Mines and Such Whatnot

Know Your Immediate Threats Aye?

Greetings Me Droogs N Droogettes!
So sorry for the delay. It’s been a shit shoah (to steal that from TheRealFloppa at Gab) but seriously… power supply on the home Mothership took a dump in the middle of this, and I didn’t have the ‘back this shit up every few minutes’ set up, so all was lost.
So… Mines

No, Not THAT kind of mine…

So tonight’s premise comes from after watching the now infamous fucking landmine shit-show in the Kraine. The TL;DW of the 11 minute vidya is essentially what’s left of a couple of what we’d call back in the day 11M Infantry Bradley Dismounts. Seems the Area of Operation they were in?

A TOTAL clusterfuck.

Like the level of fucked that if -I- were the C.O. with any balls of that group? The S2 Officer’d better be looooong gone or in protective custody ‘cos I’d have gone back and shot the fucker in the knees. Not kil’t his ass outright mind you, but inflicted the same crippling injuries that his callousness and stupidity that sent me and my boys out there with.

Knees?

In the Breeze bitch, and I don’t necessarily mean in the Airborne style so to speak. Couple of hollowpoints thru the back of the joint’d do it… IRA style.

Jes’ Sayin’

Said Video, for those who haven’t seen it:

It’s a fookin’ shytte show…
To use the vernacular.

So… point is, it’s become patently obvious that war… modern real war?
Shit has changed.
The clock in many instances, in MY opinion, has rolled BACK.
Like to the World War One levels in many circumstances
1914/1915 Trench Warfare.
OLD School shit… to the point we’re even seeing/have seen fucking MAXIMS ‘back on the front line’. BOTH elements, the Krainians AND the Russians have ‘rolled the clock back’ and used what were considered museum pieces on the front lines… this also includes Mosin 1891 Nagant Bolt Action rifles, never mind PPsH-43/44 Subguns. (BOTH of which I’ve had the pleasure of using/owning.. the Mosin being by far the MOST accurate rifle out-of-the-box I’ve ever owned, and the PPsH being the fastest cyclical bullet hose I’ve ever owned… try 74 rounds in like less than 4-5 seconds? Yeah… that fast)

Anyways…

Point to todays article is that in the very near future I have an unpleasant hunch that we may have to be fighting against our own folks here stateside. I sure AF would prefer it NOT to happen, however, our current trajectory does not give me encouragement vis-a-vis a uncivil conflict.

Too many people being assholes towards one another. And, as I -am- nominally on the “Nazi-Badthink-Rebooblican” side (leastways by their definition) I think we’re headed to a more “Spanish Civil War” sort of thing, rather than the Serb/Bosnian or Hutu/Tutsi thing… Just my feeling….

And because of that, I got a hunch when ‘nut cuttin’ time’ comes about, all bets are off the table. ALL weapons, no matter WHO controls them, outside of chem/bio/nuke will be ‘in play’. The primary reason the “triad of death” will be left out is that ALL sides are going to be ‘playing for territory/keeps’, i.e. if you poison the well, it’s of no use to them, nor YOUR own folks.

The problem is, by playing with those rules, ALLLLLL the other toys ARE on the table… and, by dint of the vidya above?
Man
Landmines purely suck
So

As a favor to all like-minded folks, at least here I can -TRY- to elucidate to y’all WHAT exactly is OUT THERE in regards to standard DotMil Landmines.

‘Cos sure as shit, the Powers That Be, once they realize just how absolutely outnumbered and fucked they are, Landmines are sure as fuck going to be ‘on the menu’ so to speak.

Now, for the record, I ain’t no expert by a loooooong shot. The intel gathered here is from contributors, Jane’s and a couple of “Drunkards with Dynamite” A.K.A. Sapper and a few ‘other frens’. It’s not complete, but hey… fuck you and move on if you don’t dig it.

So… Mine #1:
The M692 ADAM, Area Denial Artillery Munition

This’s a FASCAM deployable landmine. Fired via Artillery. It carries either the M67 Landmine, or the M72. The difference between the two is as follows:

M67 mines (long delay) will (theoretically) Self Destruct after 48 hours
M72 mines (short delay) will (theoretically) Self Destruct after 4 hours

I say THEORETICALLY ‘cos man, shit is know to have a failure rate Aye?

The delivery system is a 155mm Artillery shell that bursts open and scatters the mines. The mines themselves once deployed ‘shoot out’ 7 lil wires, that if ANYONE or ANYTHING hit the wires, the mine goes toxic if you will. Each Arty shell holds 36 mines. The only bonus to this is it THEORETICALLY has a built in self destruct.

