Buried blast threats have been used for many years in both conventional and unconventional warfare. They are cheap, easily hidden, remain viable for extremely long periods after deployment and are effective, focusing the resulting blast products and ejecta vertically upward towards the target when finally initiated. Although extremely effective measures have been developed and deployed to protect vehicles against buried blast threats (Camp, Heitman 2014, Stiff 1986) ongoing research is required and is indeed continuing to develop and enable more effective and efficient passive and active landmine and IED protection systems for the mounted and dismounted soldier.
Reference:
Reinecke, J.D., Beetge, F.J., Horsfall, I. et al. 2015. Partitioning of a scaled shallow-buried near-field blast load. 30th International Symposium on Shock Waves (ISSW30), 19-24 July 2015, Tel-Aviv, Israel
Reinecke, J. D., Beetge, F., Horsfall, I., & Miyambo, M. (2015). Partitioning of a scaled shallow-buried near-field blast load. Springer. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9203
Reinecke, John D, FJ Beetge, I Horsfall, and Mangalani Miyambo. "Partitioning of a scaled shallow-buried near-field blast load." (2015): http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9203
Reinecke JD, Beetge F, Horsfall I, Miyambo M, Partitioning of a scaled shallow-buried near-field blast load; Springer; 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9203 .
