In an attempt to unravel one of the "Gordian knots" of the past century and new millennium, three hundred leaders from the military, government labs, industry and academe came together at the Naval Postgraduate School March 13-16 for the Fourth International Symposium on Technology and the Mine Problem.

The series of conferences held every 18 months reviews existing and emergent technology and how it and biological assets can be networked to detect, classify and neutralize or destroy landmines, seamines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), from both military and humanitarian demining perspectives.

And what a problem it is. On the land side, mines -- the cheapest, deadliest and most ubiquitous of prepositioned weapons -- killed or wounded the following growing percentage of American military personnel: 2.5% killed in Europe in World War II: 1.65% killed and 3.3% wounded in Korea: 16% wounded in Vietnam: 20% of casualties in the Persian Gulf War, where Iraq mined the Gulf off Kuwait and that nation's land mass, including areas around torched oil wells: and 26% of casualties in Somalia.
In World War II, anti-tank mines accounted for 20.7% of tank losses in the European theater alone and 31% of tank losses in Okinawa. In Korea, they caused 70 percent of United Nations tank losses in the drive north to the Yalu River, and in South Vietnam were responsible for the bulk of all combat vehicle losses.

Unlike other weapons, mines and UXO, to which they are closely related, keep killing after the wars are over. Today there are 60 to 70 million landmines still in the ground in 68 countries, killing or maiming every 22 seconds. There were 2,000 "mine incidents" in Bosnia last year, and it has been estimated that it would take 2,500 mine clearing personnel over 2,000 years to clear all the mines laid in Afghanistan alone.

On the maritime side, "Twice in our history, the U.S. Navy has lost control of the seas to a country that doesn't even have a Navy, both times due to mines." (Quote attributed to Tamara Melia Smith, Historian.

In the past ten years, seamines have caused the loss of three U.S. ships versus only one to a missile -- $117 million in damages caused by a mere $11,500 of "the ultimate poor man's weapon."

The keynote speaker for the conference, was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James L. Jones, USMC The text of his speech appears elsewhere in this Summary.

The Corps perspective on seamines and mine warfare was presented by other speakers. Col. Steve Patton, USMC, Commanding Officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit at Camp Pendleton, emphasized that, with the Navy's post Cold War emphasis on the littorals and increasing use of "the poor man's artillery" (mines) to deny shore access, "the near term does not support rapid, in stride Operational Maneuver from the Sea." The mine problem must be solved and solved quickly, he said, to allow this central tenet of Navy doctrine to become a reality.

Rear Adm. Alfred Harms, USN DCINCPACFLT, presented the Pacific Fleet perspectives on mines and mine warfare. According to Harms, the previously articulated policy of making seamine countermeasures organic rather than dedicated, and making every Sailor and Marine a mine warrior, is being questioned in some circles. "If I had to pick one threat to focus on with the shift to the littorals, it would be mine warfare," Harms said. "But do we really want to put MCM capabilities on billion dollar platforms" throughout the Fleet? Harms proposed a permanent mine warfare commander in addition to the sea combat commander for both combat and commerce operations, and career progression opportunities for mine warfare officers. "On my battlegroup staff, I had no dedicated mine warfare expert," he noted.

"Mines are ubiquitous, deadly and cheap and, frankly, we don't have much better solutions than we did decades ago," said Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, Director of the Army Acquisition Corps who spoke in the plenary session Monday morning. "Detection methods haven't changed much in 50 years. We're still sending men in with metal detectors, a slow and laborious process, and then sending someone else in to disarm it, blow it up, or dig it out." Among the "bright spots" in mine countermeasures, according to Kern, are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and other robotic surveillance and detection methods; radar with synthetic aperture processing; nuclear quadruple resonance technology, successfully transferred to the Army last November; and some promising results of Dr. Regina Dugan's DARPA program to mimic the dog's olfactory capabilities and other biological detection systems.

In fact, despite the Symposium's emphasis on technology to solve the mine problem, a reality faced and increasing embraced by a growing number of experts in the field is that mammals -- dogs on land and dolphins at sea -- remain the best mine detectors available to man. An estimated 500 living "K-9 Demining Corps" members are currently at work in trained teams around the world.

