In a recent initial round of tests at Fort A.P. Hill near Fredericksburg, Va., a technique devised by Dr. James Sabatier, a research scientist at the Ole Miss-based National Center for Physical Acoustics, detected 100 percent of the antipersonnel and antitank mines without a single false alarm. A second round of tests is scheduled for March. Humanitarian de-mining was a major cause supported by the late Princess Diana. The land mine is, in many respects, the perfect soldier stealthy, indiscriminate and lethally accurate. Strewn around the landscapes of war-ravaged Third World countries like Bosnia and Cambodia, mines continue to kill 800 people and disable or maim more than 1,000 others each month, the report adds.
Mines are difficult to locate mainly because they're so plentiful.
Cheap and easy to make, they can be scattered by the thousands in battlefields. An estimated 110 million land mines are buried in about 64 countries. Ongoing civil wars promise to keep the threat alive in the Third World. In response, scientists are racing to develop better methods for finding land mines. Technologies like ground-penetrating radar, robotic minesweepers and infrared thermography have shown promise, but thus far can't be counted on for perfect accuracy.