Edition 2.1 - March 2020 DOWNLOAD
Introduction
Mechanically assisted demining is an asset for use during Land Release operations in Lebanon. When appropriately integrated into the demining process, the use of mechanical assets often significantly reduces the time spent on tasks and therefore increases production rates and diminishes the overall cost of releasing contaminated areas. To achieve this without a reduction in safety for the people of Lebanon or damaging the environment unnecessarily, the use of mechanical assets during the overall Land Release process must be controlled and restricted. Respecting the principle of continuous assessment embedded in any Quality Management system, the performance of machines in terms of reliable output shall be subject to objective assessment and, when necessary, improvements made to ensure that the assets are always being used safely and appropriately. In Lebanon, mechanically assisted demining is primarily used for the removal of vegetation and for the preparation of ground in order to accelerate manual or Mine Detection Dog (MDD) search and clearance operations. Appropriate mechanical assets may also be used as tools to rapidly determine the extent of a suspected hazardous area (SHA) when conducting area reduction in low threat hazardous areas as long as the mechanical asset is proven capable of reliably achieving the required processing depth of 15 cm and follow-up search and clearance is conducted to give full confidence that no hazards are left behind. Machines designed to detonate pressure activated mines rarely achieve this reliably and very rarely detonate other munitions that may be present, so when any explosive hazards are anticipated, follow-up search shall always be conducted before land is declared “cleared”. LMAC approved mechanical assets may also be deployed to raise confidence that manually cleared areas have been searched appropriately as part of the Quality Control (QC) process.