Demilitarization Overview

This paper is intended to provide a brief historical overview of the Army s chemical demilitarization program and provide some insight to the types of disposal processes, procedures, and equipment employed. 

As stated at the outset, this paper is intended to provide a historical overview and some insight as to the types of operations, procedures and equipment used in the Army s Demilitarization Program for Chemical Munitions. In each of the areas discussed there has been a considerable amount of study, laboratory experimentation and pilot testing accomplished to define the specific design criteria. 

Effective handling of the principal-agent relationship in the chemical demilitarization program setting appears to the committee to require (1) demonstrable and timely assessments of the problems leading to chemical events and means for their correction, (2) complete and timely disclosure of events by the agents, and (3) overview processes that assure principals of effective oversight. 

Goldstein, R. 1999. An Overview of the Army s Demilitarization Technology Research and Development Program for Conventional Ammunition, Proceedings of 5th Life Cycles of Energetic Materials Conference, Orlando, Fla., September 26-29. 

FIGURE 2-2 Schematic of chemical demilitarization incineration furnaces and a typical pollution abatement system without carbon filter. SOURCE PMCSD Overview, briefing by Joseph Pecoraro, project manager for chemical stockpile disposal, CMA, to the committee, January 25, 2006. 

The opening remarks were followed by general discussion topics that included an overview of the US Chemical Weapons Demilitarization Program, the Canadian Project Swiftsure, which described the destruction of chemical agents at the Defense Research Establishment Suffield, Canada and a comprehensive presentation by Dr. Ron Manley of the Provisional Secretariat for the Organization of Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the European experience with the disposal of old chemical weapons. 

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