Tel No: 00 44 (0)1464 820122 E-mail: aardmine@netcomuk.co.uk Fax No: 00 44 (0)1464 820985
Aardvark’s Joint Services Flail Units (JSFU)are all designed and built as dedicated anti-tank and anti-personnel landmine clearance vehicles. They are not adaptations of other vehicles and thus have none of their limitations.
For every 5000 mines removed by hand, 2 deminers are killed and another 2 injured. Is this acceptable with to-day’s modern mechanical clearance systems? Since starting in 1982, no Aardvark operator has ever been killed or injured.
Minefields were often originally laid to deny access to an area, and in many cases were in cultivated or open land which had little or no vegetation growing at the time. They may also have been fitted with booby traps or trip wires. However as the years have passed the vegetation has grown up into thick thorn scrub, or high grass with or without trees, and this presents a real problem for hand deminers. Do they clear the vegetation first, and risk the chance of snagging a trip wire, or do they try to clear the mines without clearing the vegetation? Whichever choice they make they are putting their lives at risk. Unfortunately the poorer countries in the world tend to have the worst landmine problems, and often little value is placed on human life and suffering. If these minefields were in the countries of the western world, would they accept the risk of death or serious injury to hand deminers or would they use mechanical clearance machines?
The answer is, of course, to use Aardvark landmine clearance machines which will not only clear the mines, but will also clear surface scrub and vegetation up to 3 metres high, trees with a trunk diameter of 15 centimetres, and booby traps and trip wires. Trees and vegetation are reduced to a mulch leaving a level clear area which can easily be checked by sifters or hand teams if required, and quickly recultivated.
To be effective, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines are laid just below ground level, but wind, rain and floods may move or bury these mines to a greater depth, and thus it is essential that mechanical clearance machines are capable of varying their clearance depth. All Aardvark machines are capable of this. A new operator’s computerised control system allows the depth to be set, and the vehicle then automatically travels at the correct speed to maintain that depth. The slower the forward speed the greater the depth to which the flail can dig, up to a maximum of 580 millimetres.
To ensure maximum percentage clearance, every piece of ground covered by an Aardvark machine is struck at least twice with a force of approximately 4 tons, and an automatic contouring device ensures that the flail is in contact with the ground at all times.
Roles - Landmine Clearance