Below is the original draft of a scathing letter that Bill Wattenburg sent to the U.S. Army “Mine Countermeasures” bureaucracy in 1996 after he discovered that the Army was telling members of congress that the helicopter minesweeper didn’t work. This letter was recently released to the national press that has been asking why the helicopter minesweeper is not being used by the Pentagon to protect our soldiers in Afghanistan today and to save the lives of thousand of innocent people around the world—mostly women and children in countries like Afghanistan.
Dr. Bill Wattenburg
The University Foundation
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
January 21, 1996
Charles L. Toomey
Lieutenant Colonel, US Army
Chief, Engineer Team
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff
for Operations and Plans
400 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0400
Subject: Your Gross Misrepresentations About the Helicopter Chain Matrix Minesweeping System Developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory That You Sent to Members of Congress and in Your Letter of January 3, 1996 to Ms. June E. Rothe-Barneson
Dear Lt. Colonel Toomey:
I am the inventor and developer of the helicopter pulled Chain Matrix countermine system that was developed and field tested by scientists at the U.S. Dept of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1991. All rights to this technology are owned by the government. I have no financial interest whatsoever. My only interest has been to stop the needless loss of our soldiers’ feet, legs, eyes, and lives.
You have written a letter to members of Congress and citizens that contains statements about the helicopter minesweeper that are blatantly false—and outright cruel to our service men and women who are maimed and killed by landmines. I will tell you what you have misrepresented below. The Army should be ashamed of this behavior and indifference toward our service people.
The Army has given our soldiers absolutely nothing better than the right to be killed while down on their knees digging for landmines with a knife.
I am astounded and insulted by your statements because you have seen the actual video tapes and test reports of the helicopter minesweeper being tested over live minefields at your U.S Army Yuma Proving Grounds. You know that this minesweeper will clear open areas, fields, and roads a hundred times faster and safer than anything that your “anti-mine” bureaucrats have ever produced. No humans are in danger with the helicopter minesweeper. In contrast, everything that the Army has built eventually kills the operators and servicemen who have to use your gadgets, tanks, and remote controlled bulldozers on the ground. That is why you have produced nothing that soldiers in the field can use—other than risk their lives working and walking over mine fields.
You know that your “Army Countermine Project Office” has spent hundred’s of millions of dollars on machines and gadgets that are blown to pieces after they contact the first anti-tank mine in the ground. That is why you refuse to test your gadgets over live minefields as we tested the helicopter minesweeper. Now, your “anti-mine experts” are demonstrating that they are more interested in covering their own bureaucratic butts than they are in saving the lives of our service men and women.
Bureaucrats who work for your office in the Pentagon have told members of Congress that the helicopter minesweeper will not work. But they have never tested it as we did at Livermore over live minefields and with real helicopters. Your bureaucrats insist that it must be 100% effective before it could be used. But the test videos from your own Yuma Army Proving Grounds show you that it clears both anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in ways you have never seen before—without endangering anyone’s life on the ground.
Colonel, I feel somewhat embarrassed for you as an engineer because you have put your signature on a letter containing absurd statements by others who had a long-standing vested interest in ignoring any minesweeping technology other than their own rather archaic devices and schemes. I have heard these statements made before from the Army—s Countermine Project Office. I personally encountered the attitude of some of these people during testing of the helicopter Chain Matrix at the Yuma Proving Grounds in 1991. So as not to unduly embarrass the excellent scientists and engineers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, I decided not to respond publicly to these absurd statements and so called technical conclusions which fly in the face of the documented and filmed test results. Now I must respond before the Army is seriously embarrassed.
The claims about ground conditions in Bosnia being so different that the Chain Matrix could not operate are simply outrageous. I repeat—these are whole-cloth fabrications jerked out of the air by somebody who must be so intent on doing nothing to minimize the loss of lives due to minefields. Good Lord, Colonel, did you even ask whether any tests had been done in sticky clay soils, under rough terrain covered by dense bushes and rocky outcropping, as well as hardpan soils difficult to penetrate? The answer is that we did these things and demonstrated successful operation of the Chain Matrix while being pulled by a real-life helicopter, piloted by experienced crews who have actually trained military pilots to do the same thing, but with the much larger military helicopters.
Colonel, the scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with whom I proudly worked, are not stupid. We carefully checked the real field problems with field commanders. We knew that if we could not solve the problems your letter discusses, we would be wasting our time. This is the whole reason we had to come up with a breakthrough invention called “Anti-Snag Digging Knives”, which slice through the hardest and most sticky types of soils and yet release when they encounter immovable objects so that stalling forces will not be put on the helicopter. Colonel, did anyone in your Army Countermine Project Office tell you about this? Some of these Army personnel actually saw the anti-snag digging knives operate successfully at the Yuma Proving Grounds tests in 1991. I know this for certain because they were standing right beside me as I pointed these out. One of these guys shrugged his shoulders and commented that this was of no consequence. By chance, is this the same guy who wrote this letter for you to sign? If so, this will be the same guy who told me how he was spending millions of dollars of the Army’s money on a remote-controlled bulldozer that could not possibly clear one percent as much area per day as the Chain Matrix. Furthermore, since I grew up on bulldozers for a living at one time, I informed him how quickly such a bulldozer will be completely disabled by the first anti-tank mine that explodes under its tracks.
