The United States will soon provide antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, a U.S. official confirmed late Tuesday, in a move that followed Ukraine’s first deployment of long-range U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles in an attack on Russia.
The United States will soon provide antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, a U.S. official confirmed late Tuesday, in a move that followed Ukraine’s first deployment of long-range U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles in an attack on Russia.
From the article…
“The official also pointed to the function of the mines, which they said require a battery for operation and will not detonate once the battery runs out after a period of a few hours to a few weeks.”
That’s brilliant engineering but also…I wonder how common some kind of reverse-dud would be?
“Oh cool it’s probably inert because that was MONTHS ag–”
Batteries are bounded by more predictable chemistry more so than something like the breakdown of a mechanical based trigger waiting for rust or decomposition. Chemistry makes it easier to model and predict. If you’ve got a 1Ah battery and it consumes x watt hours per hour, then it takes y days to burn through. Tolerances that cause the battery to have slightly more or less capacity or component power consumption will likely be <5%, thus not radically different because nobody is timing this to the minute.
You’re absolutely right. Very good points! I thought that too, a major improvement over analogue mechanisms that have more unpredictable longevity!
I suppose if the batteries are actively discharging as a failsafe, that makes sense.
I was thinking about how sometimes you’d pick up like, a TV remote that’s been sitting since 1993 and astonishingly the little red light blinks when you push a button, if only faintly, and for a second.