MRead at MSPO 2026: the legacy of conflict, and the case for better detection

MSPO is held a few hundred kilometres from a border that gives the exhibition a particular weight. The conversations there reflected it. Much of the discussion across the halls concerned how conflict is changing, the role of drones, the growth of autonomous systems, the pace at which new weapon platforms are being fielded.

But a theme ran underneath all of it, and it is the one that concerns us most: whatever changes about how wars are fought, the contamination they leave behind does not change at all.

The problem does not end when the fighting does

Landmines and unexploded ordnance remain in the ground long after a conflict is over. They sit in farmland, along footpaths, near schools and water points. They are found by children. They are found by farmers returning to land they have not been able to work for years.

Every new generation of munitions adds to that backlog. A proportion of everything fired, dropped or laid fails to function as intended, and each of those items becomes a hazard that someone, eventually, has to find and remove.

The scale of the existing problem is already formidable. Dozens of countries remain contaminated, and clearance capacity has not kept pace with it for decades.

Why detection is the bottleneck

The core difficulty in mine clearance is not finding signals. It is working out which signals matter.

A conventional metal detector tells a deminer that there is metal beneath the surface. It cannot tell them whether that metal is a landmine, a cartridge case, a fragment of shrapnel or a piece of farm debris. Every one of those signals must be treated as a live threat and excavated by hand, slowly, carefully, and at close range.

On heavily contaminated ground, the overwhelming majority of those excavations turn up nothing dangerous at all. The time cost is enormous, and it is time not spent releasing land back to the communities who need it.

MRead's approach is different in kind. Our Magnetic Resonance sensors do not look for metal. They confirm the presence of the explosive compound itself, RDX and TNT, without disturbing the ground. The sensor answers a different question: not is there something buried here, but is what is buried here an explosive.

That distinction is the whole point. It is the difference between a day spent digging and a day spent clearing.

The support from Team Defence Australia and Austrade at MSPO was outstanding, and we want to acknowledge it properly. For a company of our size, the access and reach that comes with a national presence of that quality is difficult to overstate.

Our thanks also to the many organisations who came to talk with us in Hall 7, including Kellie Jenkins and the team at Babcock International Group, Ark Robotics from Estonia, and our long-standing friends at EPE.

MRead's field programme with The HALO Trust continues through the remainder of 2026.

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