Minister of Defense Jussi Niinistö told yesterday that Finlands new Ottawa compliant “mine” or remotely detonated explosive devise will likely be revealed to public “during winter” This will, in Finnish context, mean “before May the 1st”.

This brand new “jump buddy” owes it’s lineage to old German S-mine, but with quite important refinements: S-mine jumped aproximately 1,5 meters into air before detonating, the jump buddy will be thrown to aproximately 25 meters up before detonating. Means of delivering energy remains the same: Tungsten or steel balls will be fired downward to cause the actual damage to infantry. This causes the normal reaction of “duck and cower” to be inefficient, as then the target will be giving maximum target area for the steel balls to hit.

As now a days enemy personnel will most likely be carrying body armour of at least NIJ II or more regularly NIJ IIIA level of protection the size of balls or pellets/spheres should be in magnitude of

This is because NIJ IIIA standard (as it is defined against around 9mm FMJ catridges is 8,1 grams at approximately 450m/s giving Kinetic energy of ½8,1g*450m/s² or about 820 joules) so we would need for penetration something like 850 joules (in 9mm ball) but as shrapnell of detonations travel at about 1000m/s we can do with much lighter pellets. If we turn things around and do the math like 850j=½x*1000m/s² we can produce the same effect with approximately 1,7g pellets. If we round this up to 2g, and we stick to steel balls with density of approximately 7,9g/cm³ we get steel spheres of volume of 0,25cm³.

Armed with this knowledge, we can arrive into  (Going reverse on volume of the sphere) diameter of about 8 mm for the sphere. Density of steel (7,82 g/cm³) is much lower than lead’s (11,34 g/cm³), but on the other hand it doesn’t deform as easily. If we go into wishful thinking “best” solution might be steel pellets that have been doused in lead to to increase density. Lead coating would also enhance the penetration of the pellet in ballistic fiber as melting lead would act as lubricant for steel ball going in. But this is in “I dunno, but it would be better” category. Hardness of steel and smaller diameter of the pellet compared to 9mm FMJ projectile will better the penetration of the jumping buddy’s pellet in any case.

China, Poland, Germany and Russia have expressed interest in this devise