"The dog is the best (landmine) detection system available today" for identifying the explosives inside and even the plastic casings of landmines, Dr. Lena Sarholm of FOA has stated categorically. "Canines are exquisitively up to the task," agrees Dr. Regina Dugan, sponsor of DARPA's "Dog's Nose" research project. Dr. Vernon Joyntt, Divisional General Manager of MECHEM, a private sector Republic of South Africa corporation with years of demining experience, agreed. "Dogs are by far 'the' cheapest and quickest first-level area (mine) indicators and (post-human operation) secondary 'proofers' of demined fields," he said. "They are up to 50 times faster than humans using probes and metal detectors."

But 'biological systems,' as "Man's Best Friend" and other mammals are often called, have limitations. Dogs must be trained, get tired and distracted, and can be effectively used as little as only two hours a day. Like their human handlers, they don't do well under extreme weather conditions or dense foliage. And, given the rapidly increasing demand for their services, they are becoming increasingly costly. For these and other reasons, a growing number of conference participants are looking at ways to integrate dogs, dolphins, bees, other insects, and someday even ferrets with man-made technology -- mechanical systems, metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, multi/hyperspectral and electro-optical/infrared technology, and acoustic and chemical detection systems -- to form superior mine detection systems for the near and far term.

This move towards integrating different systems to achieve the same goal was lauded - even mandated - by Monday night's banquet speaker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Mine and Undersea Warfare, Mr. Dale Gerry. Mr. Gerry worked 24 years for Secretary of Defense William Cohen, then Senator Cohen, 18 of them as senior military advisor on the Senate Armed Services Committee. (The text of Mr. Gerry's remarks appears elsewhere in this Quick Look Summary).

"The truth is, we have capability gaps (in mine warfare and mine detection) because of lack of appropriate technology and because promising technology is not yet being put to use in the field where it counts," said Gerry, who strongly supports implementing organic MCM. "As General Patton said -- and it couldn't be more relevant to this forum and what you are trying to do -- 'A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.' We need to 'mainstream' mine warfare and deliver good, not perfect, tools into the hands of our Sailors sooner rather than later. And the cornerstone of our strategy for being able to do this is partnering. We must talk to each other and help each other. And we must be painfully blunt with each other, especially at conferences like this... Stop trying to get those research results out to the next decimal place and work these critical problems as a team and from a common framework that will benefit our Sailors and Marines tomorrow."

Perhaps in response to Gerry's call, perhaps just because of the synergy of the conference, participants excitedly exchanged ideas on how to partner and integrate detection systems, between sessions. As one example, MECHEM's Vernon Joynt mulled putting "biological systems" - someday even ferrets, as proposed by one of the youngest speakers, Sarah Macpherson of Messiah College - in a cage in the back of one of his company's vehicles. Vapor from the ground's surface could then be channeled through the animals' cage while the man-made metal detectors mounted at the front of the vehicle did their portion of the work. "Dogs are best used to detect plastic-encased mines, and metal detectors to locate mines with metal casings," he noted. "By putting them together, we might be able to do a much better and more thorough job."

Conferences like this International Symposium on Technology and the Mine Problem "are so important, because something that's so cheap (mines) can prevent you from accomplishing what you need to do," said Adm. Chaplin following Tuesday night's address by the Oceanographer of the Navy. "We need to grab the mine problem by the neck and get the right focused (bureaucratic) place to really do something about mine warfare," Rear Adm. Dick West, the Navy's oceanographer, told Chaplin and conference participants. West pledged all the processed data produced by his office, which sponsors all of the Navy's oceanographic and meteorological support, to solve "The Mine Problem."

Conference sponsors were NPS, ONR, DARPA, Naval Facilities Engineering Command Pacific Division, and the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Center, Quantico. Thanks were also given to the Mine Warfare Association for contributing the industry exhibitors' reception.

The structure of the Symposium is based upon presentations of warfighting and humanitarian/peacekeeping requirements from senior commanders in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps; presentations of the funding and development strategies that address those requirements (the Future Naval Capabilities approach described by Dr. Doug Todoroff of ONR, for example); and technical presentations that describe work in progress that either addresses the programmed activity or opens the possibilities of new R&D and Systems opportunities. Reports from the field such as those by LTC Lerario, USA; LTC Brooks, USA; Colin King, and Vernon Joynt serve to document current capabilities, shortfalls, and emphasize needs and urgency.

