MON-50

The MON-50 is a Soviet directional anti-personnel mine that entered service in 1965, built as a copy of the American M18 Claymore mine with some differences; its designation is drawn from the Russian for directional fragmentation mine. The mine has a rectangular plastic body containing 700 grams of RDX explosive behind roughly 540 steel balls or 485 steel rods, which it fires in a 54-degree arc to a lethal range of 50 meters. Folding scissor-type legs let it be set on the ground or fixed to a tree for the best fragment spread, and it can be command-detonated by a manual inductor or set off by a pull switch or seismic trigger, and functions across a temperature range of minus 50 to plus 50 degrees Celsius. It is manufactured in Russia and exported by Bulgaria, and is issued in a cloth bandolier carrying the mine and its firing components together.