Original Item: Very Few Available. Now these were a great find! These are all inert PMA-3 Minimum Metal Anti-Personnel Mines. A minimum metal mine is a land mine that is designed to use the smallest amount of metal possible in its construction. Typically, the only metal components are located inside the fuze mechanism which triggers detonation. Both minimum metal anti-tank and anti-personnel mines exist. Some designs contain virtually no metal at all, e.g., less than a gram. This is achieved by encasing the explosive charge in a plastic, wooden, or glass body, with metallic components limited to the few small parts in the fuze which can not easily be made from other materials, such as the spring, striker tip, and shear pin. Minimum metal mines are extremely difficult to detect using conventional metal mine detectors and usually require modern techniques, such as robotic Multi Period Sensing (MPS) equipment, to identify, but it is still extremely difficult to find non-metallic mines. These techniques are usually restricted to well-funded international mine clearing organizations and major militaries, making minimum metal mines especially pernicious where they are encountered.

Unloaded or dummy grenades, artillery shell casings, and similar devices, which are cut or drilled in an BATF-approved manner so that they cannot be used as ammunition components for destructive devices, are not considered NFA weapons. These examples are in total compliance and are NOT AVAILABLE FOR EXPORT.

The PMA-3 is a Yugoslavian blast resistant minimum metal anti-personnel mine. It is circular, consisting of a plastic upper and lower half joined together by a rubber cover. A safety collar is normally wrapped around the outside of the mine, preventing the upper half of the mine tilting when in transit. Once deployed the safety collar is removed. Sufficient pressure on the top surface of the mine causes it to tilt. The tilting drives a pin through a friction sensitive pyrotechnic compound, which fires the detonator and then the main explosive charge.

Straight downward pressure does not have the shearing component needed to trigger the mine, this gives the mine blast resistance, since blast overpressure bears down evenly on the top surface of the mine.

The mine has a relatively low explosive content, so will maim rather than kill. Its blast resistance combined with the lack of metal in the mine make it extremely difficult to clear.

PMA-3 mines can be found in minefields in Albania, Bosnia, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Croatia, Serbia, Lebanon, Namibia and Peru.

Specifications
Height: 40 mm
Diameter: 111 mm
Weight: 0.18 kg
Explosive content: 35 grams of Tetryl or possibly TNT