Into the breach: The future of minefield breaching

Most of the world’s largest militaries rely on small fleets of specialised systems to breach defended minefields as quickly and as safely as possible. This article examines how these breaching systems are evolving in response to challenges to their survivability and concerns over their affordability and availability.

Breaching an enemy minefield is a complex, time consuming, and extremely hazardous operation. Unlike other mine clearance operations, the engineers responsible for opening a breach not only face the dangers inherent in neutralising mines, but are likely to also be exposed to hostile fire from the defender. Worse still, breaching is very much a time-sensitive operation; if not carried out quickly, it deprives the rest of the attacking force of its momentum and flexibility of manoeuvre. Consequently, militaries have developed specialised breaching systems designed to make this difficult operation faster and safer. However, as these systems have evolved, so too have the means available to defend against a breach. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the war in Ukraine, where efforts by Russian and Ukrainian forces to breach minefields have floundered against defences laden with sensors and precision-strike systems, many of which are based on inexpensive, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This proliferation of sensors and fires is undermining the survivability of the current generation of expensive, niche breaching systems, indicating that cheaper or more survivable solutions will need to be developed.

Layers upon layers

Breaching systems must be able to contend with a widening array of threats, chief among which are the mines themselves. These can be separated into two main categories: anti-personnel (AP) mines designed to maim or kill enemy personnel, and anti-tank (AT) mines designed to immobilise or destroy enemy vehicles. Both types can either be laid on the surface or buried underground, with surface-laid mines much faster to emplace but also far easier to detect and clear than buried mines. A variety of fuzes are also available to activate the mines, ranging from simple pressure-activated mechanisms that detonate the mine’s explosive payload when an enemy soldier or vehicles pass over it, to sensor-activated fuzes that can autonomously detect and attack their targets at a greater stand-off range. Although mines can be employed individually, they are at their most effective when several of them are laid across a large area in a minefield. This is because outside of the physical and psychological impact of directly injuring, damaging, or destroying their unfortunate targets, the primary purpose of a minefield is to slow down an attacking force and limit its freedom of manoeuvre by either forcing it to clear a path through the minefield or avoid it altogether. Both courses of action can lead to an attacking force being ‘canalised’ into narrower, predictable routes of advance. This multiplies the effectiveness of a defender’s supporting fires, since they can concentrate their attention on a smaller target area.

Based on these characteristics, systems developed to breach minefields typically employ mechanical or explosive means (or a combination of both) that can clear a lane through a minefield wide enough for a column of vehicles to pass through. The most common mechanical means are mine ploughs that can be fitted to the front of armoured vehicles. These can be set to scoop up and displace surface-laid or buried mines as the host vehicle moves forwards, depositing them in piles next to the lane. Other common means of mechanical mine clearance include mine rollers and flails. The former consist of a framework mounted on front of a vehicle with several heavy-duty rollers that detonate the mines ahead of the host vehicle, neutralising them as a danger for any vehicles following them in the same lane. Flails work on a similar principle, but instead of rollers, the framework contains a rotating drum with heavy chains that beat the ground in front of the host vehicle, detonating mines in their path. Vehicles equipped with mechanical mine clearance systems may sometimes also carry a magnetic signature duplicator, which generates a magnetic field to detonate magnetic mines at a safe distance from the vehicle.

Whereas these mechanical means require a system to manoeuvre inside the minefield, explosive means can be deployed at greater range. These can include conventional artillery shells or thermobaric weapons, but their most common manifestation is the mine-clearing line charge (MICLIC). Such systems consist of a flexible tube containing explosives that is connected to a rocket launching system mounted on an armoured breaching vehicle or a dedicated trailer. After the launcher is manoeuvred in front of the minefield, the rocket is launched over the minefield, causing the flexible tube attached to it to unfurl itself on top of the minefield. The explosive inside the tube is then detonated, with the blast wave causing pressure-sensitive mines in its vicinity to detonate, thus clearing a lane through the minefield. It is important to note that neither mechanical nor explosive systems are 100% reliable, as some mines may be missed by mechanical systems or have countermeasures in their fuzes that are designed to prevent them from being detonated by explosive means.

