OFFICIALS:  ARSENAL'S FUTURE ASSURED

By Amy Riggin/THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, October 14, 2005 10:31 AM CDT

The commander of the Pine Bluff Arsenal assured members of the West Pine Bluff Rotary Club on Thursday that the arsenal’s vital economic role will continue long after its chemical weapons incineration mission is completed.

Col. Brian Lindamood, speaking to Rotarians at the Pine Bluff Country Club, said the arsenal is in the process of developing plans to expand production of chemical and biological defense equipment.

Last week, officials announced that the arsenal had been designated as the only Center of Industrial and Technical Excellence for Chemical and Biological Defense Equipment in the nation. The designation means that the arsenal may expand its workload to include private companies and other government agencies beyond the Defense Department.

It will allow the arsenal to sell equipment such as gas masks and protective clothing to federal agencies and to private businesses and to offer repair services for those products. Before, the arsenal could only lease its facilities to private companies.

As Lindamood put it, the arsenal is able to compete “head to head” with the commercial industry.

“We are slowly but surely coming to call it ‘America’s arsenal,’” he said.

He said the arsenal is still in the process of finalizing plans for the expansion, but assured members of the business community that it will create jobs.

“We have the ability to build, from ground zero, an entirely new piece of equipment,” Lindamood noted.

He pointed out that disposal of 12 percent of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, which began in March, is probably the arsenal’s most well-known mission. However, it is not the only one, and other operations will continue after that mission is complete.

Lindamood said 85 percent of the operations at the arsenal consist of manufacturing, or industrial, missions. Those operations are primarily concentrated on the south end of the 13,000-acre compound, he added, and are expected to “remain constant.”

“We know that we’ve got to maintain that capability,” Lindamood said.

He added that the equipment, facilities and personnel being used for incineration “have tremendous opportunities beyond the disposal of chemical weapons.”

Under the guidelines of an international treaty, the chemical weapons must be destroyed by 2012. Officials at Pine Bluff have estimated that the arsenal would be finished by 2010 at the earliest.