KMMCS Standing Operating Procedures for Mechanical Demining

Status from March, 10., 2005, short description for Non-specialists. The proposed markings, warning notices, safety areas and safety margins are identically to the SOP of manual demining actions and are obligatorily taken, used, and kept. The details of these rules are not described more exactly here. The enhanced and changed detail for mechnical demining are fixed in our handbook for specialists and customers with stand as of June 2011.

1. Mechanical mine clearing operation by activating or destroying functional and not functional mines and other combustible agents of all kinds (bazookas, hand grenades, small rockets etc.) with the mill of the machines I or II. Even at the way to the mine-suspected area the machine has to mill its path with minimum of 20 cm depth.

2. Internal Quality Control with aftercare of the cleared area (visual survey without neccessity for the person to have physical contact to the soil and secure removal of not fully broken mine debris) with machine III and the attachments disk harrow and Cambridge Roller.

The contractor exactly defines mine-suspicioned areas and minefields by specification of the coordinates or by landmarks.

Mine fields, i.e. where several mines were found spatially close together are milled twice for safety reasons.

Both mine suspicion areas and mine fields are treated with following Internal quality control. Mine suspicion areas are controlled once with the machine III, mine fields several times.

Machine I and Machine II are equal. They are mostly used in minefields together as a clearing unit, so in case of a defect the other machine can rescue the broken one from the minefield in a safe manner.

Mill of machine I

This machine is equiped with a 3 m wide double-mill, rotating contrary to the direction of the driving. It can work with an operating speed of 1-3 km/h and, depending on need, with exactly pre-defined soil-depth up to 50 cm.

50 cm depth milled into the soil

KMMCS with heavy explosion at the protection shield

All detonable mines explode during the de-mining process

Milled mine

All undetonated personal mines and anti-tank mines and also other objects like tree, trunks, bush, concrete parts and other similar obstacles are all disintegrated.

Ammunition, destroyed by the mill-teeths to fragments

Mines, destroyed by the mill-teeths to fragments

The vegetation is evenly replaced back in the soil. The black and white painted stick shows the depth of 100cm to that the white wooden shred have been evenly mixed from the surface by the Krohn Machines into the full volume of the soil in this demonstration.

The white line shows the solid ground.

Layer of wooden pieces milled in the volumen down to 100 cm depth

working depth of manual deminers maximal 20 cm.

The UN requirements for depth is 20 cm for manual demining, but our machines achieve with normal setup up to 50 cm working depth into the soil. That exeeds up to 2,5× the normal working depth if needed.

The machines, which have 3 m wide twin roters, ploughs 50 cm overlapping stripes through the complete volume of the minefield that is totally overturned that way.

working strip

The driving at a minefield or a mine suspected area is allowed only in conjunction of milling with minimum depth of 20cm.

At practical work was prooven that only a small number of the mines actually explode because the system destroys most mines from their bottom before they have the chance to explode by the ignator, that is at the top side.

	Our machines protect the operating driver from explosion splinters which are equivalent to 10kg TNT. The strongest Anti Tank-Mines (ATM) known have a detonation power of 5-7kg TNT equiv., very rarely 10kg TNT equiv.

In front of the machine a hollow charge of 6 kg TNTequiv. exploded without damaging the machine.

mechanically treated thick-cased mine with detached ignator

torn apart ignators

Accidently existing mines with extreme thick case (approx. 1 cm cast-iron) are all cut from their outer ignator, but may not be disrupted totally on a mechanical manner. These UXO´s (UXOs - unexploded objects, here MUXO´s) with thick steel case and already separtated ignator are collected and destroyed in the following working process, the Internal Quality Control with Aftercare, to prevent the reuse.

Maschine III

This machine serves as vehicle for the internal quality control and helps the machines I and II in case of breakdown. The machine III is only allowed to roll at the soil that already had been milled.

The machine III can have a different apperance to this picture.

After the mechanical demining with machine l or II ALL mines and UXO´s are destroyed. The level of safety is even over 99,9%.

Mechanical agriculture machines are used. They have to be adapted to the local soil conditions for each project. As standard machine is declared:

At machine III a combination of a disk-harrow (to turn the soil and uncover hidden mine-fragments) and a Cambridge Roller (breaking up earth-clod and flattening the area) is attached.

At the back of this combination over the full width of 3 m a platform with 3 seats is located, from where 3 controllers can watch a strip of 5 meters without touching the ground. Suspected pieces are marked with colorspray. The Operation's Supervisor identifies the fragments and decides how to waist them regarding the local regulations.

As far as necessary the fragment is milled by the machine l or II and mechanically destroyed.

A minefield is treated several times with the combination attachment and controlled.

Should the control detect a clearance fault, that is a mine with intact ignator or other dangerous piece, that may explode by touch or pressure (misshandling), that piece has to be marked and one machine mills this area again.

In case there is an explosion the fragment is regarded as a clearance fault and the area of 1 ha around this point has to be milled again.
In case there is no explosion then the marked piece is not regarded as a clearance fault.

After this "Internal Quality Control with aftercare" the area is reported as minefree and ready for final external certification to the customer.

The final external certification by the customer also can be done at the last drive. By that the full 100% of the area can be controlled by the authorities of the customer and not only some spots of the area as usually done by manual demining.

The field is free from mines and dangerous explosives now and can be be certified by authorities from Mine Action Center.

1 flatbed-truck
1 repair truck
1 crane truck
1 vehicle for personnel transportation
1 ambulance
2 jeeps
1 diesel fuel tanktrailers
1 electricity generator
6 walkie-talkies
1 Cambridge Roller
1 disk-harrow

Project Manager (Director)
He is responsible for the preliminary inspection. He is in charge of the overall management of the mine-clearing operation. He is responsible for organizing personnel and keeps in touch with contractor's supervisory offices. He organizes collaboration with local authorities.

Operation's Supervisor
He is responsible for general supervision and he controls mine-clearance-operations. He is in charge of radio communication and coordinates the use of the machines. Every team member of the Krohn Mechanical Mine-Clearing System (KMMCS) follows his personal instructions exclusively.

6 Machine-Drivers
For each machine a team of two drivers with technical skills is needed to be able to work efficiently.

Safety Expert
He is responsible for the observation of all safety regulations, including the cordoning off of the safety zone, which has a radius of 300 metres around the mine-clearance area. The safety officer is in constant contact with the operation's supervisor and stands in for him while he is absent.

Safety Executives
The safety executives follow the instructions of the safety expert while establishing the safety zone.

First Aid specialist (doctor)
The First Aid Specialist monitors the state of health of the KMMCS team and gives first aid in any emergency. His equipment meets standard UN specifications.

KMMCS - Maschinelle Minenräumung und Bodensanierung
(KMMCS - Mechanical Mine Clearance and Soil Rehabilitation)
Tobias Steidle
Am Ehrenhain 2
D-38678 Clausthal
Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 5323 92 21 55
Fax: +49 (0) 5323 92 21 56
Mobil: +49 (0) 170 9988 170
E-Mail contact

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