Target Behavioral Response Analyses for the Development of Delay Munitions: Obscuring Fog for Non-lethal Anti-personnel Landmines

This experiment explores the utility of visual obscuration as a method for creating non-lethal munitions that can delay an adversary’s removal of anti-vehicle mines. Visual obscuration was achieved using controlled levels of artificial fog. Twenty-four subjects searched for mines under laboratory conditions of baseline no fog, low-lying fog, and immersive fog. A .52 or greater obscuration was associated with an 85% suppression mine detection. Under fog, subjects detected most mines by accidental kicking and found them in an average of 5 min compared with under 3 s with no fog. The fog created a condition of heightened stress, as reflected by evidence of increased sympathetic activity indexed by increased heart rate and increased electrodermal activity. Immersive fog showed greater sympathetic activation in subjects as indexed by more frequent electrodermal responses and twice the number of instances of giving up compared with the low-lying fog.