WHEN is a landmine not a landmine? When it's intelligent or remote controlled, seems to be the answer. Around 135 countries have signed the Ottawa Convention outlawing antipersonnel mines. But there's a disturbing trend towards technologies designed to change the definition of what constitutes a banned mine.
Japan, a signatory to Ottawa, believes that explosive devices strewn on beaches are not antipersonnel mines just so long as they are remote controlled. This seems to imply that a soldier in a watchtower can choose whether or not to blow off someone's limbs. Instead of calling it a landmine, it's dubbed a "projectile scattering device".
Today, the US military uses antipersonnel mines to protect anti-tank mines—but this will not be possible after the country signs the Ottawa Convention in 2006. So they're working on anti-tank landmines that literally hop around to scupper attempts to clear a minefield (see p 4).
But what happens when the war is over? Where will hopping mines hop to? And what if rogue states adapted the technology to respond to footfalls rather than tanks?
In the bizarre words of the military, this proposed minefield technology has been dubbed "self-healing". This is self-justifying doublespeak. And it's little more than sleight of hand that breaks the spirit, if not the letter, of the Ottawa Convention.
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