🧠 How AI Finds Unexploded Weapons Before You Do

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In today’s sunday special:

Read time: 7 minutes

📜 THE PRELUDE

Imagine opening your new apartment’s storage locker and finding something you definitely didn’t pack: a handful of rusty, egg-shaped shells. You’re not taking any chances, so you leave them untouched and alert the local sheriff’s department. Within minutes, a deputy sheriff arrives on the scene, immediately recognizing that these aren’t ordinary pieces of scrap metal.

The Special Enforcement Bureau’s Arson Explosive Detail arrives and identifies them as “military-style hand grenades.” After performing a series of X-rays, it’s believed that they have “no functioning explosive capability.” The military-style hand grenades are transported to the local sheriff department’s explosive training facility. The next day, while three bomb squad veterans are examining them, one explodes, killing all three.

This actually happened on Jul. 18th, 2025. Deputy Joshua Kelley-Eklund, Deputy Victor Lemus, and Deputy William Osborn served a combined 74 years with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Between them, they left behind 3 grieving widows and 16 beloved children. “There are no words to express the pain and sorrow we feel,” said L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna. “These heroes represented the best of our Department.”

This tragedy exposes an unsettling reality: old explosives aren’t necessarily dead explosives. Even decades after the battlefields have fallen silent, unexploded weapons can remain hidden beneath our feet, silently waiting for one wrong step to detonate. So, how often do unexploded weapons remain lethal after war ends? How can Airborne AI help find unexploded weapons before a forgotten relic turns into a deadly surprise?

⚔️ THE ORIGINS OF WAR

War may feel like a product of civilization, but its origins can be traced back to the earliest chapters of human history. Long before kingdoms rose, borders hardened, and armies marched, prehistoric humans were already spilling blood.

Human Evolution is the six-million-year biological and behavioral process that transformed ape-like primates into modern humans. Viewed zoologically, we humans are Homo sapiens, a culture-bearing, upright-walking species that came into existence across Africa 315,000 years ago. We’re now the only living members of Hominini, but we once coexisted with at least one other member of our “genus,” the Neanderthals.

In 1957, while scouring a cave in the Zagros Mountains, a highland region in West Asia spanning Iran, northern Iraq, and southeastern Turkey, American paleo-archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered “Shanidar 3,” a 40- to 50-year-old Neanderthal male who lived 75,000 years ago. He was found with a sharp, deep slice in the left Rib 9.

In 2009, Steven E. Churchill, a professor in the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University, evaluated the potential cause of death and concluded: “The puncture was carrying fairly low kinetic energy at a low momentum, consistent with a spear-thrower-delivered spear.” Neanderthals were believed to hunt with heavy thrusting spears, while Homo sapiens were believed to hunt with light throwing javelins. As a result, “Shanidar 3” was likely wounded by Homo sapiens.

🪖 THE LEGACY OF MODERN WARS

In the aftermath of the First World War, the fields of northeastern France became the site of a dangerous legacy: the “Iron Harvest.” The Allied and Central Powers fired more than one billion artillery rounds, 30% of which remain unexploded. To this day, Sécurité Civile unearths an average of 900 tons of unexploded munitions on French soil every year.

During the Second World War, British and American aircraft dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs over Europe, with roughly half falling on Germany. By the time the Nazi Party surrendered, the industrial infrastructure of the Third Reich, including armed factories and oil refineries, had been crippled, and dozens of German cities had been reduced to ruins and rubble. To this day, 2,000 tons of unexploded munitions are uncovered on German soil every year.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military dropped 270 million baseball-sized cluster submunitions on Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, with an estimated 80 million failing to explode. These “bombies” have injured or killed more than 20,000 people in Laos alone since the Vietnam War ended, with the small, landlocked Southeast Asian country bearing the grim distinction of being the most heavily bombed country on Earth.

On Feb. 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Nearly five years into the Russo-Ukrainian war, more than 6 million UXOs have been littered across the battlefield. According to Paul Heslop, Programme Manager for Mine Action at UNDP Ukraine, this is the largest explosive-remnants crisis of the 21st century. The confirmed deaths of Ukrainian civilians from unexploded ordnance are currently 355. The manual clearance required to eliminate these UXOs is estimated to cost approximately $37 billion, more than twice the monetary value of U.S. aid supplied to Israel within the last two years, and could take up to ten years to complete.

💣 HOW AI FINDS UNEXPLODED OBJECTS

On Sept. 28th, 2023, Safe Pro introduced “SpotlightAi,” the world’s first demining software that autonomously identifies unexploded weapons from drone imagery, strategically partnering with the State Special Transport Service to locate landmines in Ukraine. So, how does this demining software render drone imagery into detailed mappings of unexploded weapons?

🔑 KEY TAKEAWAY

Today, over 100 million people in more than 60 countries live on land contaminated by UXOs. The final shot of war is rarely the final casualty, as unexploded weapons can remain lethal for decades. Now, “Spotlight Ai” can transform drone imagery into detailed mappings of suspected explosives, helping reclaim land once rendered unusable by the cruelty of war.

📒 FINAL NOTE

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