 

Minefields can also be layered with other obstacles to make it harder for breaching systems to approach them. These include anti-tank ditches, networks of barbed wire, metal or concrete obstacles such as ‘Czech hedgehogs’ or ‘dragon’s teeth’, and fortified emplacements. Should the defender have sufficient time to prepare, the depth of a minefield can also be expanded beyond its doctrinal limit, with some Russian minefields encountered by Ukrainian forces being between two and four times their doctrinal depth. This complicates both mechanical and explosive means of breaching, as mechanical systems will take longer to clear a lane and MICLICs may require multiple launches if minefield depth exceeds the length of the charge.

However, the most effective counter-breaching approach is to defend the minefield with supporting fires, such as artillery, main battle tanks (MBTs), or anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) launchers. These can strike breaching systems and vehicles or personnel attempting to transit cleared lanes, inflicting attrition on the attacking force. The proliferation of cheap UAVs used for sensing and precision strikes has exacerbated this threat, especially when breaching is attempted in daylight and clear weather, where UAVs can operate with fewer restrictions. Not only can UAVs multiply the number of sensors available to an attacker to detect and identify breaching systems, but they can also be used to damage or destroy them for the fraction of a cost of a typical ATGM or precision-guided munition. This expansion of the fires threat is likely to have major ramifications for the effectiveness of any breaching systems that are only available in limited numbers.

Up close and personal: Armoured breaching vehicles

Leaving aside MICLIC launchers, armoured breaching vehicles (ABVs) are the most common type of specialised breaching system in service. These are designed to make breaching operations safer, by providing protection to their crews, and faster, by integrating mechanical and/or explosive means of breaching minefields. Unveiled at Eurosatory in June 2024, Rheinmetall’s Keiler Next Generation (NG) is a typical example of these platforms. Like most armoured breaching vehicles, it is based on the hull of an in-service MBT (in this case the Leopard 2). This ensures that it has a similar level of mobility and protection to the armoured units that it is supporting, as well as sufficient payload and power to support its specialised breaching and engineering systems. Furthermore, using an existing platform increases commonality across platform types, reducing operating costs and simplifying maintenance and training compared to operating a bespoke vehicle. The Keiler NG is equipped with both mechanical and explosive means of mine disposal, as well as a magnetic signature duplicator. This includes a Full Width Mine Plough (FWMP) from Pearson Engineering that can clear a 250 m long, 4.2 m wide lane per minute and two Plofadder 160AT Mk II MICLIC launchers from Denel that can each clear a 160 m long, 9 m wide lane. As with many other armoured breaching vehicles, the Keiler NG also has a crane which it can use to exchange the FWMP for other front-end equipment (FEE) or to remove obstacles. This allows it to double as a general purpose armoured engineering vehicle, which is likely to be attractive to militaries that cannot afford to operate multiple types of specialised fleets.

Despite their heavy armour, ABVs still put valuable personnel in harm’s way. This is compounded by the fact that these vehicles are large, conspicuous, priority targets for enemy fires. As demonstrated in Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in summer 2023, ABVs can be rapidly identified and targeted by UAVs, allowing the defender to neutralise them far more quickly than exclusively relying on fires assets with more limited availability, such as artillery. If an ABV is destroyed or damaged, it can create even more problems for the attacker and increase the exposure of the remaining ABVs. For example, if an ABV is damaged or destroyed while clearing a lane, it will have to be recovered or moved out of the way, putting more personnel and platforms at risk. While this issue with survivability is not unique to ABVs, it is particularly problematic for them because these systems are expensive, niche assets that are in high demand and short supply. Consequently, most militaries cannot afford to lose many of these vehicles, nor they can they concentrate them in sufficient numbers to offset the growing availability of sensors and precision strike systems available to the defenders.

 

Rheinmetall has proposed several development pathways for its Keiler NG that could partially address some of these problems. As a new platform, the Keiler NG has been designed with sufficient excess payload and power to allow the integration of an active protection system (APS). With the software in many hard-kill APSs now being modified to defend against strike UAVs and loitering munitions, the next generation of ABVs could be fielded with some organic protection against ATGMs, loitering munitions, and strike UAVs. However, this will increase the cost of ABVs, making it even more difficult to procure these systems in numbers that are sufficient to meet demand. Another development intended to offset the vulnerability of ABVs is to make them optionally manned. By removing the valuable, highly-trained crew from the vehicle, the cost of losing an ABV is reduced. This could mean that they can be used with less caution, potentially enabling faster breaching operations. However, for optionally-manned operations to be viable, the crew will need to have a wired or radio-control system that can function in a contested electromagnetic (EM) environment, otherwise it will not be possible to rely on this capability in a high-intensity war. Furthermore, making a system optionally manned does not change the fact that the system itself will be an expensive, niche asset the user cannot afford to lose in large numbers.

