Developing geophysical techniques for detecting unexploded ordnance

John M Stanley, chief technology officer, and Malcolm K Cattach, director, research and development division, of Australian company Geophysical Technology (G-tek) reflect on the increasing demand for cost effective detection of unexploded ordnance. The problem of buried hazard remaining from unexploded ordnance (UXO) has been with us since the first use of explosives in ordnance. During the major twentieth century conflicts, it was not uncommon for the failure rate in explosive ordnance to be as high as 20%, resulting in a very large number of these weapons remaining in the ground long after the conflict ceased. These weapons are still causing injury, death and damage when disturbed or when their contents leak into the groundwater system. UXO also provide a potential source of explosives for terrorist interests. In addition to UXO remaining from conflict, a major source of environmental contamination has been military training activity. To put some perspective on the extent of this problem, the office of the Secretary of US Defense reported: ‘The UXO clean-up problem is a very large-scale undertaking involving 10 million acres of land at some 1400 sites. Estimated cleanup cost of current UXOs is tens of billions of dollars’. The problem is not confined to the US. It is generally believed that matters are worse in Eastern Europe than in the US. It is unlikely that there is a country in the world where contamination and explosive hazard from UXO does not exist. Detecting the presence of UXO in the ground presents a task for which geophysicists familiar with the characteristics of the near-surface environment are well equipped. Moreover, the geophysical community involved in the UXO industry is now setting standards of quality procedure from which our colleagues in oil, gas and minerals exploration may well learn. Since when has an exploration geophysicist been held responsible for not finding a resource that current technology was capable of detecting?