A new landmine feature - manual or victim-detonation

landmines are among the most vicious and destructive items in any weapons arsenal... a number of years ago, when i worked for a company that produced "anti-personnel" devices (while it was undeniably instructive, i still feel remorse from having associated myself with such a place), i had the opportunity to observe first-hand how they were manufactured and also to fully comprehend their destructive power... when you consider that landmines literally still blanket some areas of the world and that, even though the wars that caused them to be there may be long over, they still kill thousands of innocent people every year, it is a terrible shame that the u.s. is looking to produce new, assuredly more dangerous models...

According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, budget documents submitted to Congress in 2005 show that the Pentagon is preparing for the development of new types of antipersonnel landmines called "Spider."

Spider landmines differ from conventional mines because they are designed to detonate in a variety of ways. Spider mines can explode either through command-detonation--where a human operator determines when the mine will explode the mine (also know as a “man in the loop” system)--or through conventional victim-activation, where a victim detonates the weapon by stepping on or picking up the mine. An operator would have the ability to turn the switch one way for command-detonation, and the other way for victim-detonation.

this is especially horrific because it comes...

Ten years after US President Bill Clinton declared the country would "aggressively pursue an international agreement to ban the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines..."

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