Immediate Low-Cost, Big-Payoff Help for Afghanistans

Letter from Dr. Bill Wattenburg to President Bush and Vice President Cheney

Dr. Bill Wattenburg
Consultant, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
And “The Open Line to the West Coast Show”
KGO Radio 810AM
ABC Network, San Francisco

January 28, 2002

To:	President George W. Bush Andrew Card Jr., Chief of Staff The White House
	Vice President Dick Cheney The White House
Subject:	Immediate Low-Cost, Big-Payoff Help for Afghanistans We Have Equipment that will Rapidly Clear Most Landmines from Roads, School Playgrounds, and Farmers’ Fields at Little Cost and no Danger — Only Army Bureaucrats Will Not Use It or Provide It.

You can give Afghan Chairman Karzai an immediate present of immense value to the citizens of Afghanistan. We can give them the means to clear 95% of the landmines around roads, villages, schools, and in farmer's fields very easily. We can save the lives of thousands of women and children who will otherwise die this year alone, and open up 30% of their farmland that is infested with mines. The Afghan warlords can be put to work in productive ways that will give Karzai better control over them. The U.S. can do this for peanuts in cost compared to other massive aid programs that will not solve this most immediate problem.

The U.S. Dept of Energy (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) developed and demonstrated an inexpensive minesweeper system called the “Chain Matrix” that can clear the most dangerous mines from large areas of open land and fields. It can be pulled at a distance by either trucks or helicopters. It was tested over live minefields at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Grounds during the Gulf War. Full video tapes of the successful tests have been released. They are now posted on a website (pushback.com) at the request of the national media.

The Chain Matrix technology is owned by the U.S. government. It costs a few thousand dollars compared to millions for anything the military has that will do even 1% as much without killing people (and our soldiers). But the U.S. Army so-called mine clearing experts and bureaucrats have refused for ten years to even try this monesweeper, let alone use it. Their sour-grapes attitude has been “not invented here” — while they have spent hundreds of millions on the dumbest machines imaginable.

All the Army’s mechanical creations are blown apart (killing the operators) the first time they hit an anti-tank mine in the ground. This is why our soldiers have lost their legs and lives while they have to crawl on their knees poking knives in the ground to clear even very small areas. The U.S. Military has nothing that will clear hundreds of square miles.

Existing copies of the Chain Matrix minesweeper have been offered to Afghanistan representatives, but they have no means to transport the equipment to Afghanistan. For gosh sakes, it costs only a few thousand dollars to give it to the Afghanistans and let them use it. It is easily made and repaired by ordinary workmen. They can test it by pulling it with trucks using a long cable to keep the trucks and operators far away from the exploding mines. This is how we first tested the Chain Matrix in 1991.

Our Navy knows how to pull the Chain Matrix with their helicopters and has offered to do so in the past. The Navy has been doing this over the oceans for thirty years. But the Army complains that their helicopters might be in danger while pulling the Chain Matrix on a long cable, safely away from where the mines explode under the Chain Matrix. They are afraid that a mine exploding 500 feet away might scratch the paint on their helicopter — and maybe demonstrate how stupid they have been in allowing our soldiers to die needlessly for so many years.

Some national news organizations are considering hiring a private helicopter company to test and demonstrate the Chain Matrix over simulated minefields, as we did in 1991. They will also test it again by pulling it over farmers’ fields with trucks (as we did in 1991). The Chain Matrix also plows a field ready for planting while it is clearing the mines. The media knows what is needed desperately in Afganistan — and what our military cannot do. Some people in the Pentagon are going to be very embarrassed when these demonstrations are done and aired on the nightly national news.

Read the letter I had to write to Lt. Colonel Tommey in 1996 after the Army did not tell the truth to Congressmen who asked them to test the Chain Matrix that was given to them by DOE. The letter is now posted on pushback.com along with the helicopter minesweeper test videos.

If nothing else, please have any Texas farmer take a look at this and see what he will say. What has not been done is criminal while so many people and our soldiers have been dying needlessly.

Dr. W.H. (Bill) Wattenburg, former member, US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board; presently consultant, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and host on KGO Radio AM810, ABC Network, San Francisco.

This page was last modified on Monday, 11-Oct-2004 19:52:04 PDT.

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