this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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Talking about "landmines" instead of anti-personal mines in the headline is pure sane-washing.
There is no treaty against the use of landmines. There is only one agains the use of anti-personal mines. And for good reasons: When have you seen armies actually marching on foot to make them relevant compared to anti-vehicle landmines the last time? Countries agreed on banning anti-presonal mines because there are very little benefits of using them, yet massiv drawbacks in the form of (often your own) population getting killed for years and decades to come from leftover mines.
PS: The same is true for cluster ammunitions btw. They were not banned because you want to be nice to your enemies but because they are unreliable and duds will kill your civilians still when the war is mostly forgotten. Also there are better (as in cheaper, safer and more effective) shrapnel-based alternatives nowadays. Unbanning those is similarly insane and basically a statement of "fuck my population, I want to use those old stocks I still have, because that's slightly cheaper then building/ordering newer ones".
Cluster munitions and anti-personel mines are effective AF, seeing how the Ukrainian-Russian war is progressing.
The countries in question will create additional factories just for these bad boys. The old stock if any is pretty much useless.
These things are dangerous for civilians, but far less than an aggressive nation by your doorstep. Notice how all the countries border Russia?
It is useless if you have air superiority, but only US has that, and no one believes they'll honor article 5.
Nope. Anti-vehicle mines are effective. Anti personal mines are of little use in comparison, unless actual infantry marching of foot return.
And cluster ammunition are effective in Ukraine for the simple reason that this is the best stuff they actually got, as the US is dumping their remaining old M30 stocks on them. The few remaining ones not already converted to M31 unitary warheads. While tungsten-shrapnel-based M31A1 and A2 have replaced them in their anti-infantry and anti-light-armor role because they are cheaper, safer and more efficient...
Your argument makes as much sense as advocating that NATO countries should go back to 50+ year old vehicles because they were effective in Ukraine when those were the best they got delivered.
You mean like the foot infantry assaults that Russia is using along the entire front?
No, I mean the mechanized assaults that constantly fail because of mainly anti-vehicle mines and artillery, with the infantry stranded on foot then being easily picked off by drones or more artillery.
Just because it's insane for us how a country would waste living beings in constantly failing armoured assaults this way and loves to frame it as "meat waves" doesn't make this actual foot infantry assaults. Actual infantry movement (the reasons I refered to "marching") that would make anti-personal mining reasonable doesn't exist anymore and would fail for a mix of modern reconnaissance and artillery precision nowadays 100 out of 100 times.
Speaking of artillery... Have you actually seen the locations totally bombed to the ground before Russians move forward another few meters. No amount of mining with anti-personal mines would survive that well enough to actually deter soldiers. It only leaves just enough somewhat still functional explosives behind that are as likely to kill some singular enemy soldier tomorrow as some civilians in 5 years.
Artillery is actually surprisingly bad at clearing minefields. If you could just lob shells onto a minefield, why would nations everywhere develop incredibly expensive mine-clearing systems?
Minefields are used because they work. Mixed minefields are used just like castle walls, to slow an enemy and increase the defender advantage. They don't stop an enemy by itself, but purely anti-vehicle fields are easily cleared by hand, or walked across. Mixed fields are not.
Minefields that deter strategic movement have never existed. They have always been a tactical thing, even in WW2 desert combat, which saw some of the most extensive minefield ever, they have always been tactical obstacles.
Mining the border doesn't mean spreading mines across the entire literal border. It means defending key areas with thicker fields, and probably not even that, it means keeping them ready just in case.
The thing is, yes, mines might kill civilians some time in the future. But losing a war against a genocidal foreign country will absolutely kill more.
Because you are primarily talking about anti-vehicle mines that can be well buried and are much less sensitive.