Organization methodically clearing minefields, or just a farmer who had mines on his land, an old tractor, some technical know-how and a need to put food on the table for his family?
this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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That very much looks like just a farmer who needs to put food on the table and had a welder on hand. The tractor itself looks like it's more or less sacrificial as well, so if the mine clearing tool (or contraption, depending on how you look at it) at the front doesn't do the job the rest is acceptable loss.
That kind of tractor is relatively simple to rig for remote control, all you need is a couple of hydraulic valves to do the steering and at minimum a one cylinder to engage clutch, or if that's also driven by hydraulics then just couple of more on/off valves. Throw wireless cctv camera on top and you're good to go. I suppose that wouldn't check all the boxes for western security requirements, but if it gets the job done without injury or death I'd say it's quite good enough.
If you bypass the safety sensors, most 10 year old tractors already has everything else needed to drive a preprogrammed route around the field. You can buy kits relatively cheap to add this to much older tractors, not much skill needed that a farmer wouldn't have. The hard part stopping the tractor when done if a mine doesn't destory it.
As an employee of John Deere (not speaking for my company) I normally strongly discourage bypassing safety sensors, but this is one application where I can support the idea.
I couldn't help but notice the disc on the back too. I'm not sure if its heavy enough to trigger an anti-tank mine, but that information could be looked up and calculated. Not that hard.
It's the kind of thing I can see myself thinking of, for one last pass of security. A plow would stir the dirt, potentially shifting a mine without detonating it. The disc applies more pressure directly downward, much higher chances of triggering one I'd think.
And a disc is also easy to replace if blown to smithereens. And the tractor might survive, so, its working and you can keep going.
Maybe a half a dozen passes or something before I'd start to feel comfortable actually stepping foot in a former minefield?
That tiller (if that's the correct term) in the back is a farming tool meant to break ground for seeds, it's the modified snow plow at the front which is meant to clean mines. As it's got pretty much the whole tractor keeping it on the ground it most definetly has enough pressure to trigger mines, the rollers might not take more than one direct hit, but they seem to be relatively simple to replace.
Personally I'd go after something which military uses instead of rollers, where it has motors to spin chains which then detonate the mines, but that's a bit more complex to build and you need more parts than a few bearings and a grinder+welder, so that might not been an option for the guy who built the thing.
Yeah, I've always just heard it referred to colloquially as a "disc", and you use it to "disc a field". In some cases this is a common second step after a first step that plows much, much more aggressively and deeply. I don't know what kind of soil that is and what he plants though, so that first step might be unnecessary.
I don't think it'd be wise to prepare the field for planting and clear the field of mines in the same step, though, at any rate. It would be extremely inappropriate to feel confident that a single pass of your implement has successfully cleared every last mine. When its life on the line, you want near-certainty.
So, he's gonna go over his field with that thing many, many times, not just one. If he's smart. Which means the disc is for mines, not to prepare the field for crops.
My thinking anyway, I don't actually know anything about mine clearing. I do know some about farming though.
My thinking anyway, I don’t actually know anything about mine clearing. I do know some about farming though.
I'm in a very same boat, I've been sitting my share on a tractor cabin turning ground around and smoothing it, but our fields don't luckily (now, at 1940s it might've been a bit different at the eastern border) have mines to worry about.
Is it safe to be standing so close to it while its operating?
It looks like they're just testing it in a safe space. Hence the operator more focused on filming rather than steering
HIMARS is great, drones are cool, but tractors are the real MVPs
Ukrainian ingenuity never fails to impress me.
Necessity is the mother of invention
I read the other day that some anti-tank mines have delay fuses specifically to take out mineclearing vehicles, the roller at the front is designed to handle a blast but the mine doesn't go off until after the roller has passed. Something like that would take out this tractor. But still, better than nothing.