User:The All-knowing Sith'ari/M28 Antlion anti-personnel mine

The M29 Antlion is an anti-personnel mine used in use with the United Nations Space Command Defence Force. The Antlion can be detonated using two modes: One is a simple explosion which sends shrapnel upwards. The second is a bounding mode, where the mine's payload is ejected by a booster charge and airbursts at a height of approximately one metre.

Design
The mine consists of an aluminium warhead within a thin titanium sleeve. The mine can be activated by a variety of methods, including command detonation, IFF interrogation, or pressure detonation. The mine is fitted with motion sensors, electromagnetic sensors, and passive infrared systems to detect enemy targets. The mine can also launch seven tripwires to a maximum distance of six metres in all directions.

A central fuze well on the top of the mine is fitted with a pronged pressure and tilt fuze. Sufficient pressure on the prongs, tension on an attached tripwire, or information from sensors will cause the release of a striker. The freed striker is forced into a percussion cap. If the mine is set to send the blast upwards, this will detonate the mine's explosive charge, sending a huge compressive force upwards and ejecting six hundred razor-edged tungsten arrow-shaped darts, which are skinned with magnesium with a core of powdered zirconium, and are designed to fly aerodynamically. The darts retain the exterior ballistics and penetration of a standard flechette, but increase wounding ability by providing a wider wound path and by igniting clothing and causing severe burns on impact.

In bounding mode, the percussion cap ignites a short pyrotechnic delay. The purpose of this delay is to allow the victim to move off the top of the mine, to prevent its upward movement from being blocked. Once the delay has burned through, a 51 gram liquid propellant charge is ignited, which launches the mine's aluminium warhead into the air, leaving behind the titanium outer sleeve. The charge also ignites a second pair of pyrotechnic delays. The mine rises to a height of approximately one metre, before one or both of the pyrotechnic delays triggers the main charge of the mine which sprays the flechettes in a 360-degree spread.

The M28 is designed to be blast-resistant: The fuze is insensitive to the shock wave from an nearby explosion. This feature makes it difficult or impossible to clear such mines using explosive minefield breaching techniques. As a result, the process of clearing minefields is slower and more complex. This is achieved by having the fuze react differently based on the length of the impulse. Air is forced through a small hole into an air bladder, which inflates and rotates a locking collar and releases the striker into the detonator. Sudden impulse from impact or explosion does not have the time to inflate the bladder and rotate the locking collar, whereas steady pressure from a foot or vehicle wheel does.

Deployment
The mine can be deployed by infantry, artillery, or specialised mine-launching systems on armoured vehicles. The mine's warhead is carried in a void which also contains the bounding system's liquid propellant. The void allows the propellent fluid to settle under gravity in the correct position beneath the warhead, so that the warhead is always launched or detonates in an upward direction irrespective of the initial orientation of the mine.

When emplaced, most of an Antlion mine is buried underground. As a result, it can be extremely difficult to spot it visually, particularly in areas of long grass, heavy undergrowth or other debris. However, the M28 contains large amounts of metal, and so it is very easy to detect using a metal detector. However, the act of moving the detector's head over the ground may strike the prongs and trigger the mine. In any case, other minimum metal mines such as the M32 Legionary may have been planted near to an M28 in order to protect it from mine clearance personnel.

Variants

 * M28B Training Mine - Inert training model with blue casing as opposed to the green of live mines.

Operators

 * United Nations Space Command