How are mines cleared?
The primary clearance technique remains the manual deminer equipped with a metal detector proceeding slowly along one-meter-wide lanes. When a signal is heard, the deminer must stop and either the deminer or a colleague must carefully excavate the object to determine if it is an item of explosive ordnance or a harmless piece of metal. The overwhelming majority of signals lead to innocuous metal fragments being discovered (e.g. nails, barbed wire, tin cans.) This painstaking process — repeated thousands of times a day around the world — is why mine clearance is expensive and time-consuming. The key to cost efficiency is minimizing the overall area to be cleared through good initial survey and ongoing refinement of the clearance plan for a minefield.
