2024-07-29 08:22:03
The ugliest weapon ever
The Hunt series was created back in the 1960s to make minefields more deadly. Minesweepers were getting better at detecting and removing or destroying mines, so a new weapon was needed to disrupt attempts to overcome a minefield.
The “Hunting” system consists of up to five standard anti-personnel mines and a special sensor that controls them. Common mines are pop-up mines “OZM-72 Varlė”, which are usually activated at a distance. When activated, the Frog throws a grenade into the air, which detonates at waist height, scattering shrapnel with a lethal radius of 25 meters. “Hunting” can also be equipped with MON-50 Claymore-type directional mines or a POMZ-2 stick mine.
The nerve center of “Hunting” is a 10 kg lunchbox-sized seismic sensor that detects ground vibrations over a large area. The sensor detects and approximates human steps at a distance of 90 meters. It can spot a person approaching a minefield long before that person knows the minefield is there.
When targets come into range, the Hunt selects the nearest mine and activates it.
Then the most unpleasant part begins.
“We explained it simply to the soldiers: this mine explodes five times,” according to one Russian website. – When the first soldiers are wounded, their friends and medics will think it’s a normal mine explosion and rush to save them, thus activating the second mine. Attempts by the wounded to crawl to safety will activate the third mine.”
It is noted that the OZM-72 exploding in the air injures both standing people and people trying to crawl on the ground. Linked to five mines, the “Hunt” ensures that multiple groups of rescuers can be hit – and there will be few, if any, survivors.
The Hunt is said to reliably recognize people in motion – whether they’re running, walking, crawling or skiing – and distinguish them from animals and vehicles in all weather conditions, with an error of just 0.4 percent. The sensor can be calibrated to adapt to certain types of terrain, such as soft or rocky ground.
Later versions of the Hunt also introduced a timer mechanism that activates and deactivates the mine at set times of the day, allowing patrols to pass safely, but the mine activates when the entire unit has already arrived.
Goddess of the hunt
Russian military blogger Combat Engineer, who has a Telegram channel with 58,000 subscribers focused on bomb and unexploded ordnance disposal, noted earlier this month that the Ukrainians had come up with a solution to the Hunt. It’s a metal cylinder with a spike dropped from a drone.
The name “ARTEMIDA” is written on the side of the device. It is the Ukrainian name of the Greek Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt.
According to the Combat Engineer, the Artemida emits several pulses that mimic human footsteps. This seismic simulator fools the Hunter’s sensor into harmlessly activating all of its mines. Ukrainian sites are silent on Artemis – Forbes cautions that it reports only what is known from Combat Engineer.
This is a great idea, although similar concepts have been proposed before. An obvious similarity to Frank Herbert’s 1965 in the fantasy novel “The Dune” mentioned tvoksle, which is also driven into the ground to imitate the vibrations of human steps. In the novel, however, the tvoks act not as landmines, but as bait for giant worms.
Ukraine now uses a variety of drone-based mine detection systems, drones fly over territory and detect mines without the risk of exploding near a person. Among such demining systems is one in 2022. A project created by 17-year-old Igor Klymenko, the Safe Pro AI system uses machine vision to detect mines. machine vision) system Brave1 ST1, which uses a metal detector – and the Polish charity Postup drone, also based on metal detection. Such systems provide many opportunities to spot mines without entering a minefield. More drones can be sent to drop Artemida devices to neutralize the Hunting systems as well.
DI vs. DI
As mentioned, the original Hunt system was developed in the 1960s and has been improved upon. However, it appears that the level of sophistication of the POM-3, Russia’s air-dropped anti-personnel mine with a processor-based seismic sensor, has yet to be reached.
According to the developers, POM-3 uses artificial intelligence and is so advanced that it can not only distinguish people from animals and other sources of vibration, but also distinguish the footsteps of soldiers and civilians. Western experts don’t take these claims seriously, but it would be relatively easy to use machine learning to reliably detect footsteps in a seismic sensor and probably filter out fakes – like the Artemis.
But it would be just as easy to use the same machine learning to ensure that Artemida creates an imitation of steps that matches natural steps as closely as possible. The AI-enabled Artemida could also vary its rhythm by trying different patterns until it catches the sound of a mine exploding.
The ability of future weapons to detect targets will be increasingly complex, writes Forbes. In order to deceive them, no less sophisticated methods, straight out of science fiction, may be required.
2024-07-29 08:22:03