An article in the June, 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly does a great job—a far better one than almost any other article or broadcast piece I’ve seen—of describing why mineclearing is so difficult. Forget the Artificial Sniffer points out that the traditional detection methods have a 99% false-positive rate, explains why the U.S. Army unit responsible for developing mine clearing technology has no great incentive for putting such technology into actual production, and should be a must-read for anyone wishing to comment on the topic.