§ Lord Strathcona and Mount Royalasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have yet found a means of detecting the plastic anti-personnel mines laid by the Argentinians in the Falkland Islands and if so when the removal of this menance will be complete.
§ The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne)We have not yet found a satisfactory means of detecting plastic anti-personnel mines. In peacetime any system of mine clearance must be completely effective to ensure that neither those carrying out the clearance nor anyone subsequently using the area are at risk. It is not possible to guarantee this with any existing equipment, nor with any system which could be developed in the short term.
Ministry of Defence funded research into the detection of plastic anti-personnel mines was terminated in 1986. At that time a prototype mine detector using pulsed radar technology had been produced, but a considerable amount of time and money would have been required to develop it into an effective 1185WA practical equipment. Work on this system has continued as a private venture and we continue to monitor technical developments which might help to resolve the problem.
Minefields in the Falkland Islands at present appear to offer little danger to the population, being well marked and fenced off. Any individual mines which are discovered outside the minefield perimeters are destroyed using remotely controlled equipment, but this is not suitable for the clearance of large areas. Even if the removal of the mines was technically feasible, it is a task requiring expertise which is in short supply. The clearance of mines in the Falkland Islands would require specialist manpower which is already committed to ordnance disposal work in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.