Biological and Chemical Weapons
The Other US Chemical Weapons Disposal Program
CBW Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 5 (January 1999)
The elimination of the US chemical arsenal is well underway. With two facilities operating at Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific and Tooele, Utah, the Army destroyed over 4,000 tons of chemical agent by 3 January 1999. That amount represents almost 13 percent of the total chemical weapons stockpile. Although many Americans have heard about this stockpile destruction effort, the Army’s Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization must also oversee disposal of an entirely separate category of chemical weapons materiel, an effort largely unknown to the general public.
At an estimated cost of nearly $16 billion, the non-stockpile disposal program is charged with five missions. First, the Army must address binary chemical weapons---munitions wherein the two chemicals are stored separately but mixed just prior to release to produce a lethal chemical agent. The binary arsenal is comprised primarily of M687 155mm projectiles, most of which have been stored at Oregon’s Umatilla Chemical Depot since 1991. These munitions consist of a projectile and an M21 canister filled with an isopropyl alcohol mixture. Canisters filled with a second chemical are stored at a separate facility in Arkansas. As of 6 January 1999, some 202,000 M687 projectiles had been destroyed at a recycling facility at Nevada’s Hawthorne Army Depot, in compliance with an April 1999 Chemical Weapons Convention deadline. The remaining 57,000 M687s will be destroyed no later than 2007, ten years after the entry into force of the Convention.
A second element of the non-stockpile program is the dismantling of former chemical weapons production facilities in Arkansas, Indiana, and Maryland. Demilitarization is either in the planning stages or underway at each of the sites. For instance, demolition of the VX production facility in Newport, Indiana, began in August 1998. The first piece of specialized production equipment from this facility is slated to be destroyed in mid-January 1999. This eight-year project is expected to cost nearly $75 million.
Miscellaneous chemical warfare materiel is the third category of the non-stockpile inventory and consists mainly of empty ton containers previously used to store chemical agents, components filled with inert material, various metal parts, and chemical samples. Fourth, recovered chemical materiel unearthed during range clearing operations also falls under the jurisdiction of the non-stockpile program. At the moment, recovered range munitions represent a small amount of agent B just a few hundred tons B although that figure is sure to increase as more buried weapons are discovered.
Buried chemical materiel, the final leg of the non-stockpile mission, is causing the greatest concern. A logistically complicated effort, the Army must not only find the burial areas, but also determine the nature of the materiel buried there and identify the safest possible method of extracting it. One General Accounting Office report estimated that the buried chemical materiel mission would eat up 95 percent of the total non-stockpile program budget. Figure 3 shows the states wherein over 60 chemical warfare materiel sites have been identified. These sites include test ranges with dud or possibly live munitions and deliberate burial sites dating back to the 1950s, when burial was the accepted disposal method. So extensive is the buried chemical weapons conundrum that the Army estimates it will not be resolved until the year 2033.
One of the most vexing problems is the buried Chemical Agent Identification Sets, widely used by the Army until 1969 to train personnel in the proper methods of handling, identifying, and decontaminating chemical agents. These kits hold glass vials and bottles containing chemical agents, including phosgene, mustard, cyanogen chloride, and chloropicrin. Approximately 110,000 of them were produced, but only a fraction of that number has been recovered.
As an additional complicating factor, federal law prohibits the use of stockpile destruction facilities for any purposes other than the elimination of stockpiled chemical weapons. No initiative has been taken to change the law so that buried munitions could be shipped to these sites, especially since the stockpile disposal facilities are not entirely applicable to the varied types of non-stockpile materiel.
The Army currently plans to destroy recovered materiel on-site so as to avoid any risks associated with moving these items to a separate disposal facility. Consequently, the non-stockpile program has been developing mobile units that can be transported to non-stockpile recovery sites as needed. The Army is testing the Mobile Munitions Assessment System to identify chemicals contained in unmarked munitions without opening them; the Rapid Response System to treat recovered agent identification sets; and two different Munition Management Devices to destroy buried chemical weapons. These technologies are designed to give the non-stockpile program the flexibility necessary to identify, recover, and safely eliminate a broad spectrum of chemical warfare materiel. However, executing this mission will no doubt prove to be just as politically sensitive as the operation of the stockpile destruction program.