The Baltic states (catch all)

[Stan Reber]

Tom,
RONCO's dogs are very expensive, say 15 grand or more. They get dogs at a premium like the USAF as they often buy as many as 50 at a time and we only have 7 at any given time in country. Our dogs are mostly shepherds and trained locally for Explosive Detection (Dogs) (EDD). At least 5 to 7 different types of explosives must be detected, or back to square one and a new dog.

The robot simply permits us some distance with IEDs. Normally we don't use the robot on cleared military ordnance, as one "high order" detonation together with fragaments would destroy the robot.

We typically clear with Vallon detectors and MB4 data recorders. No more signal sweeping, which would drive you nuts in under an hour. That is, the VMH-2 with a larger search head and data recorder means we can "silently" sweep 50 square meters in under an hour and download the targets. From there the "privates" begin to dig

Most of the ordnance is WWII era and some WWI. The German stuff looks like new even after 40 years underground. The Russian stuff (ahem) also looks like the day it was made...horrible, rusty and unlikely to go even with a shape charge

That said, if it's German and the projectile already went down range once (the ogive and obturating band shows rifling) we would most likely destroy in place. If the fuse looks like it will gently come off, we dawn an EOD 8 or 9 and unscrew the fuse. Most of the time, the lead or senior with the response team gets to decide and nobody, not even the police argue. A 50-gram shape charge means 60 to 70 meters stand off distance and low order (breaks in two or three pieces and one hell of a bang). Trouble with the German stuff, the projectile walls are thick and the rounds back then, 170mm carried 11 kgs of high grade Comp B (similar to the USA). Our copper shape charges have in the past bounced off. You already know, without a secondary explosion, the charge went elsewhere and do again.

I have thousands of jpegs, and we often work with ATF and FBI when we find stuff. Sometimes they help and sometimes we help.

Regards, Stan

[Stan Reber]

I hope the attachment made it here. It was dug up and cleaned in September of 04. An RGD33 right out of the movies.
Stan

[Stan Reber]

What do you think ordinary people do when they find this #### ? Put it in the basement and wait for WWIII of course. There is no wonder what criminals will do once they get ahold of this stuff.

Stan

[Stan Reber]

Keep in mind these still work !

[Stan Reber]

four 50 kilo airial delivery bombs. Did you notice, the boneheads forgot the fuses. Could have killed a whole lot of fish back then.
Stan

[Tom Odom]

The German ordnance is amazingly well-preserved. I wonder how much temperature range affects degradation over time. In Sinai the ordnance went quick; same in the Libyan desert. Both places though it became very unstable as the heat allowed the explosive to "melt" and pool. It made for leaky mines and rounds that you just did not want to touch. Rwanda the stuff was "new" as in freshly used and certainly more modern than what you show here. I attached a ppic of a box of Italian AP mines we found on Iwawa after the RPA took the island in Nov 95. These little nasties were what narrowly missed changing me into a soprano forever; I knelt by one unknowingly that 3 hours later blew off an RPA troop's foot. Overall the RPA had 6 WIA to these in the 48 hours after the operation ended. My deminers came in and they found other ferrous mines (like an AT mine where we had beached our boat) but these caused problems. That led me to ask for dogs and we got 10 or so from RONCO. And yes they were expensive. I almost took a RONCO team to Angola after I retired but that war started again so the contract went tango uniform.

Best

tom