You know we have sent many, many army tanks with protruded devices used for minesweeping to the Middle East from the Logistics Base in our country. They are assigned to removing the left over land mines of past wars. Each year hundreds of thousands lose their lives and limbs to these past war buried relics. The army tanks which remove these devices have not really been redesigned since the second WW, hardly any real improvements in their designs. But it has occurred to me that you can sweep these mines from the air if you want. Here is how it might be done; first, a powerful helicopter drags flat plates of steel along the ground with skids, in front of that is heavy chains dragging approximately 20 yards connected to each other like the kind your used to level fields and scrap away dirt clods and then the chains of smaller size actually in the air attached to cables attached to the helicopter about 50ft AGL.

Now the second idea is to have the company out of CA which is making the large air barges for Fed Ex prototype use the air barges to tow the drag chains and metal skids, each crane is able to hold up to 180,000 lbs. There is an article in Popular Mechanics last year, which will confirm the tests. Ten of these units dragging the skids and chains of 50-80 feet in length can de-mine and are of 800 feet in width by ten miles in less than three hours. It would also give monies necessary to use in R and D for this progressive company with leading edge aerospace engineers and perhaps a future solution to the moving of large amounts of freight over bodies of water and terrain in the future, thus helping the shipping industries after the war. Not to mention the possibility of moving troops, cargo, armament or victims of disasters such as flooding to safety. Think of it this way instead of towing a banner on a vertical plane you are towing a steel sled along a horizontal plane. Most mines are set off by as little three pounds per square inch.

So think of this you have a sled that is strong enough to withstand many, many blasts. The last half of the sled is magnetized and therefore picks up the shrapnel, and the last two feet is a plow with rolling disks that plows the ground to farm it later. HAH. You get all the technology, free roto-tilling and possible farmland in some spots. Where they can grow things like lima beans, soybeans, instead of poppies or babies breath for flower shops in the West. Think in advance and kill multiple birds with one stone. If this works as well as it does in my physics mathematical equations, other countries can use this too, there are many countries with mines everywhere and we could clean them all up.

That would be a humanitarian gesture of epic proportions. I also figure that if Cargill, John Deere and the Gates Foundation, along with NASA and HP foundation and scientists testing genetically altered seeds, they could feed the entire region indefinitely once it was over with. And I bet you could figure a way to plant the seed on the initial sweep and put the seeds far enough down to not freeze. And if you did this during the winter then the snow and ice broken up by the exercise would be enough to get the water into the soil to start the process, just like planting of Winter Wheat in ID. All that you would need after that is to drill for water in selected places to supply what little is needed for those crops which do not need much to start with. If the seeds were resistant to frost then it will work. As far as the Air Barges, which are shaped like the shuttlecraft from Star Trek, but are really huge blimps, they have adequate control and autopilots so at 100 feet AGL they could easily do the job with stability and control, check it out and get back to me on that one. The technology we could get form this endeavor would be incredible and may prove to be the answer to many countries farming problems. We are looking for ideas to rid the world of landmines; got any your self? Think about it please.

"Lance Winslow" - If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs