What are landmines?

Landmines are munitions or explosive weapons, normally encased, and designed to be placed under, on or near the ground or other surface area (like a road) and to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person or a vehicle.

What are the military uses or purposes of landmines?

These include but are not limited to the following offensive and defensive purposes: destroying personnel and vehicles, denying the enemy an area, channeling the enemy's movements, slowing an advance, perimeter defense, and psychological or demoralizing effects (of uncertain danger with every step, and of the landmine injuries which shatter leg and feet bones usually requiring amputation).

What are the types of landmines?

For the Philippine context, these are the most relevant typologies -
1. According to target: a) anti-personnel mine (APM); b) anti-vehicle-mine (AVM)
2. According to mode of detonation: a) victim-activated; b) command-detonated
3. According to production process: a) conventional (industrially manufactured); b) improvised

What distinguishes an APM from an AVM?

Aside from the obvious distinction as to target, there is a corresponding difference in the corresponding amount of explosive charge and also of weight or pressure required to detonate it in the case of a victim-activated mine. For conventional victim-activated APMs, a pressure force of 20 to 35 pounds is sufficient to detonate it, with an explosive charge of even just a few ounces -- enough to incapacitate, injure or kill persons. For conventional victim-activated AVMs, the pressure force required is from 350 to 750 pounds, and the explosive charge is usually 22 pounds -- enough to disable tanks and other armored vehicles. Of course, AVMs often also disable the personnel on board those vehicles as incidental or collateral targets or victims.

What is the importance of the distinction between victim-activated and command-detonated landmines?

Victim-activated landmines are inherently indiscriminate, they may victimize both combatants and civilians, both military and civilian vehicles. They may be inadvertently triggered by anybody or anything who/which trips its tripwire or places the requisite weight/pressure on it.

Sometimes, in the international arena, the term "anti-personnel mines" (APMs) is used to mean only victim-activated anti-personnel mines. But there are APMs, like Claymore mines, which are also command-detonated. Thus, for overall clarity, it is best to qualify APMs as either victim-activated or command-detonated or both. It is the victim-activated APMs which are the most pernicious in their direct human impact.

Command-detonated landmines are presumably discriminate in that they are detonated only against legitimate military targets. Command-detonation requires a person to be present, observing the landmine emplacement and manually detonating it, usually electrically, upon the approach of a mobile military target (whether person or vehicle) close to the emplacement. This allows for total control over the landmine, its use and effects, unlike the victim-activated ones which are unobserved and left behind "to whom it may concern."

What about media reports of military vehicles which "hit" landmines on the road?

That could be misleading, especially as regards ambushes conducted by the New People's Army (NPA). NPA use of landmines against military or police vehicles, per field verification and even military/police reports, invariably involve improvised command-detonated AVMs. In these cases, it would be more accurate for the media to report or say that a landmine hit the military vehicle (connoting command-detonation) rather than the military vehicle hit a landmine (connoting victim-activation). Or better still, to say that the NPA detonated a landmine against the military vehicle. The best evidence of command-detonation is the recovery of remnant electric detonating cords from the scene of the landmine incident, as is often reflected in military or police reports.

Are improvised landmines also considered as landmines, thus subject to the same rules? What about improvised explosive devices (IEDs)?

Yes, improvised landmines are also landmines, the only difference being in the process or mode of production. IEDs produced by adapting other munitions (like a mortar shell) to function as landmines are also to be treated as landmines, at least as far as the applicable rules are concerned. On the other hand, IEDs which are made like time bombs, like those used in a number of terrorist bombing incidents in public places in Mindanao, are not considered as landmines.

What are Claymore mines?

A Claymore mine is a U.S.-designed (M18A1) directional APM which can be used in both victim-activated (trip-wire with pull firing device) or command-detonated mode (electric firing device with detonating cords). Its main external physical feature is a concave-shaped casing with "front toward enemy" so as to give direction to 700 small steel balls in a fan-shaped sheaf pattern projected in a 60 degree arc covering a casualty area of 50 meters. The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) used to have U.S.-made Claymore mines in its inventory but these were reportedly all disposed of in 1998. The NPA in recent years has extensively produced and used improvised Claymore mines in command-detonated mode, using scrap metal as shrapnel in lieu of steel balls.