Exclusive: ‘Most heavily mined country on Earth’ critically short of sappers and equipment to clear frontlines
At this stage of our de-occupation campaign we critically need more mine clearance equipment, from minesweeping trawls to Bangalore torpedoes,” he said.
I was gonna say that Bangalore torpedoes are World War II era technology, but according to WP, they’re actually pre-World War I era technology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangalore_torpedo
We do have something newer in the US, APOBS, but I don’t know how many exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-personnel_obstacle_breaching_system
Michael Kofman mentioned in an earlier podcast that those were a want from front-line soldiers in Ukraine.
I assume that if we’re talking about the ongoing offensive, scaling up production isn’t going to have time to have a lot of impact, so it’s probably going to have to rely on consuming existing stores.
I don’t know whether there might be other forms of combat mine-clearance equipment that other countries have.
Equipment for war needs to scale fast. We have learned that existing stores are not enough, and also existing stores tend to be obsolete so you wouldn’t want to use them.
There have been larger, vehicle-mounted line charges.
IIRC, one problem that Ukraine hit when using vehicle-mounted mine-clearing tools, MICLICs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M58_MICLIC
…was that Russia would have Ka-52s sit outside of MANPADS range and then fire long-range ATGMs at them.
I wonder how practical it is to throw enough smoke onto the minefield to obscure their approach. I believe that modern military smoke is opaque in the infrared. I dunno about radar, or whether the system in question can do radar.
googles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50
This says that they use Vikhr ATGMs, which are apparently set up home onto a laser designator’s spot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K121_Vikhr
I would assume that smoke can block that.
I dunno if the helicopter has to use the designator or if Russia can fly a (more expendable) drone with a laser targeting pod over and maybe illuminate it from a safer angle.
I haven’t really seen articles talking much about specifics of the problems hit in breaching the minefields, so I dunno if smoke is involved, but I suppose that that’s probably partly reasonably operational secrecy.googles
I don’t know if this is combat or training, but it claims to be Ukrainians using MICLICs. There is no smoke obscuring the vehicle in this video:
https://www.funker530.com/video/ukrainians-use-american-miclic-to-clear-minefield/
One more reason you need to scale fast, you can’t always guess what is important. For months we heard about tanks, but nobody thought too hard about mine stuff. So the tanks are not as useful as they could be while the little mine clearance equipment they have gets working.
I’m pretty sure that people did think about mines, as there was anti-mine stuff involved. Just didn’t expect the density and depth of them.
I remember Michael Kofman saying that the density of mines substantially exceeded what Russian military doctrine prescribed.
My impression is that one major issue with mines for tanks was that there were triple-stacked anti-tank mines, and that this was enough to disable anti-mine rollers in front of tanks.
The other issue is that it sounds like there was better ability to counter the MICLICs than had been expected, since I saw some conversation about them being vulnerable. I don’t know for sure if it was via artillery or long-range ATGMs, but one or the other was apparently hitting them.
