Airships returned to Balkan skies for the first time since before World War II after Sir Richard Branson's Mineseeker began a six-week mission to help rid war-torn Kosovo of deadly land mines and unexploded cluster munitions.

The experimental Mineseeker went to Kosovo as part of its two-year development programme to test its revolutionary ground-penetrating radar and special optical sensors against real minefields. Belinda Goslin of the Pristina-based UN Mine Action Co-ordination Centre (MACC) hoped the publicity surrounding the deployment of the Mineseeker would also kick-start further funding for mine-clearing work in Kosovo.

The Mineseeker began work in north-western Kosovo from the huge British army base at Podujevo in early October after UN chiefs conducted a publicity campaign to educate trigger-happy locals about the 135-foot-long aircraft. "We are afraid that unless people know about its humanitarian role they might try to shoot at the Mineseeker" says Goslin. "It's going to have a large UN logo on the side."

Sir Richard Branson's Lightship Group owns the airship and is paying most of the cost of the Kosovo mission with the Defence Research & Evaluation Agency (DERA) supplying sensors. Linde Gas and North Face clothing also are supporting the mission according to DERA spokeswoman Joanna Sale. "We went to Kosovo at the request of the UN MACC. The experience will be invaluable in the Mineseekers development process".

The Lightship Group is Britain's only active airship operating company, boasting a fleet of 14 airships that are used mainly for advertising and aerial filming work around the world.

Goslin said the deployment was an exciting project that would help to achieve the UN MACC's ambition of clearing Kosovo of mines and UXO by the end of the year. The Wescam optical sensors are hung around the aircraft's gondola and were used by the 12-strong crew during the first part of the mission, surveying for surface objects. Experiments then took place with ground-penetrating radar that can detect plastic mines that are invisible to normal mine detectors that detect magnetic anomalies. Many of the 1,500 minefields and 518 cluster-bomb strike sites in Kosovo have been surveyed so it provides a huge amount of data to judge the effectiveness of the Mineseeker's sensors, said Sale.

UN MACC works with about 30 mine-clearing and mine-awareness organisations to rid Kosovo of several hundred thousand mines and unexploded bombs that have killed 103 people and wounded just under 400 since NATO troops entered the Yugoslav province in June 1999.

After working in the British sector for three weeks the Mineseeker moved to the Italian base at Dakovica in western Kosovo. It was flown across Europe to Kosovo, via Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Macedonia at its top speed of 53mph.

The Mineseeker was launched in March 2000, by Branson, DERA's Sir John Chisholm and UK Defence Procurement Minister Baroness Symons. The public-private partnership is aimed at fielding a cost-effective airborne survey platform for mine clearing to replace time-consuming ground survey work using conventional methods.

"There are many minefields and cluster-bomb strikes in Kosovo that represent an immediate threat to the local population" said Lightship Group's CEO, Mike Kendrick. "Regeneration and aid to the population is hampered by both the real and feared presence of mines and unexploded ordnance. There is good data from Serb and NATO sources, and a very well organised co-ordination of effort employing relatively sophisticated databases and GIS co-ordination" he said. "Immediate clearance and effective deployment of resources is restricted by lack of detailed surveys and primary identification of where the problems lie. One mine expert told us that a minefield clearance they had undertaken over seven months with four mine-clearance teams of nine people would have been achieved in three months with an aerial survey. The same operator had taken a week to clear an access path simply to look for a known small minefield that would have been unnecessary with aerial survey.

"Cluster-bomb strikes pose unique problems in Kosovo as over half are not adequately surveyed and many are not even discovered. Ground-based surveys of 2km x 2km blocks with painstaking walkthroughs, could be greatly reduced with aerial identification of strike patterns."

During the six-week deployment, the Mineseeker team surveyed 30 mine sites, producing 60 hours of video tape and 500 still pictures. Dr Paul Bishop, DERA's project director for Mineseeker, is enthusiastic about these results saying "the DERA team has worked hard for years on this radar, refining and adapting it for humanitarian de-mining and building on the results of the January trials. The data captured in Kosovo is exciting and invaluable. The radar has performed well and this data, from a live site, will allow us to assess the potential of the system and how to develop it".

John Flanagan, manager for the MACC in Pristina said: "Mineseeker has contributed to our understanding of the mine and UXO problem in Kosovo. Data collected will be used extensively during the rest of the clearance operations".

Says Kendrick: "We are delighted with Mineseeker's deployment in Kosovo. To get an airship flying over a post-conflict country, use it to collect information that will speed up de-mining, and to enjoy such promising results from the radar trial surpassed our every expectation. The dedication of the whole team has been rewarded by the feeling that we have made a huge step forward".

www.dera.org

www.mineseeker.com

www.lightships.com