Materiel storage facilities

The Army has at its disposition four principle types of facilities for treating non-stockpile chemical materiel nonstockpile facilities, designed to destroy large quantities of dissimilar CWM stockpile facilities, constructed to destroy large quantities of similar CWM research and development facilities and commercial treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs). 

The Safety Manual AMCR 385-100 prescribes general safety rules for the US Army Materiel Command including those relevant to facility construction for explosive materiel operations and storage requirements, personal protective clothing and equipment together with quantity distance standards of explosives. 

Outside of military conflicts, exposure to sulfur mustard has occurred or may occur in work environments associated with chemical weapon materiel (e.g. storage depots, demilitarization facilities, research laboratories), during emergency response operations or remediation and decontamination activities, or during treaty verification activities in support of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Chemical weapons such as the vesicants are stiU considered potential military threats and terrorist targets. The most likely route of exposure to sulfur mustard is via aerosol/vapor exposure of the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract. 

Obsolete chemical weapons that have been in storage since the decades following World War II constitute the U.S. chemical stockpile and are differentiated from nonstockpile materiel. Facilities in the United States that have been constructed to destroy this stockpile employ assembly line systems for separating the agent from the munition. This is feasible because the munitions are overwhelmingly in a good and consistent condition. Leakers and other occasional nonuniform munitions that are periodically encountered can cause problems out of proportion to their numbers, however. 

Under the CWC, countries may apply for an extension of the deadline of up to 5 years. The United States has acknowledged that some of the stockpile destruction facilities are likely to continue to operate for several years beyond 2007. The Product Manager for Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel (PMNSCM) has indicated to the committee that the PMNSCM intends to meet the 2007 deadline for destruction of all recovered non-stockpile materiel currently in storage. 

The 9ad s mission at Oran was primarily the creation of a consolidated CWS depot near MBS headquarters. Four outlying depots were closed out and their stocks moved to the new central installation, a former engineer storage center with ample facilities. It took more than a month to get the 4,000 tons of CWS materiel crated, consoli-... 

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