The Armed Forces of Ukraine can count on expanding the capabilities of repelling russian "meat" assaults with the help of new means. We are talking about unnamed antipersonnel mines that will be transferred by the US to Ukraine after the White House decided not to listen to some "human rights campaigners".
This is stated in the Washington Post publication.
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It should be noted that these "human rights campaigners" mentioned in this article simply ignored the fact that russia is currently massively using against Ukraine anti-personnel mines of all types, including those intended for remote mining. So this is about lifting another ban on Ukraine and, most likely, about the transfer of a remote mining system.
Previously, the US has repeatedly transferred anti-personnel land mines to Ukraine. In particular, many aid packages since 2022 have mentioned M18A1 Claymore directional anti-personnel mine.
Given this, it is obvious that this time we are talking about a different tool. The Washington Post, citing its own sources, reported on the new US decision, but did not disclose the specific type of anti-personnel land mines that are planned to be transferred to Ukraine. At the same time, given that the Washington Post article notes that these land mines are “nonpersistent,” meaning that the mines self-destruct or lose battery charge to render them inactive within days or weeks”, Defense Express can rather cautiously assume that this may be about the Area Denial Artillery Munition.
This assumption is due to the fact that the US armed forces generally do not have many types of anti-personnel mines in service. At the same time, ADAM is part of the FASCAM family of special projectiles, like the 155-mm RAAM projectiles, with which the Ukrainian military is already quite familiar. In particular, as of August 2024, the Armed Forces of Ukraine received more than 60 thousand RAAM projectiles, which are equipped with M741 and M718 anti-tank mines.
ADAM is a similar 155-mm projectile in principle, but equipped with M67 or M72 anti-personnel mines, 36 in each projectile, which has the index M692 or M731, respectively. The difference between M67 and M72 is only in the self-destruction time - 4 or 48 hours, respectively. In the event that the self-destruction does not work for some reason, these mines are still deactivated no later than 14 days, due to the fact that by this time the battery that powers the mine detonator is discharged.
The M67 and M72 ADAM mines, when falling to the ground, emit "whiskers", contact with which leads to the activation of the mine by triggering an ejection charge, which shoots a fragment element to a height of about 1.5 meters, where it is detonated. The effective radius of manpower damage is up to 7 meters.
One ADAM projectile, which, like RAAM, has a range of up to 17.6 km when fired from an M109 artillery system, scatters mines up to 600 meters from the aiming point. Therefore, a number of shots must be fired for dense mining of the area.
The ADAM, as part of the FASCAM family of land mines, entered service with the US in 1975 and was developed specifically for the conditions of a full-scale war with the USSR. Thus, if the Defense Express assumption is correct and we are talking about the fact that Ukraine received ADAM, this means a truly effective strengthening of Ukraine's defenses with an effective means against the invasion of russian infantry. At the same time, we should not forget that the russian federation has been actively using anti-personnel mines of all types since the very beginning of its aggression against Ukraine in 2014, while Ukraine has been significantly limited in this regard.
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