bird's eye view by the hawk Vehicle shows humanitarian side
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of transport The Hawk often features unusual vehicles—this week's might look quirky (and military) but it is engaged on very important work— land mine clearing.
irdymosity between The Hawk and his many feathered friends rarely goes beyond the odd peck or a divebomb or two but man's cruelty towards his fellow creatures is legendary Take landmines as an example—there are thousands of the nasty little blighters still lying around in places such as North Africa, Mozambique, Vietnam and Cambodia and they still exact a terrible toll in life, limbs and livestock. Thankfully a number of organisations have devoted themselves to righting the evil wrong. They're busy locating and detonating mines, some in the time-honoured way by probe and bayonet and others using vehicles that pound them to destruction.
One fascinating truck appeared amidst BAUMAs construction and earth moving equipment exhibition, that promises to clear all personnel or anti-tank mines with up to 10kg of explosive material in its path. It's called the 910MCV mobile mine flail and is one of two built by the Danish hydraulic equipment specialist Hydrema for Norwegian People Aid to deploy in Angola next month. Another dozen have also been supplied to the Danish army for similar humanitarian work.
The vehicle shown comes in two parts; each has its own independent 182hp (136kW) Perkins engine, cooling, air filter, exhaust, oil-immersed disc brakes and hydraulics. Should one system get blasted the other can still operate for the vehicle to extricate itself safely. Its 17.5R 25in tyres have a large low-pressure imprint and are foamfilled for reliability. At the front there's a conventional cab and at the rear a heavily shielded flail, but being hinged at the centre gives the mine-thrasher hydraulic pivot steering. This enables the front and rear wheels to drive in the same track and the vehicle to clear a 3.5m-wide path through the minefield.
With the flail gear folded over its back, the Hydrema fits neatly into a Hercules C130 aircraft and on arrival in, say, Bosnia, it can then be rail-roaded, low-loaded or driven using a six-speed powershift transmission with hydrostatic transmission at up to 35km/h into an area for clearing.
To begin its deadly work, the driver simply rotates his seat and faces the "rear" through the heavily protected rear screens and slowly flails a path using twin joystick controls or an advanced computerised fully automatic pilot steering. A GPS navigational system is optional. Afterwards the vehicle can be cleaned using an on-board high pressure water hose.
The cabin is a one-piece welded construction that resists 7.62 or 51mm AP shell fire as well as blast or flying fragments. The next ones will probably use Kevlar.
The concept has taken Hydrema 30 months to develop and at present it's building four a month. One man heavily involved in the project is Major Gert Daugaard who's on a year's leave from the Danish artillery. "It's relatively cheap for the sort of work that it does," he enthuses, "a really versatile machine that can clear the area of a football pitch in under three hours." It sounds like just the sort of thing the English FA needs to thrash out soccer hooligans...