California IN BRIEF : LIVERMORE : War Device May Have Peacetime Uses

Officials at Livermore Laboratories have other uses in mind for a new device designed to clear vast minefields in the Persian Gulf. “The agricultural applications alone would be staggering,” said Jerry Richards, a Livermore Lab lawyer who is working on a patent application for the device. The device, designed by engineer Bill Wattenburg, uses a helicopter to tow a blanket of linked chains and harrows that unearth and explode hidden mines. Livermore officials are experimenting with other uses for the device. During tests last month in Oregon, the device “quickly turned a field into very soft, pliable earth,” said Milton Finger, director of the advanced conventional weapons section at Livermore. The device replicates the plowing and tilling functions of farm implements, but over a much wider path. “It could also be used, perhaps, in fighting forest fires, for cutting a firebreak in a remote area,” Finger said.