He appeared most irritated at my suggestion that he should spend as little as a few thousand dollars investigating the helicopter Chain Matrix which can be pulled over areas by either helicopter or bulldozer at safe distances on a cable. Do you think it is fair to the Army, the soldiers, or you that this official did absolutely nothing to find out the truth about the Chain Matrix during the last four years?
I am completely mystified and rather flabbergasted that you suggest a clearance efficiency of 100% must be achieved before any reduction of danger to soldiers can be achieved. Colonel, anytime you can reduce 90% of the danger over areas that will not be swept by any other means until soldiers die, you have reduced the danger to the soldiers by precisely that amount. The helicopter Chain Matrix can be used to sweep vast areas to eliminate anti-personnel trip wires or shallow anti-personnel mines ahead of advancing soldiers. Would you in anyway suggest that a major reduction in danger to the foot soldier is a waste of time because it does not produce a degree of safety equivalent to you strolling down the halls of the Pentagon? The most important thing is to have a means of finding minefields before soldiers ever enter them. The helicopter Chain Matrix system can do this in many areas because it will unearth and explode existing mines and give your field soldiers forewarning. All the equipment and procedures that you are now using are less than 100% effective. You know that your mine clearance people will eventually die if they attempt to poke in the ground for mines for too long a period of time. They will eventually touch a mine with a mercury switch which is designed to kill the minesweeper. You know that your minesweeping tanks cannot eliminate all danger to the foot soldier. The truth is that your countermine “specialists” take the attitude that this is an acceptable risk for the foot soldier. We at Livermore did not accept this absurdity, and we did something about it.
The easily demonstrated fact is that the Chain Matrix can sweep a 16 ft. wide area at 15 mph and eliminate all trip wires and most anti-personnel mines—even over rocky and brushy terrain as well as open areas and roadways. The Pentagon does not have any other equipment or schemes that can do this with no danger to minesweeping personnel.
Your paragraph of calculations for the safe distances for a helicopter from an exploding anti-tank mine are strange. We did some very careful calculations in 1991 which took into account the blast characteristics of the largest available anti-tank mines. The danger to a helicopter at 300 feet horizontal distance from an anti-tank mine explosion is miniscule. The danger to foot soldiers on the ground is thousands of times greater. The danger to personnel using your present mine clearing schemes and equipment is hundreds of times greater. Proud and experienced military helicopter pilots in other branches have told me they would be ashamed to say what you have stated in this letter.
It is not true that there is high danger of hard debris or mine fragments beyond 300 feet. It makes me wonder if your countermine personnel really understand the shape-charge characteristics of the anti-tank mines of which they are supposed to be the experts. Could you please, for the sake of many soldiers’ lives, show me or other qualified scientists the basis for these statements about danger to helicopters and actual test results?
Finally, I am simply blown away by the statement that a helicopter could be caused to crash if the Chain Matrix snagged in the ground or the pulling forces became too great. Colonel, I have to tell you in this case that you were asked to put your proud signature under a statement written by an idiot. And if this idiot is in the employment of the U.S. government, responsible for the lives of military personnel, you had better do something about it very quickly. Here is why. Standard operating procedures used by all heavy-lift contractors and all military helicopter lifting operations is to use a quick-release coupling in the cable between the helicopter and any load that it is pulling. It is considered as stupid as a Captain grounding his ship to not use such a coupling. Such a coupling was used by the Colombia Helicopter (Portland, Oregon) crew when we field tested the Chain Matrix over rough ground and rugged and rocky terrain at Riley, Oregon. The pulling forces never exceeded 10,000 pounds. The quick-release coupling never opened up. Anyone can check this technology or technique that has been used over forty years by picking up the telephone and calling a heavy-lift helicopter pulling company (or your own helicopter flight crews).
Colonel, you state that you have great concern for our soldiers and your own combat engineers who must risk their lives to clear minefields. I believe you do because of the high authority you hold. I am telling you that you have not been served well by those who have given you the statements contained in your letter. I imagine your letter has been passed on to the White House and members of Congress who have been asking the same question. I would trust that for the sake of our soldiers that you would very quickly check the facts I have given you herein, and at least obtain a copy of the official 1991 test report from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Rights to this technology were given to the U.S. government for its use. I have always felt that it is my responsibility as a citizen and a scientist who has had the benefit of government funds in the past to do everything I can to assist our country. You may contact me at any time. I will give you any amount of help I can. I apologize for having to be so direct and irate, but nothing less is appropriate when you consider the opportunities for saving lives that have been passed up by some very lazy or irresponsible people somewhere.
I have helped design many weapons systems for the Pentagon in my career. In case you are told that I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to field operation systems and hardware such as helicopters, tanks, bulldozers and bombs, etc., you might call the Chief Engineer of the world’s biggest engineering organization—Mr. James Roberts, Chief Engineer, California Department of Transportation, Sacramento, California.
Sincerely,
Dr. Bill Wattenburg
This page was last modified on .
Related Information |