Here's an interesting application for bomb detection that is only in the development stage. As the articles suggests, it is only a matter of time before the ability is mastered:
Many Former Military Base Sites Hold A Hidden Peril: Unexploded Ordnance
By MICHAEL OREY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MARINA, Calif. -- When officials from this seaside community first visited the scrub-covered land the U.S. Army was preparing to hand their city, they thought the site would make a perfect golf course. Golfers could enjoy panoramic views of the area, from the waters of Monterey Bay to the vegetable fields of the Salinas Valley.
The golfers also would have encountered some unusual hazards. In 1994, specialists swept the site and removed 23 live antitank bazooka rounds. Local environmental groups worry there could be more unexploded ordnance -- or UXO -- hidden in the area, and a lawsuit has now led the Army to hold off transferring the land.
The antitank range is just a tiny portion of Fort Ord, a base closed in 1994 that sprawls over 28,000 acres -- or 44 square miles -- of the Monterey Peninsula. And UXO, which consists of dud munitions that failed to explode after being fired or surplus ordnance that soldiers simply buried as a means of disposal, is a huge problem throughout the base, just as it is at hundreds of other former military sites around the country.
"When you train soldiers for war, you need to put them in a live environment, firing live munitions," says Bill Collins, UXO project manager at Fort Ord. But military officials never contemplated that hundreds of firing and bombing ranges across the country might someday be returned to public hands for use as golf courses and hiking trails.
No one knows how much UXO exists, but estimates gathered by a Defense Department task force suggest that more than 15 million acres in the U.S. need to be surveyed for contamination. The sites range from the World War II desert training grounds of Gen. George Patton in California to recently closed bases, like Fort McClellan in Alabama.
Also, I understand that the number of UXO in Cambodia number in the millions.
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