The US Army Chemical Materials Agency announced hitting the 60 percent destruction mark in its efforts to eliminate the US chemical weapons stockpile. It won't make the 2012 deadline, but it is making steady progress using a safe and efficient technology - incineration.
"It took eight years to destroy the first 10 percent of agent, including agent destroyed before the CWC entered into force. Back then, the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) was our first operating facility, and we were still mastering operations," said Col. Robert Billington, CMA Project Manager for Chemical Stockpile Elimination. "Since then, we have systematically applied the lessons learned from JACADS and our other operating sites to continually improve our efficiency," he said.
You may not recognize the significance of the colonel's last sentence there - Congress specifically told the Army that it had to test and operate the JACADS facility, and then develop and implement "lessons learned" prior to beginning the next chemical incineration plant. You might say, well that makes sense - but what it had was the effect of delaying the schedule by about six or seven years while the demil critics took the Army to court over this exact issue.
But the good news - steady progress, no accidents, eventually we'll get rid of all the materials. Sure, India, South Korea, and Albania have completed their chemical weapons destruction - but they had a very, very small stockpile as compared to the US stockpile of 30,000 tons. And if Congress - Senator McConnell in particular - would have gotten out of the way, we would have been done by now as well.
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