These obvious solutions have been tried in one form or another for years. But there are too many landmines in difficult terrain to be demolished by obvious solutions. During WWII the Russians drove herds of cattle over suspected areas ahead of troops. Detecting non-metallic mines is difficult and dangerous and robots are being developed to do this. Clever people in the business are working on it but the reluctance of countries like the USA to ban the mines is one of the main problems.

Unexploded cluster munitions cause the same problem.

Our military says we need them to protect S Korea. I knew a GI who was in Korea and he said there are so many mines in the DMZ that you could hear them explode from time to time, triggered by deer or boar.

Clearly defined mine fields defined by signs are a matter of international law, but sowing them over wide areas by aircraft, etc, is inhumane and cowardly.

hey belmont, YOU GOT IT. we just raise heaps of cheap ol' heavy animals, like pigs, and fence them in an area chockers with mines and then let them wreak havoc. we kill them for reasearch and for eating, why not help humanity in this fashion. why waste time with a frickin' stick forking the ground. GO FOR IT!!!

your ideas are flawed. the giant breakable roller- what happens when the pieces of the roller fly off into the uninspected areas of the minefield and need to be retrieved. the bouncing ball, it cannot be assured to hit every inch of ground, thus resulting in a dangerous field that people only think is safe, also unless it operates on perpetual motion it will stop, most likely well before making it all the way across. so unless you figure out perpetual motion, your screwed.

Um yeah the military has a large machine with many weights attached to chains on a rotating drum that canvases the mine field desscrating any mines in it's path. Works on the concept of the hammer mill.

good onya, helloiam.

also, land is stuffed anyway, right. so put a big bomb in the middle, blow it all to kingdom come and then start again. GO FOR IT!!!

Have chain gangs of death-row inmates walk over suspected minefields. Those who don't get blown up by the end of the day could have their sentences commuted to life...

Better yet, hitch prisoners at Gitmo together in groups of 10 in star and circular pattern (to prevent individual escapees should the chain break), to traverse the areas where Islamo-fascists have placed land mines! Tell them to march in patterns that would eventually comb the entire area(s) in question. This would cut down on the areas that Islamo-fascists would designate as mine-fields! I say we release all captured prisoners (Islamic) at Gitmo and hitch 'em together and take 'em to Baghdad (or wherever they're needed) right now!!! Hey, we may get a few more to sign up if we sell them on the whole "72 virgins" thing!

Perhaps sonic booms could be used to detonate land mines. Such booms “rattle houses & furniture & break glass” according to complainers. Shaking of that magnitude should set off landmines, especially if the planes flew low and fast. With modern, highly accurate navigation systems, supersonic jet fighters could reliably give complete coverage to any designated spot on the map, including rough, steep ground, and thereby clear the countryside of them. The only cost would be a few broken windows.

Alternatively, to reduce cost, lighthouse-volume diesel-powered foghorns could be hung from helicopters that traversed landmine fields. Those things can really shake anything in the vicinity of a hundred feet or so, I've read.