MOSCOW. Dec 29 (Interfax-AVN) - A new remote mining engineering system will have armored and air conditioned cabins, Rostec's NPO Splav Holding General Director Vladimir Lepin said.
"The remote mining engineering system comprises a combat vehicle, a transporter-loader and transporter-loader containers with engineering munitions containing various types of mines. All the mines fully comply with Protocol 2 to the Geneva Convention," Lepin told Interfax-AVN in an interview.
The vehicles are mounted on KamAZ truck chassis and have armored, filtered and air conditioned cabins. The combat vehicle carries an automatic weather station to determine weather parameters on the firing position, he said.
The system is highly automated, the general director said. "The vehicle will automatically fire on designated targets, will automatically record the strike zone, and will transfer data to a command post and the transporter-loader," Lepin said.
At present, the Russian army is using a universal minelayer mounted on a ZIL truck chassis. The vehicle is designed to create minefields at short range: the impact radius is around 100 meters. The army also employs the VSM-1 mine laying system mounted on Mil Mi-8 helicopters, which, however, can be used only at low altitudes of up to 150 meters.
According to the media, the new system will operate at a range of five to 15 kilometers. In addition, it will have launch containers customized to next-generation engineering munitions.
Engineering Research Institute General Director Igor Smirnov told Interfax-AVN earlier that the Russian army would be provided with POM-3 smart mine cluster projectiles in the end of 2016. These mines can ignore uncharacteristic targets, such as hardware and wild animals, and respond only to hostile soft targets.
Attempts to create a remote mining system on the basis of a multiple rocket launcher began in the 1970s. Cluster projectiles were developed for Grad and Uragan rocket launchers. The systems operated at a range of up to 30 kilometers but their use was limited by the low degree of precision, the high cost of munitions and the limitations imposed by international treaties.