Historical Swedish shooting terrain cleared of grenades

Project details

Damasec Mine Action clears former military training ground in Sweden.

It is not every day that civilian companies get a contract to clear Swedish military training areas for unexploded ordnance. Damasec Mine Action in 2013 helped to clear the former training ground Myran Shooting range at Falun just over 200 kilometers northwest of Stockholm.

From 1909 to 1958, the Valley Regiment used the area as a shooting range. The Swedes have a tradition of using explosives in their exercise ammunition. It has significantly increased the threat picture and made additional demands on e.g., Damasec’s ammunition clearance team.

In the project, the ground has been cleared of unexploded ordnance down to two meters below ground. This has been done by using probes that detect changes in the earth’s magnetic field and thus potentially detecting unexploded ordnance. The probes have been mounted on tractors or carried by hand.

NIRAS was a consultant for the turnkey contractor RGS90 and Damasec Mine Action had the responsibility for managing quality, risk, and the environment. The customer was the Swedish Fortifications Agency, which corresponds to the Armed Forces’ Building and Installation Service.

This project was a pilot project in which a total of 295 pieces of unexploded ordnance and 9,165 pieces of munitions scraps were removed.

Read more about the project (in Danish)