In his remarks, Kosiniak-Kamysz revealed that Poland could consider renouncing the Ottawa Convention, which aims at eliminating the use of anti-personnel landmines. But he added that “the arming of minefields will only take place when we are sure that war is inevitable”, reports broadcaster TVP.
Hmm. It might be possible to use mines that self-disarm. That addresses much of the UXO concerns, while still permitting for defensive use.
Would you walk through a field of “self-disarmed” land mines?
Much more happily than I would a field of non-disarmed ones.
Military explosives are generally pretty stable. They can’t just explode when you bump them.
If your detonation mechanism requires ignition of a primer by a battery that (a) is runs a timer and then disables itself and (b) has batteries that only last so long anyway, there’s not a lot that can reasonably set the thing off.
More complexity means more things that can go wrong.
But we do have smoke detectors, for example, with ten-year sealed batteries. I don’t think I’ve heard of those having any failures.
A buried explosive will still have a non-zero chance of detonating.
Why would a country beef up it’s borders against peaceful nations? They must be planning to invade us, we better attack first.
-Russia, probably.
Why would they make this public though? Wouldn’t it be best to let them find out the hard way if they ever tried?
Or is this maybe so me sort of disinformation to cover up even more complex defenses?
It’s not disinformation, but it is partial information. They’re revealing enough information about their defense plans to make it clear that any invasion attempt on Poland will be costly. Russia does not have limitless resources. If they think they have enough resources to fight a war on two fronts, then it is in Poland’s best interest to both bolster their defenses, and let the enemy know they’ve bolstered those defenses in hopes that it changes the war cost equation enough for Russia to realize it is not favorable decision anymore.
It’s the geopolitical equivalent of finding out there’s been multiple breaking and enterings in your neighborhood recently, so you go out and buy a gun and place a “this house defended by Smith & Wesson” sign out front. You don’t tell them where in the house the gun is. You just give enough information for them to rethink their choice. The goal isn’t to defeat the burglar. The goal is to not get broken into.
It’s not like they are advertising specific mine placement. They showed pictures about trenches, anti-vehicles barriers, gates, etc. This stuff isn’t hidden, a guy with a camera at the border could spot everything, let alone aerial or satellite imagery. It’s about hardening the border and slowing down invaders. Then you layer it with more complex defense systems to support the static defense.
Also, there’s a cost to keeping things secret in general. If you rely on something being a surprise, that’s one thing, but…