The technical contributions tend to fall along disciplinary lines; sensors, biomimic systems, environment and phenomenology (military oceanography and electro-optical processes in the ocean) and so on. There were about 80 contributed papers. Many of the papers were novel, thought-provoking, and very significant harbingers in the answer to the question “ Where are we going?” These organizations and taxonomies of the material will be more apparent in the Proceedings.

In the “ cutting edge” approaches of Biomimicry, both in sensors and in vehicles (robots) plenary session reviews were provided by

* Professor Nathan S. Lewis, CALTECH, who showed the underlying bases of the work of the CALTECH team in response to DARPA's (Regina Dugan) project on the “ Dog's Nose” . They are approaching in the laboratory a device with the sensitivity of the dog to being able to detect explosives in mines and UXO.

* Professor Joseph Ayers, Marine Sciences Center, Northeastern University, who showed the underlying neuro-psiological basis for the work with artificial lobsters and lampreys. In this work there is a marriage between biology and electrical engineering.

* Dr. Doug Gage, SPAWAR Systems Center, led a parallel technical session on land and sea based robotic systems at which Dr. Gaurav S. Sukhatme presented some of the work at USC with cooperating robotic systems (in one case a robotic helicopter directing ground-based robotic vehicles in area search tasks.

* Professor Tony Healy, NPS reported on the progress of a decade of research on Underwater Autonomous Vehicles at NPS. The new generation ARIES vehicle will take part in a Fleet Tactical Experiment on Mine Countermeasures and will use the tactical oceanography interface called MEDAL. ARIES is the result of approaches more closely identified with the traditional physical sciences.

Military Environments for Mine Warfare and Humanitarian Demining

*RADM Richard West, USN, Oceanographer of the Navy, gave the Oceanographers address that has become a feature of this Symposium Series. If his venue, the Chateau Julien Winery, was different from the Monterey Bay Aquarium; his message was dead-on the dominating influence of the physical and biological environments in Mine Warfare, He described the series of oceanographic products that directly support fleet operations.

* Dr. Norris Keeler, KAMAN and Symposium Co-Chair, presided over a mini-symposium on the technical aspects of the Electro-optical Processes in the Ocean. In the parallel technical sessions he was assisted by Dr. Bobby Ullich, KAMAN, and by Dr. Joan Cleveland, Program Officer at ONR. The broad examination of electro-optical possibilities also revealed a few “ missed opportunities” such as timely search for the debris of TWA 800 that crashed off Long Island.

*Dr. Herb Eppert, NRL-Stennis, also presided over a technical session that examined oceanographic products and research supporting the Oceanographer.

On the land side, Colin King and Vernon Joynt, in their respective plenary sessions documented the awesome impact of the environment in land deeming - particularly in the humanitarian demining operations in many parts of the world. Dr. Vernon Joynt, MECHEM, showed the evolution of fighting, mine-clearance vehicles to the humanitarian demining application.

HUMANITARIAN DEMINING

Major General Howard “Jack” von Kaenel, USA, is the Military Assistant to the President's Special Representative for Global Humanitarian Demining. The Global Humanitarian Demining office is in the Department of State; but the United States Government Initiative 2010, to reduce the risks to populations all over the world from anti-personnel landmines, is a joint undertaking of the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

The 2010 initiative does not promise removal of all mines all over the world by 2010. It does not promise a risk-free world. Initiative 2010 does undertake to focus government and private resources, national and international, on mine removal, mine education, victim relief and rehabilitation and the like. There is real interest in developing models and modalities for public-private partnerships. Here is a policy and practice opportunity for Non-Government Organizations, some like the United Nations Association with their “ Adopt-a-Minefield Program” are already partnering with US and indigenous groups.

General von Kaenel's themes were taken up in a panel discussion that was chaired by Dr. Robert Gard of the Vietnam Veterans' Foundation, Dr. Dan Wolf of Terra Segura, Joe Lokey of James Madison University, and Mr. Robert Sherman, of the State Department. While the issue of the Ottawa Convention and the International Committee to Ban Landmines did not overtly arise, Mr. Sherman did describe to official USG approaches to the CCW Treaty and the protocols for controlling the use of landmines.

AMB