By JAMES MERRIWEATHER
The News Journal
10/07/2004

Since the prototype was introduced five years ago, the Army's Explosive Destruction System has safely destroyed every chemical weapon that it's come up against.

And the head of the Army's Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Program said Wednesday that destroying a mustard gas shell now stored at Dover Air Force Base was not likely to spoil that perfect record.

"We've done it 227 times without a problem," said William Brankowitz, project manager of the program and leader of an 11-person entourage from Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md.

"And I suspect we'll shortly have 228 times without a problem. It's a good unit, and we expect it to get the job done."

Brankowitz and his crew hosted a six-hour open house Wednesday at the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Dover, looking to answer any questions the public might have about how the mustard weapon would be obliterated over two days later this month. The ordnance was found July 19 by a state police trooper in a poultry farm driveway west of Bridgeville.

Guy Lindsay of Felton, an 80-year-old Army veteran of World War II, came with his family for a first-hand look at the disposal unit. While he peppered program representatives with questions, other family members took a brief tour of the system.

"After looking at how big and thick it is, I'm not fearful," said Lindsay's daughter, Bonnie Melvin, 50, of Harrington, who was accompanied by her husband, Thomas, 58. "I'm sure they tested it and tested it and tested it."

The system on display Wednesday, mounted on a 50-foot flatbed trailer, is larger than the one that will be used at Dover. The 9,950-pound containment chamber features 4-inch-thick steel walls. Its steel door is 9 inches thick and weighs 3,314 pounds, and two clamps that close in to seal the door before the explosions adds 3,040 pounds to the weight.

Since the treatment typically takes place away from ready power sources, a 212,000-watt generator is part of the package.

The key feature of the Explosive Destruction System is an airtight vapor containment chamber, which hosts three simultaneous explosions that break the munition in half and detonate any explosive that may be inside. The explosions are triggered by remote control from at least 200 feet away.

Once the chemical agent is exposed, a neutralizing compound is pumped in to destroy it.

"It's a lot like a washing machine," said David Hoffman, a program group leader. "You put the laundry and the soap in, and you get clean clothes."

The neutralization process takes about an hour. Lab technicians and air monitoring specialists who are part of a 16-person team that will oversee the operation then will check to make sure none of the chemical agent remains. Eventually, the byproducts of the process, including munitions fragments, will be shipped to CleanHarbors Environmental Services in Deer Park, Texas, for incineration.

Two days after the weapon was found at Bridgeville, three Air Force sergeants were hospitalized after they tried to open and disarm the 75-millimeter shell. Speculation is that the weapon was dredged up along with clam shells used to pave the driveway.

But Jeffrey Smart, an Army historian, said the origin of the shell was not clear.

Smart noted the military routinely sank surplus ships loaded with mustard, a blister agent, and other chemical weapons in the Atlantic Ocean before Congress barred the practice in 1972. Those ships typically went down 100 miles or more offshore in water thousands of feet deep. It's not clear how the shell ended up at Bridgeville.

"That was the object - to get it to a place where it wouldn't bother anybody," Smart said. "But what was recovered here is not what we've found in sea dumps in the Atlantic."

Authorized by Congress in 1992 at a time when discoveries of chemical weapons were mounting, the nonstockpile chemical materiel program has taken its Explosive Destruction System as far away as Britain, where, for a fee, it was allowed to test the system on recovered munitions. The program also has been called to destroy weapons in Alabama, Colorado and Washington, D.C.

In each case, an open house was held to inform residents about the destruction process. Capt. Cheryl Law, chief spokeswoman at Dover Air Force Base, said notice of the plan had generated no calls from the public, and only eight civilian visitors stopped by during the first two hours of the Wednesday's open house.

"We don't like surprises," said Karen Drewen, spokeswoman for the nonstockpile materiel program. "We don't want anybody to say we didn't tell them."