Australian invention could revolutionise minefield clearance

SBS Australia

4 days ago

Listen to Australian and world news, and follow trending topics with SBS News Podcasts . "Yes, I knew the statistics. But putting a face to those figures, really brought the reality home to me. Like when I met Sandra, the thirteen-year-old girl two days ago, who'd lost her leg. You know for people like her, the rest of her life will be very different. And we must stop the landmines if we can." It has been almost three decades since Diana, Princess of Wales walked through the minefields of Angola. Wearing a visor and flak jacket, Diana traversed along a live minefield, contaminated with hidden weapons left over from the decades-long civil war. "It's been a very intense four days, I have seen a great great deal. I've seen the people affected by landmines. I've seen the landmines themselves. Angola is an example of what the Red Cross can achieve around the world, given the sort of cooperation we have seen that exists between the Red Cross and the N-G-O's and the Angolan authorities." Given the public fascination with Diana at the time, her visit to Angola triggered a global conversation and sparked real efforts to address the crisis. The Princess died shortly after her visit, but the trip sparked a boost in funding for de-mining projects and, by spotlighting the issue, led to the creation of the Ottawa Treaty, which aimed to eliminate anti-personnel landmines. The issue of landmines, however, is far from over. According to NATO's Strategic Warfare Development Command, there are still 110 million landmines globally. The world's largest landmine clearance charity, The HALO Trust, says over 5,700 civilians were killed or injured by landmines and explosives in 2023. Now, an Australian innovation is hoping to revolutionise landmine clearance. "The old way, which is actually still the current way, would be using metal detectors or ground penetrating radar. What they do is they will detect an anomaly in the ground. The anomaly could be a mine? It could be metal? It could be whatever? So there's lots of false, what they call, false positives. So you will dig up one in 30 would be a mine, out of 30 that you may dig up, and that's based on the anomalies. Whereas our technology sends a low frequency radio wave into the ground tuned to the magnetic resonance of the structure of that mine, which could be RDX or TNT. So specifically, it is that mine. Not there's an anomaly, there's something here, it'll be it's that mine, yes or no. That's the real technological jump." John Shanahan is the Managing Director of MRead. MRead, or Magnetic Resonance of Explosives and Drugs, is an Australian company working in collaboration with the C-S-I-R-O. Together, they have developed the first handheld device using low frequency radio waves to identify the molecular signatures of explosives. "Every explosive, or drugs which we detect has a fingerprint. We are the only sensor that can detect the actual fingerprint. So not that there's an anomaly there, as we talked about earlier, it's just, this is that substance. It's just binary as that." De-mining is a meticulous process; it's estimated around 117,000 mines are cleared each year. Conducting trials in landmine fields in Angola with The HALO Trust, the MRead team simulates the real world and says their device can speed up mine clearing by at least 30 per cent. Nick Cutmore is the Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer. He says that with no real world testing, no one can be sure of how reliable the devices truly are. "The way that we test it is to simulate the real world. We have used real explosives that are buried and in land mines all over the world, we bury them, simulating a landmine, and we use our detector to look into the ground and determine if we can detect it, how effectively we can detect it, and how reliably we can do this. Because although we want new technology, the last thing we want is technology that only half works, because no one wants to leave landmines behind." Anti-personnel landmines are designed to be hidden in the ground and detonate when someone steps on or passes by them. According to the U-N's Mine Action Service 2025 figures, an estimated 100 million people in more than 60 countries and territories live with the threat of landmines. Earlier this year [[2025]], Angola's National Mine Action Agency said the country needs $240 million to clear nearly 1000 minefields from a civil war that ended over two decades ago. But Nick Cutmore says land mines don't only impact the people living around them. "The direct impact is easily understood from landmines, which is people get hurt or killed. There's a much wider impact than that. Angola is a really good example, where you've got people with subsistence living and slash-and-burn type existence. And that influences not just Angola but countries across the world, because the way you're limiting the way these people can live their lives, you're contributing to the loss of habitat and loss of forest that has an impact upon climate change itself." MRead are expecting to return to Angola in 2026 for an extended three month trial of their device, alongside The HALO Trust. The company expects that by the end of 2026 they will have developed the final model to then be deployed in early 2027. In Angola, the landmines left behind from the war, which ended in 2002, continue to harm and displace people. John Shanahan says it is critical for communities like those surrounding Angola's minefields to be able to live safely on their own land. "If you think of Princess Diana in the Angola minefields, that's where we were essentially last November, and they they lay it out very well, and then you see the impact on the communities when this land is handed back to them that they haven't been able to access for decades. Whether that's for economic reasons, whether that's for tourism, or whether it's actually just be able to grow your own crops and not have your children blown up. It's just what they do is marvellous. We love working with them (The HALO Trust)." Next, MRead is working to develop a T-N-T sensor, which Mr Shanahan says will make a huge difference. "So our next version is a TNT sensor, which ultimately we will combine into one sensor. If we are able to detect TNT and RDX, that is over 90% of land mines in the world, and we've been looking to do that throughout by '27, '28. Which is why all of the de-miners- saying, if you can do that, it's just never been done before, ever in the world, full stop. Which is the remarkable thing about it. So if we can do that in two and a half years time, we will make a huge difference." The 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty banned anti-personnel landmines and helped destroy over 50 million. While some countries in Europe are now looking to withdraw from the treaty, countries like the United States, China, Russia, and Israel are not party. Recently, Ukraine, which is considered the most heavily mined country in the world, has voted to suspend its participation in the treaty. John Shanahan says he hopes this new device can, at some point, help Ukraine rid itself of this problem.
"I'll be going there (Ukraine) in September this year to see how our technology might be able to help out. We're looking for that to be a scoping visit this year to really understand the problem set, which is very different to the Angola one, to understand the problem set for us, then to go back after we come back from Angola next year. So we've really got a product now that we know really does work as well as we wanted it to, that we can then look to see how we can get that deployed to support a terrible problem in Ukraine."