Harvest season for Minewolf

03. Dezember 2004 By Aaron Kirchfeld

A landmine isn't much different than a sugar beet. A stroke of genius led the retired engineer, Heinz Rath, to make this connection. His theory that an ordinary tractor could demine an area faster and cheaper than the mechanical beasts developed by military contractors seemed absurd to those with in-depth knowledge of attempts to develop high-performance demining equipment. After all, the German military had spent tens of millions of euros over a period of twenty years. It couldn't have been for nothing.
But Rath was not convinced. Like any true do-it-yourselfer, he grabbed his toolbox and began tinkering around with the idea in his basement. At the same time, the 68-year-old learned the ins and outs of all varieties of landmines. He visited a minefield in Mozambique and saw manual mine clearers struggle through inch after inch of earth. “I was convinced that I could build a machine that would improve demining, which was still being done by hand and dog,“ Rath told F.A.Z. Weekly.
He recognized the potential in the tiller and flail technology used in the agricultural and forestry industry. Rath believed the military had simply taken a wrong step somewhere. The other machines were in Rath's words “tank-like, too heavy, too expensive and ineffective.“
It took the German Ministry of Defense over 20 years and almost €40 million to develop the Keiler demining machine. But the 54-ton tank serves a strictly military purpose by clearing a path through minefields to allow troops to advance. Rath, on the other hand, had traveled to Mozambique and Bosnia, he'd seen mine victims with prosthetic limbs, and he recognized the humanitarian need.
“Especially in Germany, the demining industry made a mistake by developing tank-like machines,“ Rath said. “The key failure was not asking the users and those affected by mines.“
Rath sold the idea to the Federal Foreign Office, which offered to provide funding, and the Defense Ministry, which did the testing. He also convinced AHWI, a German manufacturer of tractors for forestry and agriculture as well as a Swiss armaments maker, which supplied the armor. By 2002, Rath unveiled his prototype of the Minewolf.
“People often think everything has been already done and it's not worthwhile thinking about improvements,“ Rath said. “But the Minewolf shows that it is important to take a second look at things.“
With the mechanics in place, the next step was to piece together the business side. Consulting firms such as McKinsey or Accenture were not in his budget range. So Rath recruited three under-30 business students at the Otto Beisheim Graduate School of Management in Koblenz, where the company's office is located. “I know nothing about finance and accounting,“ Rath admits.
But Rath, who worked in the security department of a British automotive supplier, apparently knew how to solve an engineering riddle. The Minewolf has already proven its effectiveness on the field. It passed stringent German military tests with flying colors and has already been used by two non-governmental organizations. In July, Minewolf cleared a 44-acre area in Serbia and Montenegro in cooperation with the German NGO Help. And just this week, Minewolf completed a 153-acre plot in northern Bosnia with the NGO Norwegian People's Aid (NPAID) and funding from the German foreign ministry.
“I've seen a lot of fancy and expensive demining machines that break down in five days,“ Paul Collinson, program manager Balkans at NPAID, told F.A.Z. Weekly. “The Minewolf, in comparison, can sustain this type of difficult operation and gets the job done eight hours a day, twenty days a month, and nine months a year.“
Collinson said he had no complaints about the machine and plans to continue working with Minewolf next year. “For what it costs and what it produces, it is a very economical approach,“ he added.
The Minewolf costs around €750,000 ($999,075), a comparatively low price. A manual deminer - a man equipped with a metal detector or dog - needs an entire day to secure 5 to 10 square meters. Rath's invention can cover up to 1,500 to 2,000 square meters an hour. The German army's Keiler, in comparison, covers only 270 square meters an hour.
AHWI, which produces the Minewolf, equipped the machine to cover rough terrain. It also made sure that the Minewolf can be “repaired with a hammer“ to keep maintenance costs at a minimum and make replacement parts easy to find. The 16-ton Minewolf is also much lighter and more compact than the average demining machine, making its transportation feasible and affordable.
The Minewolf draws its brilliance from existing farming machines. It is unique because it can use both a tiller, which is best for detecting antipersonnel and smaller antitank mines, as well as a flail, which detects heavier antitank mines. The other demining machines available can find only one or the other. In addition, the design ensures quick tool change and multifunctional purpose.
Rath improved on the existing heavy tiller by developing an open or basket design. The grinding metal teeth are fixed on open cross bars, reducing the resistance against heavy blasts and as a result decreasing damage to the machine. Operators, either a Minewolf employee or on-site drivers who can be trained within two weeks, are protected by an armored cabin.
The German army extensively tested the Minewolf against both antipersonnel and antitank mines in 2001 and 2004, and Minewolf showed a 100-percent success rate. All tests were completed without significant impact on the machine and the driver, Minewolf says.
Minewolf's multipurpose design allows it to be equipped for agricultural purposes after a field has been demined. This is particularly important for poorer countries because unlike military-built demining machines, the Minewolf can be used to farm on areas that were inaccessible because they were designated as “suspected areas.“
“People are often too scared to step on land years after a conflict has ended because someone may have been injured or killed from a mine blast,“ explains Christoph Frehsee, one of Minewolf System's three managers along with Tobias Schmidt and Philipp von Michaelis. “Three months ago I visited a village we demined in Sarajevo and the people proudly showed me the food they had grown and said their kids now play on the land. So the social impact is always there.“
Currently the company has only one machine in operation. But Frehsee says the first Minewolf has been used to prove that the machine is effective and cost efficient. The company hopes to sell between five and 10 machines in 2005.
The demand is there because antipersonnel and antitank mines continue to maim and kill between 15,000 and 20,000 people each year according to UNICEF. Around 90 percent of the victims are civilians. Every fifth is a child. At the current pace, analysts say it would take 100 years to clear the estimated 80 to 100 million landmines around the world.
But Rath, as optimistic as a sugar beet farmer in September, sees hope: “We have solved a problem and this machine can be used by every humanitarian organization. With this technology the worldwide problem can be solved. It is only a question of time.“