anti-vehicle mines as well as persistent 

anti-personnel mines can cause humanitarian problems. Therefore it 

treats anti-personnel (APL) and anti-vehicle mines equally. It is not 

merely an "APL" policy. It is a comprehensive landmine policy.

• The new policy applies to all U.S. stockpiled landmines wherever they 

may be used. After full implementation, it carries no special exemptions 

for Korea or any other geographic area.

• The United States is the first major military power to apply these 

humanitarian standards to its entire landmine inventory. Other countries 

are welcome to apply these standards as well.

Ending use of persistent landmines

Ending the use of persistent landmines of all types is the most significant 

component of the new policy. The humanitarian danger posed by any 
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landmine is directly proportional to its persistence. Mines that remain active 

long after their military use is finished pose an unnecessary risk to civilians 

– and the longer they linger, the greater the risk. Persistency, not size or 

weight, is what creates humanitarian risk. This new policy ensures that the 

United States addresses this issue directly and comprehensively.

Although persistent landmines fulfill a unique military requirement on the 

battlefield, self-destructing landmines provide the valuable capability of 

allowing our own forces greater freedom of maneuver. Also, unlike 

persistent mines, self-destructing landmines defeat enemy attempts to 

recover these mines to use against us, or to recover mine explosives and 

fuses to employ in improvised explosive devices.

U.S. forces already take extensive measures to ensure their use of landmines 

does not contribute to the global landmine problem. This policy will provide 

further safeguards to ensure that this will continue to be the case.

To achieve this, U.S. landmines rely on the combination of two features:

1) Self-destruction (SD) uses a timing device to explode the mine after a 

period of time. This time can be a fixed time period incorporated into the 

design of the mine itself or it can be set to any of several options before the 

mines are emplaced. Current U.S. SD mines self-destruct between four 

hours and fifteen days, well within the specified limits set by the CCW's 

Amended Mines Protocol. Future U.S. systems will continue to meet or 

exceed this standard.

Self-destruction of U.S. landmines is extremely reliable. 100% of the 

electronics of every mine are non-destructively tested before it is accepted. 

More than 67,000 SD/SDA mines have been tested under a wide range of 

conditions including shock, vibration, high and low humidity, high and low 

temperature, and exposure to chemicals including salt and sulfuric acid. 

Throughout these tests, the self-destruct mechanism has not failed. Thus, 

unreliability of self-destruction of activated U.S. mines is statistically too 

low to measure. Note that the United Nations standard for humanitarian 

mine clearance is 99.6%. U.S. SD reliability alone - without the additional 

self-deactivation capability - exceeds this standard.

2) Self-deactivation (SDA) is a backup process that would occur in the 

unlikely event that an activated mine failed to self-destruct. Unlike SD, it is 
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not a specific mechanism. Rather, it is an inevitable and deliberate result of 

the design of the batteries' electric charge. All U.S. SD/SDA mines contain 

batteries that have been designed with a limited life span of 90 days. So as a 

back-up to the self-destruct feature of U.S. SD mines, 90 days after 

emplacement the mines' batteries are completely exhausted, rendering them 

incapable of detonation. This 90-day limit is well within the 120-day 

requirement specified by the CCW’s Amended Mines Protocol. It is 

impossible that an activated U.S. SDA mine would not self-deactivate, since 

the battery will die.

The vast majority of US landmines already incorporate both SD and SDA. 

After 2010 all U.S. landmines will incorporate both features.

Ending use of non-detectable mines

It is possible to make a mine of wood, plastic, and other nonmetallic 

materials so that standard metal-sensing detectors cannot reliably detect it. 

Many mines around the world are so constructed.

Such mines pose special challenges for humanitarian mine clearance. While 

techniques do exist to find so-called minimum metal mines, these methods 

are difficult and costly. Humanitarian mine clearance is inherently timeconsuming, expensive, and hazardous. It becomes much more so if the 

mines are essentially invisible to standard metal detectors.

The key point with respect to detectability is that the new policy represents a 

permanent commitment on the part of the U.S. to end the use of nondetectable landmines of all types within one year.