One means of overcoming this cost spiral may be to proliferate breaching capabilities across a greater number of platforms. In this way, militaries will be less reliant on a stretched fleet of specialised ABVs and the defending enemy will find it harder to prevent a breach. As it stands, many MBTs already have the provision for mounting mine ploughs or mine rollers on the front of their hull, as do some wheeled vehicles like the US Army’s Stryker 8×8. At Eurosatory in June 2022, Pearson Engineering presented its Vector mine plough. Unlike other mine ploughs designed for heavy tracked vehicles with a high tractive effort, Vector is specifically designed for lighter wheeled vehicles so that formations equipped with such platforms can independently breach minefields.

By purchasing more of these systems and ensuring that more of the force is trained in their operation, militaries could multiply their breaching capacity at a much lower cost. This greater flexibility could also prove useful in tackling the types of surface-laid mines that can be deposited by artillery, manned aircraft, and even UAVs behind an advancing force, freeing ABVs to concentrate their attention on the more difficult obstacles. Once again though, using other armoured vehicles for breaching will require a willingness to put personnel and expensive platforms in a particularly dangerous position and will therefore result in high levels of attrition. Moreover, adding more mine clearance systems to a unit’s inventory places more stress on logistics, as means to carry and store these extra mechanical mine clearance systems will need to be provided.

Out of harm’s way: Unmanned breaching systems

Considering the difficulties in designing cost-effective and survivable manned ABVs, more attention is being given to developing unmanned breaching systems based on unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). These offer two main advantages over manned platforms. Firstly, as they are designed to be remotely operated, the crew is less exposed to risk. Secondly, since there is no need to protect the crew, a UGV can be smaller, lighter, and therefore cheaper than a manned system. This means that they could potentially be employed in far greater numbers for a comparable level of investment, perhaps even being treated as expendable platforms rather than high-value specialised assets.

UGVs are already employed to clear minefields away from the frontlines, and experimentation with unmanned breaching systems is increasing. During Eurosatory in June 2024, Pearson Engineering unveiled its Robotic Combat Vehicle-Pioneer (RCV-Pioneer). Taking the form of a kit designed to be integrated on any type of UGV with sufficient payload, the RCV-Pioneer leverages technology developed for the Vector mine plough to allow UGVs with lower tractive effort to clear surface-laid and buried mines. As with manned ABVs, the kit can be dismounted from the vehicle within 30 minutes and swapped for a different payload, so that the same UGV can support multiple mission types. UGVs can also be adapted to carry MICLIC launchers, with one such system demonstrated during the US Army’s Project Convergence – Capstone 5 experiment held between March and April 2025. Militaries have also experimented with converting surplus armoured vehicles into unmanned ABVs. This is being pursued by the British Army’s Project Attila, which published a tender in August 2025 for the conversion of six Warrior infantry fighting vehicles into Weevil optionally-manned ABVs equipped with FEE for mounting mine ploughs. Comparable efforts have been undertaken in the US, where an M113 armoured personnel carrier was reportedly converted into the optionally-manned Outlaw Breaching Vehicle with a MICLIC launcher for as little as USD 50,000.

Yet for all their theoretical advantages, there are several practical obstacles standing in the way of the adoption of UGVs for breaching. The most significant of these is maintaining control of the system in an environment where the EM spectrum is likely to be highly contested. Unless they employ a tethered connection to their operator, which could be cut by enemy fires, UGV operators must rely on having a secure connection to a datalink on the UGV to control the system. With these being vulnerable to jamming, the attacking force could find itself unable to use its breaching systems, especially as enemy electronic warfare (EW) efforts are likely to be focused on areas being subjected to breaching operations. The EM signature generated by large-scale use of unmanned systems also makes the force vulnerable to detection and targeting by enemy fires, and renders it more difficult for the attacker to gain the element of surprise. Concentrating breaching UGVs in one place could thus decrease the survivability of friendly forces (including the UGV operators) if the defender can mass their EW and precision strike systems against EM ‘hotspots’. UGV operators may also find it increasingly difficult to maintain situational awareness during breaching operations, as the cameras that they rely on to navigate the vehicle could not only become obscured by any dust kicked up during ploughing or flailing, but they could also be damaged by shrapnel from enemy fires or any mines detonated during the breaching operation.

