Landmines are considered to be the most serious post Cold War threat to those communities attempting to recover from the ravages of war and past internal conflicts. Landmines have been an expedient weapon in all wars and conflicts for most of the last century. They are designed to cause maximum trauma to their victims without killing them; the theory being that wounding the enemy causes them more problems than killing them outright by tying up medical and logistical capabilities and inflicting fear in those who are exposed to the agony of the victim.

Statistics from a recent UN conference revealed that there are some 95 to 100 million landmines scattered throughout 64 countries. These countries are faced with the huge dilemma of having to clear the millions of buried mines without any means or funds to do so and invariably without expert assistance.

Named after the little pre-simian 'Bush Baby' of the African bush, with it's all-seeing eyes, the Pookie was born of necessity.

In the mid-1970s, the mining of the roads in Rhodesia by African nationalist guerrillas was paralysing the nation. With thousands of kilometers of vulnerable roads to be cleared daily, conventional methods of landmine detection were hopelessly inadequate. There was a paramount need for a vehicle-borne detector to travel at speed ahead of convoys. The Pookie co-developed and manufactured by Trevor Davies Engineering would do this, exceeding all expectations.

The crucial difficulty was how to avoid detonating the mine and thereby destroying, or at least, damaging the detecting vehicle. The solution was to fit the Pookie with the widest and softest tyres available, Formula One tyres, to give the Pookie a ground pressure which would not even break the small bones in a man's hand.

The width of the tyres, in any case, spanned most landmine holes, lessening the chance of a detonation. In addition, as the Pookie's mechanical parts were drawn from the universal Volkswagon Kombi, the use of the VW trailing arm suspension, imparted less downward thrust than conventional coil springs.

None of the sixty-seven Pookies, built from 1976 to 1980, ever detonated a landmine. Twelve Pookies were lost and two drivers killed but only by electrically-detonated mines or by RPG7 rockets in ambushes ahead of their convoys. One driver was killed by a rocket hitting his windscreen, the other by a boosted command detonation mine. All the other drivers survived because the V-shaped armoured cab, 700 millimeters above the ground, deflected the blasts harmlessly.

The prototype was tested in the field in 1976 and promptly found twelve Soviet-made anti-tank mines on the notorious Mount Darwin-Mukumbura road in north-eastern Rhodesia. In the four years of their deployment, the Pookies found an assortment of over 550 anti-tank mines buried in the roads.

A world first and combat-tested, the Pookie remains the most effective mine-detecting vehicle available. Its Reutech (Barcom) detectors sweep a wide path. And soon its effectiveness will be doubled by the installation of the newest non-metallic (Ground Probing Radar) detecting system to combat the menace of the plastic mine. The Pookie is robust, fast and capable of all-weather and 24-hour operation on all roads and in open terrain. It is cost-effective, light on fuel, and, because it is based on the VW Kombi, spares, replacement engines, gearboxes and the like as well as mechanical expertise are available world-wide.