The CCW Amended Mines Protocol already prohibits use of non-detectable 

mines. A proposal to extend this to cover anti-vehicle mines is under 

discussion in CCW meetings, and has been endorsed by fifteen nations. The 

U.S. is working hard to gain worldwide acceptance of the existing CCW 

treaty and the new proposal.

What Practical Effect Would This Policy Have

Imagine that the United States were to emplace a minefield using only the 

SD/SDA technologies currently available today. Next, imagine that a short 
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distance away another country emplaced a minefield using persistent mines 

that are compliant with the Ottawa Convention.

The U.S. minefield might include both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle 

landmines, but these mines would be designed, using SD/SDA technologies, 

to remove themselves from the battlefield after a given time. These mines 

would therefore be emplaced only as the opposing force was approaching or 

entering the area in question to ensure the limited duration minefield was 

effective while the enemy force was in the vicinity. The anti-personnel and 

anti-vehicle landmines within the field would begin to self-destruct in as 

little as four hours or within a current maximum of fifteen days after being 

emplaced. In the unlikely chance one failed to self-destruct, its battery 

would die within ninety days, rendering the device incapable of operating. 

At that time, without any further U.S. operator interaction with the field, the 

area would then have no landmines remaining that could kill or injure 

civilians.

The minefield emplaced by the other country would include only antivehicle mines. Although this field would not contain anti-personnel mines, 

the anti-vehicle mines could be fitted with anti-handling devices. These 

devices are designed to detonate the mine when it is moved, lifted or 

otherwise tampered with, making it harmful to individuals as well as 

vehicles. This minefield would not self-destruct and would remain in place 

until the mines eventually decayed over a period of decades. The clearing of 

this minefield would require the expenditure of significant manpower and 

resources. It would place those personnel involved in the clearing 

operations at significant risk.

Thirty years after both minefields were established, no one would have 

cause to remember that the U.S. SD/SDA minefield ever existed, yet the 

other minefield would be as dangerous and deadly as the day it was first put 

down (unless a concerted and costly effort had been made to clear the area).

Future Concepts

This policy recognizes that our future military will require new material 

solutions to accomplish the missions of tomorrow's conflicts; including new 

tactical barrier systems. These future tactical barriers may include a new 

generation of landmines or alternative systems, most likely incorporating 

improvements to our current SD/SDA technology to provide more flexibility 
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and control of the devices once emplaced. Remotely controllable modes, to 

include command detonation of emplaced mines, will enable a deployed 

field of munitions to be eliminated at will by our forces without having to 

wait for pre-determined times to elapse. Further, the ability to “turn on” and 

“turn off” munitions within a field will allow safe recovery and in-field 

maintenance, and will improve the military utility of these systems. Other 

technological enhancements are possible, but those described above are the 

ones most likely to be included among improvements to current systems.

Humanitarian Mine Action

This policy calls for an increase of 50% to the U.S. Department of State’s 

Humanitarian Mine Action funding. This highly successful program is but 

one component of the U.S. Government's already robust Humanitarian Mine 

Action Program. The Department of Defense, USAID and Centers for 

Disease Control and Prevention also work to alleviate the humanitarian harm 

caused by the indiscriminate and illicit use of landmines. The U.S. was one 

of the first countries to support humanitarian mine action efforts beginning 

in 1988 in Afghanistan. Since then, the U.S. has consistently been the 

world’s strongest financial supporter of humanitarian mine action, providing 

almost $800 million dollars to 46 countries or territories. U.S. efforts 

include support for mine clearance operations, mine risk education, 

survivors assistance, research and development, training and a public-private 

partnership program. More information can be found at:

1. U.S. Department of State, Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement: 

www.state.gov/t/pm/wra.

2. U.S. Department of Defense Humanitarian Demining Training Center: 

www.wood.army.mil/hdtc.

3. U.S. Department of Defense Humanitarian Demining Research and 

Development Program: www.humanitarian-demining.org.

4. U.S. Agency for International Development Patrick J. Leahy War 

Victims Fund: www.leahywarvictimsfund.org.