 

Working at arm’s length: Artillery as a breaching tool

While ABVs and UGVs require specialised personnel and platforms to be directly exposed to the danger of mine blasts and hostile fires, it is possible to open a breach using artillery. This is not a novel approach; using artillery bombardments to open a passage through minefields was commonplace as early as the First World War. Artillery shells can destroy mines in a variety of ways: by directly impacting them, by detonating them with their explosive energy, or by impacting them with shrapnel, particularly if the artillery shell’s fuzes are set to detonate them at the optimum height. Compared to using specialised tools, this approach has the advantage that it uses existing systems. It is also faster than massing specialised breaching systems, increasing the chance that the defender will be taken by surprise. Moreover, even though directing artillery to fire in support of a breaching operation will expose the artillery to counterbattery fire, the standoff range means that they will be less exposed to shorter-range, cheaper precision strike systems such as small strike UAVs.

Nevertheless, using artillery for breaching also comes with drawbacks. Unless more expensive precision-guided munitions are used, clearing a minefield to a standard that is sufficient will require vast expenditure of ammunition, a commodity that is already in short supply in many of NATO’s militaries. It may also be more unreliable and less readily available than dedicated breaching systems, as artillery systems will be in demand for other fire missions. With large-calibre artillery being an expensive asset and likely to remain in high demand, it is doubtful that it will be able to replace dedicated breaching systems.

However, shorter-range artillery such as mortars could be more suitably employed for breaching. An iteration of this approach is being explored by the US Army’s XM123 Ground Obstacle Breaching and Lane Neutralization (GOBLN) system that is designed to replace the M58 MICLIC launcher during the 2030 fiscal year. In its experimental iteration, the GOBLN comprises three elements: a detection system represented by a FLIR Systems R80D Skyraider UAV fitted with an optoelectronic infrared (IR) sight and an automatic target recognition system that can detect surface-laid and partially-buried mines [Note: the eventual goal also includes detection of buried mines, and in this vein, the US Army has expressed interest in exploring technologies such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) to detect buried threats] and upload their coordinates onto a digital map, a fire control system that can compute firing solutions for destroying detected minefields, and an effector based on the 81 mm Automated Direct/Indirect Mortar (ADIM).

In a typical operation, the Skyraider UAV will fly over suspected minefields and detect any mines. This data will then be passed to the FCS, which will compute a firing solution for the effector that can then neutralise the identified mines. According to official specifications published by the US Army, the system should be able to operate at a standoff range of more than 1 km and clear a lane 150 m long with a single fire mission. Its effectors could be mounted on different types of platform including the XM30 Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle, the Armored Multipurpose Vehicle (AMPV), and Robotic Combat Vehicles (RCVs), potentially allowing breaching capabilities to be distributed across more the force. However, the XM123 GOBLN’s reliance on UAVs to precisely detect mines will render it vulnerable to EW in the same way as UGV-based breaching systems, and will also limit its application in challenging weather. Moreover, it is unclear if and how the mortar bomb’s effector will be able to neutralise buried mines, however, the US Army has also expressed interest in exploring solutions such as UAV-delivered munitions, and guided munitions, which may hold more promise here.

Exploring all paths: The future of minefield breaching

All of these developments are aimed at addressing the two fundamental issues facing minefield breaching systems. First, they have become more vulnerable due to the increasingly widespread use of UAVs for sensing and precision strike, which provides the defender with cheaper and more widely available means to identify and disable or destroy them. Second, breaching systems are expensive and are therefore limited in number, meaning that an attacker cannot afford to lose very many of them. This means that breaching systems will either need to become more survivable, or cheaper and more plentiful. In theory, using UGVs for breaching could mitigate the cost problem and obviate vulnerability concerns, but issues with their reliability in a contested EW environment means that they have yet to prove trustworthy enough to take on such a valuable role. This indicates that the transition to unmanned breaching systems is likely to be more gradual, perhaps involving a mix of optionally-manned conventional breaching platforms equipped with defensive measures for countering UAVs and paired with UGV wingmen to provide greater mass and redundancy, plus a greater reliance on standoff systems like the US Army’s GOBLN that reduce the number of personnel in harm’s way.

Jim Backhouse