The United States will soon provide antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, a U.S. official confirmed late Tuesday, in a move that followed Ukraine’s first deployment of long-range U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles in an attack on Russia.

  • CoCo_Goldstein@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    From the article…

    “The official also pointed to the function of the mines, which they said require a battery for operation and will not detonate once the battery runs out after a period of a few hours to a few weeks.”

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      13 hours ago

      That’s brilliant engineering but also…I wonder how common some kind of reverse-dud would be?

      “Oh cool it’s probably inert because that was MONTHS ag–”

      • chaospatterns@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Batteries are bounded by more predictable chemistry more so than something like the breakdown of a mechanical based trigger waiting for rust or decomposition. Chemistry makes it easier to model and predict. If you’ve got a 1Ah battery and it consumes x watt hours per hour, then it takes y days to burn through. Tolerances that cause the battery to have slightly more or less capacity or component power consumption will likely be <5%, thus not radically different because nobody is timing this to the minute.