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M86 Pursuit Deterrant Munition


ordnance
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Here's an interesting munition that has never been addressed on the forum and one with its own unique nylon bandoleer carrier that occasionally is found among newer field gear. Note that everything shown is completely inert, mostly samples from the manufacturer or test programs.

 

The M86 PDM a modification of the M67/M72 artillery delivered anti-personnel mine, known as the ADAM, for Area Denial Anti-personnel Mine. These are normally delivered by a 155mm base-ejecting artillery shell that carries 36 of them arranged like pie wedges in a circle and stacked in layers. The shell's nose fuze fires in flight and pushes the payload out of the bottom of the projectile. When they fall to the ground over a targeted area, the mines deploy seven trip wires, each about 20 feet long. Any disturbance of the trip wires will fire the mine.

 

The mine itself is an electronic chassis and oval shaped explosive ball encased in a molded plastic block. It is a fairly complex exectronic device with a gas generator that propels the trip wires on impact. The kill mechanism is a coined fragmentation ball that is surrounded by a thin aluminimum shell with a small amount of liquid explosive in between. This allows the lift charge to settle to the bottom regardless of how the munition lands on the ground. When the device is triggered, the liquid explosive shatters the plastic housing and propels the ball 1 to 2 meters up where it bursts in the air.

 

The M86 is merely a hand emplaced version of the ADAM mine developed for Special Ops troops. When they are in some difficult location being pursued by enemy troops, a couple PDMs dropped on the trail will certainly help slow down the bad guys coming after you.

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The clear plastic ADAM on the right is a desktop demonstrator with all the internal parts except the kill mechanism. You can see the yellow and white tubing connecting the gas generators to the trip wires and much of the IC chips and other electronic circuitry. The example in the center is a chassis ready to be inserted in the mold. The grenade ball within has its outer aluminum shell, like the half shell in front of it.

 

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Early test model marked XM86 on the left, standard M67/M72 in the middle showing trip wire remnants, and current M86 PDM on the right.

 

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The bandoleer for the M86 is a nylon pouch holding two of the mines. It has a 75" shoulder strap and two lower 28" tie straps. On the back side it is rectangular and measures 8" wide by 6 " high. The early one (marked lot 0002) has slightly different stitching and smaller drain grommets. The munition fits very tightly inside and is hard to remove, a problem that seems to have been corrected in the newer example which has slightly larger pockets.

 

The only examples I have seen are dark OD nylon but I assume they exist in tan or other colors. Any others encountered?

 

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WOW. I had never heard of those before. Pretty complex piece of ordnance for sure, thanks for the post and education and photos.

 

What era or time frames were these used or deployed?

 

Were they ever fully implemented and actually deployed for field use anywhere, at least that is known?

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Charlie Flick

Thanks for the education, ordnance. Gotta admit this is something which has never crossed my radar screen before. Great post.

 

Regards,

Charlie

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Thanks for the comments. Generally, my interest in ordnance runs from WWI through the Vietnam era but confess to being fascinated by some of the high tech munitions items developed since the 1970s. The introduction of electronic guidance, fuzing, IFF determination, self-sterilization or destruction, and other control features have made previously "dumb" explosive devices a lot smarter and more versatile.

 

As the M67 and M72 ADAM mines are designed to be area denial devices, they should keep the enemy from moving in a specified area but hopefully allow our forces to move freely. They are designed with short and long delay features which are supposed to make the mine blow itself up after a specified delay even if the trip wires aren't triggered. Certainly better than older submunitions and mines that can remain armed and dangerous for many years.

 

The M86 PDM has been in service since the late 1980s and I believe it's still a standard item. I have never heard much about actual use but that's not too surprising considering the nature of the piece. They have also issued magnetic limpet mines since WWII for use by SEALs and other clandestine types. Never heard of an actual employment of one of those either.

 

You can find a bit of info on Wikipedia, Globalsecurity.org, and other online sources. But for an item that is almost 30 years old, the M86 PDM, as well as the M67 and M72 ADAM mines it was derived from, are generally unknown to the average person.

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  • 1 year later...

Thank you for the nice photos. It's the first time I see inside of these interesting munitions. Army had problem with the first models as they malfunctioned with SD (self destruct) mechanism. Then they assigned several teams to address the issue which turned out that was due to the batteries. Also, they introduced a simple safety mechanism using couple of transistors to inhibit the current from the firing circuit for at least 25 seconds, hence the white warning on the body. I believe those transistors behind the black IC are part of this safety circuit. The orange component seems to be resistor networks. May I ask what is the model number on the black ICs? I want to see if they had improved the CMOS chips.

 

Kindest regards

D

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ADAM.pdfI pulled some info from a study conducted in 1995 on various submunitions to add to the discussion. The ADAM, as mentioned above, is deployed by 155mm projectile. The M85 is the same mine/submunition body, its just modified to release the trip lines when the pin is pulled. It only takes 1.5 pounds of pull on the trip line to function. They have a maximum time delay of 48 hour until self-destruct.

 

The problem for EOD folks is the 1,5lbs of pull. If a trip line hangs on a tree branch and the wind blows........Boom!!! LOL!!

 

Smitty

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