A warm breeze sweeps through a desolate field on the outskirts of Pawnee, Oklahoma. A group of researchers fights the strong wind as they try to erect a pop-up tent for shelter. In close proximity, a young guy unlocks a bulky Pelican bag to show several bundles of explosives. He continues, "These are inert, but we're blessed to be operating at a range that has so many different types of weapons."
Researchers Jasper Baur and Gabriel Steinberg, who founded the Demining Research Community, a non-profit organization that bridges academic research and humanitarian demining efforts, work at the range, which is maintained by Oklahoma State University as an explosive-ordnance-disposal field laboratory. For the last two weeks, they have been in Oklahoma building up grids of mines and bombs to teach a drone-based, machine-learning-powered detection system how to locate and identify potentially lethal explosives without endangering human lives.
The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor estimates that in 2020, mines killed or wounded at least 7,073 persons in 54 countries and territories. Most of the organizations attempting to dispose of these explosive remnants of war are non-profits with much less resources than the forces responsible for deploying them.
Steinberg displays a little plastic wing with an electrical spark plug-shaped metal attachment. A "butterfly mine," as he calls it, is the PFM-1, he explains. Soviet Union antipersonnel mines are still visible in Afghanistan from the country's involvement in that conflict. There is evidence that Russia is presently deploying the same mines in Ukraine.
The major function of mines and unexploded cluster bombs is to prevent enemy soldiers and vehicles from using the roads and fields. Unfortunately, mines and unexploded cluster bombs do not just "switch off" after a battle ends. As a result, they continue to pose a grave threat to humans for decades, often even outliving the governments that originally deployed them.
A large number of nations are thought to be home to millions of live mines and other ordnance. According to Baur, his and his team's ultimate objective is to make their drone-detection technology accessible to demining groups worldwide.
Since nations are still sending bombs to Ukraine and other conflict zones, innovation in military hardware is likely to be in demand for some time.
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