In its continuing program to provide a complete size-range of area-preparation systems to the world’s humanitarian demining community, the United States Humanitarian Demining Research and Development Program, located at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, developed a lightweight area-preparation system around the ASV Inc. SR-80 rubber-tracked crawler with a family of attachments. The system, assembled by Applied Research Associates, Inc., and named the Nemesis, is intended to cut and mulch up to Category 3 (difficult, up to 10 cm diameter trees) vegetation and to remove cutting debris. Attachments used during this evaluation test were the Bradco, Inc., Mini-Mag Mulcher Model XL 165-6; the Quick Attach Attachment, Inc., 4-in-1 bucket and Eagle Talon Grapple; and the Coneqtec, Inc., Universal AP1000 Cold Planer. Testing of the Nemesis took place during the spring of 2008 at a central Virginia military test site. The government’s system and test engineer was Zeke Topolosky from the Humanitarian Demining Program staff; the system operator was Todd Sellmer. Test site support was provided by John Snellings and Arthur Limerick. Photography support was provided by Tanekwa Bournes of the Camber Corporation. Test data collection, test data analysis, and writing of this report were done by Harold Bertrand and Jennifer Soult of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). Tom Milani (IDA) edited the report.
The purpose of this performance evaluation test was to determine if the Nemesis, an off-the-shelf, self-propelled area-preparation system, and its attachments can be operated under absolute control, at distances up to 400 m, through the use of a radiocontrolled remote operating system. The performance evaluation included the remote deployment of the Nemesis, the cutting and clearing of varying vegetation categories, the use and control of a grapple and 4-in-1 bucket to clear an area where heavy vegetation cutting had occurred, and the use of an off-the-shelf pavement cold planer to potentially engage and destroy antipersonnel land mines buried to a depth of 15 cm (6 inches)
