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Demining

Metal detectors were first used for demining, after their invention by the Polish officer Józef Kosacki. His invention, known as the Polish mine detector, was used by the Allies alongside mechanical methods, to clear the German mine fields during the Second Battle of El Alamein when 500 units were shipped to Field Marshal Montgomery 's Eighth Army.

The Nazis used captured civilians who were chased across minefields to detonate the explosives. According to Laurence Rees " Curt von Gottberg, the SS-Obergruppenführer who, during 1943, conducted another huge anti-partisan action called Operation Kottbus on the eastern border of Belarus, reported that 'approximately two to three thousand local people were blown up in the clearing of the minefields'."

Whereas the placing and arming of mines is relatively inexpensive and simple, the process of detecting and removing them is typically expensive, slow, and dangerous. This is especially true of irregular warfare where mines were used on an ad hoc basis in unmarked and undocumented areas. Anti-personnel mines are most difficult to find, due to their small size and many being made almost entirely of non-metallic materials specifically to evade metal detectors.

Manual clearing remains the most effective technique for clearing mine fields, although hybrid techniques involving the use of animals and robots are being developed. Many animals are desirable due to having a strong sense of smell capable of detecting a land mine. Animals such as rats and dogs can be trained to detect the explosive agent.

Other techniques involve the use of geolocation technologies. As of 2008 a joint team of researchers at the University of New South Wales and Ohio State University was working to develop a system based on multi-sensor integration. Furthermore, defence firms have been increasingly competing on the creation of unmanned demining systems. In addition to conventional remote control mine defusing robots that operate either through precise mechanical dismantling, electronic destabilization and kinetic triggering methods, fully autonomous methods are in development. Notably, these autonomous methods utilize unmanned ground systems, or more recently subterranean systems such as the EMC Operations Termite, using either outward pressure differentials along system bodies, or corkscrew mechanisms.

The laying of land mines has inadvertently led to a positive development in the Falkland Islands. Minefields laid near the sea during the Falklands War have become favorite places for penguins, which do not weigh enough to detonate the mines. Therefore, they can breed safely, free of human intrusion. These odd sanctuaries have proven so popular and lucrative for ecotourism that efforts existed to prevent removal of the mines, but the area has since been demined.