The ‘Mine Kafon’ Autonomous Land-Mine Demolition Device

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Massoud Hassani was a young boy living on the northern edge of Kabul during the final days of Soviet occupation.  Along with his brother and friends from his village, Massoud built wind powered toys out of any lightweight material and watched as they glided and rolled across the rough desert terrain in an angelic like fashion, although ultimately to be lost as they escaped the children’s limited reach and flew into the mine ridden outskirts of the Kabul Airport.

While in design school Massoud reminisced on his childhood and realized his simplistic wind propelled toys could be used to design an “autonomous” mine demolition tool, which could save many thousands of innocent lives each year, with the ultimate goal of a mine free planet.

The Mine Kafon (“mine exploder” in Dari) was born.  While currently still a prototype, The Mine Kafon is a wind powered anti land mine ball that is about the same height and weight of a man, composed of a round core with many bamboo poles jetting out of it in all different directions, with a plunger like disc at pole end used to mimic the action of a human foot as it passes over a mine setting off its destructive power.

At a marginal cost of $60, compared to the $500,000 price tag of the human driven Aardvark mine flailing vehicles - and with more than 10 millions supposed land mines still awaiting removal in Afghanistan and millions more around the world - The Mine Kafon could pave the way for a cheap, safe, and effective way of depleting the concentration of mines around the globe.

Let a couple million of these loose and well take care of those mines in no time.