SubscribeThe Swiss-German companies’ products have shown unprecedented results in peace-keeping and humanitarian missions.
MineWolf Systems is a leading supplier of effective mechanical mine clearance solutions with remarkable results in numerous demining projects. Its product range comprises the large-scale vehicle MineWolf, the light-weight Mini MineWolf and the MineWolf Bagger, a standard excavator equipped with mine clearance capability.
The MineWolf family of COTS mine clearance vehicles has already seen extensive service with various customers in Sudan, Jordan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia.
The MineWolf in action in Sudan
Its effectiveness and survivability has also been trialed and validated by the defense forces of Germany and Switzerland. Several land forces are currently evaluating the deployment of these next-generation mine clearance vehicles.
The large MineWolf system consists of a specially-designed tracked vehicle which pushes a mine clearing tool. This can be either the traditional chain "flail" which beats the earth ahead of the vehicle, or a unique, patented "tiller" head designed to physically mulch through the earth and detonate both AP and AT mines.
The MineWolf in action in Sudan
The tiller resembles a massive rotary cultivator: it is a rotating 2.8m shaft long and 1.1m thick onto which are mounted 64 chisels evenly spaced to ensure that every mine along the 2.8m wide swathe is destroyed or detonated. The tiller rotates at 300 - 600 rpm driven by the vehicle's 270KW Deutz diesel engine.
Its chisels penetrate all soil types including heavy clay and sand to a depth of 350mm. Importantly, in clearing a safe strip across a mined area it doesn't leave undetonated mines in the spoil alongside its path.
The MineWolf moves at a speed of 0.8 - 1.5km/h when the tiller or flail is operated. The crawler tractor weighs 21.9 tons with the cabin fitted and the tiller and flail add another 4.5 and 4.8 tons respectively. It is designed to suit military air transportation requirements and is also made, with slight modifications, for tactical deployments.
The system comes with a containerized field workshop which enables quick repairs and the rapid conversion from tiller to flail, depending on the threat.
The MineWolf is manually operated and sufficiently protected from heavy mine blasts. In very high threat environments it can also be operated remotely, with its profile reduced by removal of the armored cab.
In either case it employs GPS guidance both to plan and execute the task and, crucially, to provide an accurate record of the areas it has cleared.
The MineWolf can easily clear 1000 m²/h even in difficult environment, up to 2500 m²/h under more benign conditions. In the past, it was involved in tasks clearing roads, airfields, camp sites and for general land clearance.
No other mine clearance system has delivered comparable results in recent years. Since 2003 more than 8.5 million square meters of minefields have been cleared in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It has operated in temperatures from -10 to +48 degrees Celsius, and always under the hands of local operators with MineWolf providing advice on achieving maximum productivity.
Clearance Performance
Each MineWolf machine has fulfilled its expectations, and together they have rendered over 8,500,000 m² of contaminated land mine-free.
At the time of publication of this article (Jan. 2007), the following results have been achieved:
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (since 2003) 3,838,000 m² (project ongoing).
- Serbia and Montenegro (July 2004) 180,000 m² (1 month of operations).
- Croatia (since May 2005) 3,525,000 m² (project ongoing).
- Sudan (since Nov. 2005) 754,000 m² (project ongoing).
- Jordan (since 2005) 220,000 m² (project ongoing).
During these operations the MineWolf machine has proven its reliability and demonstrated productivity of up to 3,800 m2/h on various types of terrain, soil and vegetation. The machine successfully withstood multiple AT-mine hits without affecting operations (M 15, TM 57, TMRP 6, etc.) and at the same time effectively cleared small AP- and fragmentation mines (PROM, POMZ 2, M 14, PMA-2).