U.S. advances land mine removals, improving lives, security across Indo-Pacific

FORUM Staff

Royal Thai Armed Forces and United States Marine Corps personnel began training on explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) in mid-November 2022 at the Thailand Mine Action Center (TMAC) in Ratchaburi.

Along with strengthening bonds between Thai and U.S. troops, the joint effort to train 18 TMAC students is part of the U.S. Defense Department’s Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA) program, which assists partner forces in the safe disposal of land mines and other hazardous remnants of war to eliminate lingering social, economic and environment effects. (Pictured: Royal Thai and U.S. Armed Forces instructors and students track stopwatches during an explosive ordnance disposal course in Ratchaburi, Thailand, in November 2022.)

Launched in 2013, the U.S.-Thailand HMA program plays a key role in advancing common security interests in the Indo-Pacific. TMAC’s mission is to make Thailand free of land mines.

“I hope that everyone will receive knowledge from Thai and U.S. instructors and use all this knowledge to make them more proficient in their work,” said Gen. Supathat Narindarabhakdi, TMAC director general. The training includes courses on EOD techniques, as well as practical experience.

The U.S. has invested more than U.S. $4.2 billion worldwide since 1993, more than any other nation, for conventional weapons destruction (CWD), including safe land mine removal, with more than U.S. $738 million allocated to the Indo-Pacific, according to the 2022 U.S. State Department report, “To Walk the Earth in Safety.”

CWD also includes disposing of small arms and light weapons, such as portable air-defense systems and munitions.

Decades of conflict, especially in Southeast Asia, have contaminated large expanses of arable land with mines and other unexploded ordnance, including from U.S. bombing campaigns, stalling economic growth, the U.S. State Department reported.

In the Indo-Pacific alone in 2021, CWD efforts identified more than 193 million square meters of land to be cleared and released more than 101 million square meters for productive use. That year, U.S.-funded activities also destroyed more than 96,000 pieces of ordnance, 6,793 pieces of small-arms ammunition, 2,526 land mines, 51 anti-tank mines and 46 metric tons of excess munitions, according to the report.

The U.S. Defense Department, which accounts for roughly 14% of CWD spending, sponsors innovative programs such as the Humanitarian Demining Training Center at Fort Lee, Virginia, which prepares military forces, government stakeholders and international partners in HMA missions, disposal and stockpile management.

The U.S. Army Humanitarian Demining Research and Development Program develops and validates land mine and unexploded ordnance detection and clearance technologies to enhance mine clearance globally, the report said.

The research program coordinates with U.S. geographic combatant commands, including U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and has tested demining technologies in Cambodia, Palau, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam, among other nations. Thai and U.S. Soldiers, working with the TMAC, tested the Mini MineWolf, an earth-tilling system developed by the program to clear anti-personnel and anti-tank land mines.

Eventually, the Thai center will sustain a domestic EOD capability for the nation.

“We are transitioning now,” U.S. Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Jeramie Pawloski, the HMA Thailand team leader, said in a news release. “Marine Forces Pacific EOD is taking a smaller role and the TMAC Demining Training Center instructors are playing a bigger role — taking control of the classes, schedule, and training.”

The U.S. Defense Department supports other mine action centers and clearance teams in the region. From 1993 to 2021, the U.S. invested more than U.S. $180 million in Cambodia, more than U.S. $185 million in Vietnam and more than U.S. $310 million in Laos for CWD programs that support national capacity development, among other activities.

The U.S. also provided CWD support to Myanmar, Nepal, Palau, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste in 2021, and to Fiji, India, the Marshall Islands, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands in previous years, the State Department reported.

IMAGE CREDIT: CPL. MOISES RODRIGUEZ/U.S. MARINE CORPS