Who are we ? History
Our history
In its beginnings in 1998 the DIGGER DTR Association had some thirty volunteer members. Enthusiastic, determined and with the help of donors and sponsors they have developed a light, remote controlled and armoured vehicle, the D-1.
Digger_D-1This 4 tonne « lawn mower » was designed to clear vegetation from mine fields and reduce by 80% the injuries to deminers caused by exploding anti-personnel mines. In addition it doubled the speed at which deminers could do their work.

By cutting shrubbery and vegetation littered with trip-wire mines, the D-1 demonstrated its effectiveness.

At the beginning of 2005 the DIGGER DTR Association became a non-profit foundation with tax free status. Feedback from deminers working in partnership with Digger prompted our technicians and engineers to design a new concept that would both clear vegetation and clear mines. The D-2 was born.Digger_D-2_solution The main change consists in replacing the system of cutter-chisels with a hammer-head chain flail that digs to a depth of 20 cm. The result is that the majority of mines are detonated which significantly reduces the deminers work while increasing their speed by 5-7 times.

Still, all mechanical means are incomplete. Human deminers remain indispensable to ensure a complete demining and to guarantee that a farmer can return to the land. In this regard humanitarian demining is fundamentally different from military demining.
Since January 2006 the D-2 is in Africa as part of a large demining operation. DIGGER DTR is working in collaboration with the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD). While an ideal environment to test the limits of the 7 tonne machine, the extreme heat and dusty conditions of southern Sudan are a severe test of both operators and the machine.

At the beginning of 2005 the DIGGER DTR Association became a non-profit foundation with tax free status.

Feedback from deminers working in partnership with Digger prompted our technicians and engineers to design a new concept that would both clear vegetation and clear mines. The D-2 was born.

Digger_D-1_D-2The main change consists in replacing the system of cutter-chisels with a hammer-head chain flail that digs to a depth of 20 cm. The result is that the majority of mines are detonated which significantly reduces the deminers work while increasing their speed by 5-7 times.

Still, all mechanical means are incomplete. Human deminers remain indispensable to ensure a complete demining and to guarantee that a farmer can return to the land. In this regard humanitarian demining is fundamentally different from military demining.

Since January 2006 the D-2 is in Africa as part of a large demining operation. DIGGER DTR is working in collaboration with the Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD). While an ideal environment to test the limits of the 7 tonne machine, the extreme heat and dusty conditions of southern Sudan are a severe test of both operators and the machine.

fraiseRecently, a new need has emerged in demining, that can deal with very hard soil more efficiently and more economically than using a flail. This resulted in the development of a tiller, the first of which was set up on the D-2 and was delivered in late 2008 to the Macedonian Department of Defense to support operations in Afghanistan.

Finally, recent developments to date, in connection with field tests, the necessity occurred to increase the power of the D-2 and redevelop the axes of the flail and the tiller to improve the demining performance and the resistance to AT mine detonation. This has been implemented on its "big sister" the DIGGER D-3, which came out in April 2009 and used since then in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

But the story isn’t finished…