Mine #2:
The Classic M18A1 ‘Claymore’

The Claymore mine is a directional anti-personnel mine. Has a matrix of about 700 +/- 1/8th of an inch steel ball bearings that’re projected by either C-4 or, these day, Comp B explosive. THESE buggers are something I figure we might see the most of. Hell, I print a 3/4 scale model as a battery holder on my 3D Printer…

These things have been around since Nam, and are highly effective in OH so many ways. (More in another poast on booby traps and whatnot later). Per Wiki: “When the M18A1 is detonated, the explosion drives the matrix forward, out of the mine at a velocity of 1,200 m/s (3,937 ft/s),^[1] at the same time breaking it into individual fragments. The steel balls are projected in a 60° fan-shaped pattern that is 2.0 metres (6.6 ft) high and 50 m (55 yd) wide at a range of 50 m (55 yd). The force of the explosion deforms the relatively soft steel balls into a shape similar to a .22 rimfire projectile.^[1] These fragments are moderately effective up to a range of 100 m (110 yd), with a hit probability of around 10% on a prone man-sized 1.3-square-foot (0.12 m²) target. The fragments can travel up to 250 m (270 yd). The optimum effective range is 50 m (55 yd), at which the optimal balance is achieved between lethality and area coverage, with a hit probability of 30% on a man-sized target.^”

They’re so good, and so useful, the Ivans have copied them (the MON-50) and so has Joe Chink (the Type 66).
Not much to say outside of the fact that a great command detonated mine, mostly employed in Ambush and Base settings (perimeter guard stuff).

Mine #3:
The M-16 ‘Bounding’ Anti-Personnel mine

Copied from a World War 2 German “S” Mine… this thing is mean as fuck.

’Bounding’ ‘cos it literally pops up out of the ground when you trip it

There’s a reason they call these fuckers “Bouncing Bettys”

It’s designed NOT to kill but blow your balls off. It’s buried, and in the pic above? those lil ‘tines’? Those are what’re sticking up out of the ground. You break just one of them tines off and a small base charge ‘kicks’ the mine up to about waist height.

It the blows/bounces up and takes your balls with it.

Nasty shit.
Older, reliable, and mean as fuck. Only good news is a standard metal detector can ‘sniff’ it out, and you can disarm them readily. Problem is to -know- you’re in a field of these things, and generally, the way you find that out is when one of your guys starts singing uninvited soprano.

Like that scene in “The Big Red One”… Smitty goes for water, gets hit by a Kraut “S” Mine (the forerunner of this toy) and the Sarge tells him “Don’t worry Smitty… I found one of your balls… that’s why God gave you tweo” or word to that effect.

Mine #4 is a bit less Common.
The M86 Anti-Pursuit Munition.

Now THIS lil Booger is cool, but brutal.
It’s right out of some ‘Predator’ Sci-Fi shit IMO.
Primary design/Purpose is to slow down pursuing enemies.

Each one of those lil ‘hole/prongs’ on that model above? Those are where it shoots out wires, much like the M67 and M72 mines previously talked about. In fact it’s a hand-deployed offshoot of the M72 short delay mine. In this case, it’s used by, oh say a SEAL team that got spotted/caught/is being chased. They take a few of these and prep/prime them and then haul ass.

When they get deployed, this’ what happens:

Those lil trip wires shoot out.

God help the fucker who touches one. You hit one, big KA-Boom. and it’s game over. The wires have to be actually touched to complete the detonation… think its something about closing the circuit… that and wind moving/blowing WON’T from my understanding cause it to detonate.

Now, Mine #5
The M-14 Landmine

Now, some of you might remember I printed up a bunch of fake ones of these on my 3D Printer. They make neat lil pillboxes or coin holders, as they’re only about 2.2 inches wide, and 1-3/4 inches high. These are the classic “toe poppers”. VERY hard to find (as in detect) as they only use the firing pin as the only metal in them.
A video of it from the History Channel is HERE

29 grams of Tetryl.
That’ll leave a mark.
These have been around since the 50’s, and some source put the US inventory at about one point five million of them in various areas. They’re, quite simply, area denial munitions and terror weapons. Too small to really see until some poor bastard steps on one.

The US used them pretty heavily in Korea, usually paired with the Bouncing Betties. The one-two combo being enough to keep people from either coming at you or trying to follow you IF you manage to have a field of them set up.

Now, as far as anti-armor, theres a bunch of them. However, I’m going to cut this off as Gretchen is in bed, sick, and I’m now full time Papi with the Mini-Redheaded Nuke Plant with Legs, A.K.A. Gran#1.

Where the hell do they get the energy!?!

I sure as hell don’t remember having THAT MUCH juice to go the way she does, that’s for damned sure. She’s exceptionally well behaved, but oh Holy Hells “Look!!! SQUIRREL!” in the attention span, with accompanying meth-head speed affectation.

I’ve had 3 Monsters so far and 2x Stackers to -try- to keep up.
And no, don’t worry, my last EKG and heart test showed the ticker, despite the one heart incident YEARS ago is actually in primo shape. I think it’s the only part of me that’s still running at 100%. Leastways that’s what the doc has told me, and again, my luck has held at the VA as my old sawbones got promoted, and I’ve been breaking in a new one. She, thank the Gods listens to me. Also my last doc did too, and took copious notes about my mutant self, so at least I got that too going for me.

So… I’ll look as dispersal systems in the next round with some anti-armor mines, as well as some ‘foreign stuff’ as it pertains to the possibility of exposure to them during “Spicy Times”

Also, let me know if you’re willing to chip a few shekels in. I want to keep it free, but I do have bills, and this here has been a multi-hour write fest. Anything helps, and the paypal is theintrepidreporter2019@gmail.com if you want to go that way, or DM me at BCE187th@protonmail.com if you want to go ‘other routes’ like getting the mailing addy as some of you have already done (Many Thanks Jack!)

So More later and let me know what you think
Big Country