Russia Unveils 'Powerful' Lasers in Backpacks to Destroy unexploded ordinance or landmines

This laser weapon seems to be a little bit of a joke! Effective distance only 100 m.

(236) Russia Unveils 'Powerful' Lasers in Backpacks to Destroy Bombs | Vantage on Firstpost | 4K - YouTube

Croatia is officially free of landmines

Good news! Unexploded landmines and ordnance are horrible reminders long after a war has ended. How many children have been maimed in the past? 

"Croatia is officially free of landmines set during its 1990s war of independence."

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Israel Bombs Lebanon, but one bomb fails. US Now Wants Its advanced GBU-39B smart bomb Back with Palki Sharma

Recommendable! Apparently, the location of the unexploded bomb is still unclear.

Children are Nearly Half of All global Landmine Victims according to the Landmine Monitor 2025

A grim reminder! A very sad statistic for at least the past five decades or so.

"Nearly half of landmine victims are children, per the new annual Landmine Monitor report, with many children injured or killed while searching for scrap metal, tending animals, and cultivating crops; 6,279 casualties were reported in 2024, with Burma the most dangerous country for such accidents."

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Landmine Monitor 2025

Children Now Nearly Half of All Landmine Victims as Global Casualties Reach Four-Year High

US asks Lebanon to return undetonated GBU-39 bomb, fearing it could reach Russia, China - report

Always trouble with unexploded ordnance! This time of a different kind!

"The United States has asked Lebanon to return a GBU-39 small-diameter bomb launched by the Israel Air Force toward Beirut during the operation that killed Hezbollah military commander Ali Tabatabai earlier this week, after it failed to detonate, according to Lebanese media. ..."

US urges Lebanon to return undetonated GBU-39 | The Jerusalem Post "The GBU-39 is a glide bomb manufactured by Boeing. Once launched, it deploys wings and can glide up to 110 km, despite lacking its own engine."

Demining large swaths of the agricultural land of the Ukraine by hand

Bad news! The many horrors of war!

The Ukraine is the breadbasket of the world!

How many individuals (or children) will become maimed victims by unexploded mines and ordinance? This might go on for decades after the war. 

"There were so many mines on Larisa Sysenko’s small farm in Kamyanka in eastern Ukraine after the Russians were pushed out that she and her husband Viktor started demining it themselves – with rakes.

Further along the front line at Korobchyne near Kharkiv, Mykola Pereverzev began clearing the fields with his farm machinery.

“My tractor was blown up three times. We had to get a new one. It was completely unrepairable. But we ended up clearing 200 hectares of minefields in two months,” he said. ..."

‘Everyone Demines by Themselves’ – Clearing Mined Land, from Drones to Rakes "“Ukraine has 42 million hectares of agricultural land,” says one farmer. “On paper, we can cultivate 32 million. But usable, uncontaminated land not occupied by Russia – only 24 million.”"

Hero rat sets Guinness World Record for detecting landmines

Amazing stuff! More rats please!

How many trained rats will be needed for the Ukraine?

"Meet Ronin. Ronin has detected 109 landmines and 15 items of unexploded ordnance since 2021. That’s according to both APOPO, the charity that trained the African giant pouched rat, and the Guinness Book of World Records, which declared Ronin the new record holder. He’s currently working in Preah Vihear Province in Cambodia, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.  ..."

Hero rat sets Guinness World Record for detecting landmines "We salute Ronin, who has sniffed out 109 landmines and 15 other kinds of unexploded ordinance."

APOPO (Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development organisation)

Ronin the rat, at work in Cambodia.

Explosive Toll of Landmines in Myanmar

Bad news! Landmines and unexploded ordinance are the scourges of war to civilians sometimes long after the war ended! Human progress is very slow! Give peace a chance (John Lennon)!

What is the situation in Vietnam since 1975?

"Landmine casualties nearly tripled in Burma (Myanmar) last year as the nation’s civil war escalated, a new UNICEF report finds.

That means Burma now ranks among the world’s nations “most heavily contaminated” with landmines.

Children are especially vulnerable, making up 20% of victims. 

By the numbers:

188 people were killed and 864 wounded from buried bombs—compared to 390 casualties in 2022. 

Ubiquitous usage: Landmines are being used by “all sides in the conflict,” and are in every region except the nation’s capital, Naypyitaw."

"... Data released by UNICEF on International Day of Mine Awareness and Assistance shows that there were 1,052 verified civilian casualties from landmine and explosive ordnance incidents during 2023 – nearly triple the 390 incidents recorded in 2022. Over 20 per cent of the victims were children. ..."

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Three-fold increase in civilian casualties caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance in Myanmar’s escalating conflict Over 20 per cent of victims are children, according to UNICEF

Crater detection from commercial satellite imagery to estimate unexploded ordnance in Cambodian agricultural land

Latest AI research helps to save life and limb in very difficult circumstances!

Full credit for this story goes to Deeplearning.ai The Batch by Andrew Ng

Crater detection from commercial satellite imagery to estimate unexploded ordnance in Cambodian agricultural land: Unexploded ordnance (UXO) pose a significant threat to post-conflict communities, and current efforts to locate bombs rely on time-intensive and dangerous in-person enumeration. Very high resolution (VHR) sub-meter satellite images may offer a low-cost and high-efficiency approach to automatically detect craters and estimate UXO density. Machine-learning methods from the meteor crater literature are ill-suited to find bomb craters, which are smaller than meteor craters and have high appearance variation, particularly in spectral reflectance and shape, due to the complex terrain environment. A two-stage learning-based framework is created to address these challenges. First, a simple and loose statistical classifier based on histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) and spectral information is used for a first pass of crater recognition. In a second stage, a patch-dependent novel spatial feature is developed through dynamic mean-shift segmentation and SIFT descriptors. We apply the model to a multispectral WorldView-2 image of a Cambodian village, which was heavily bombed during the Vietnam War. The proposed method increased true bomb crater detection by over 160 percent. Comparative anal