The United States will soon provide antipersonnel mines to Ukraine, a U.S. official confirmed late Tuesday, in a move that followed Ukraine’s first deployment of long-range U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles in an attack on Russia.

  • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    That’s brilliant engineering but also…I wonder how common some kind of reverse-dud would be?

    “Oh cool it’s probably inert because that was MONTHS ag–”

    • chaospatterns@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Batteries are bounded by more predictable chemistry more so than something like the breakdown of a mechanical based trigger waiting for rust or decomposition. Chemistry makes it easier to model and predict. If you’ve got a 1Ah battery and it consumes x watt hours per hour, then it takes y days to burn through. Tolerances that cause the battery to have slightly more or less capacity or component power consumption will likely be <5%, thus not radically different because nobody is timing this to the minute.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        1 day ago

        You’re absolutely right. Very good points! I thought that too, a major improvement over analogue mechanisms that have more unpredictable longevity!

        I suppose if the batteries are actively discharging as a failsafe, that makes sense.

        I was thinking about how sometimes you’d pick up like, a TV remote that’s been sitting since 1993 and astonishingly the little red light blinks when you push a button, if only faintly, and for a second.