Finland plans to withdraw from landmines treaty, prime minister says
reuters.com
Finland plans to withdraw from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines
Poland and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said last month they will withdraw from the convention
Dumb decision by our dumb gov. Use that money to buy more drones instead.
Talking about "landmines" instead of anti-personal mines in the headline is pure sane-washing.
There is no treaty against the use of landmines. There is only one agains the use of anti-personal mines. And for good reasons: When have you seen armies actually marching on foot to make them relevant compared to anti-vehicle landmines the last time? Countries agreed on banning anti-presonal mines because there are very little benefits of using them, yet massiv drawbacks in the form of (often your own) population getting killed for years and decades to come from leftover mines.
PS: The same is true for cluster ammunitions btw. They were not banned because you want to be nice to your enemies but because they are unreliable and duds will kill your civilians still when the war is mostly forgotten. Also there are better (as in cheaper, safer and more effective) shrapnel-based alternatives nowadays. Unbanning those is similarly insane and basically a statement of "fuck my population, I want to use those old stocks I still have, because that's slightly cheaper then building/ordering newer ones".
Cluster munitions and anti-personel mines are effective AF, seeing how the Ukrainian-Russian war is progressing.
The countries in question will create additional factories just for these bad boys. The old stock if any is pretty much useless.
These things are dangerous for civilians, but far less than an aggressive nation by your doorstep. Notice how all the countries border Russia?
It is useless if you have air superiority, but only US has that, and no one believes they'll honor article 5.
Cluster munitions and anti-personel mines are effective AF, seeing how the Ukrainian-Russian war is progressing.
Nope. Anti-vehicle mines are effective. Anti personal mines are of little use in comparison, unless actual infantry marching of foot return.
And cluster ammunition are effective in Ukraine for the simple reason that this is the best stuff they actually got, as the US is dumping their remaining old M30 stocks on them. The few remaining ones not already converted to M31 unitary warheads. While tungsten-shrapnel-based M31A1 and A2 have replaced them in their anti-infantry and anti-light-armor role because they are cheaper, safer and more efficient...
Your argument makes as much sense as advocating that NATO countries should go back to 50+ year old vehicles because they were effective in Ukraine when those were the best they got delivered.
The headline should rather be, "Russia forces Finland, other neighbouring countries to withdraw from landmines treaty." It's very sad that they have do that.
Yeah, terrible that weapons like land mines are making a comeback, but they are just too effective in warfare and Russia has shown that land mines are needed once more.
They are a great area denial weapon.
And if you are wondering what an area denial weapon is, look up the Desolator from Red Alert 2, far from the same concept of land mines, but effective at denying area to the enemy.
Mines are still used in the future too. Widow mines in sc2