PDA

View Full Version : Marines go green with biodegradable ammo



thedrifter
03-15-09, 08:56 AM
Marines go green with biodegradable ammo
Now, an environmentally-sensitive way to shoot at people

Pigs must be sprouting wings, because the Department of Defense has recently taken a step towards greening the ammunition used by soldiers training for combat in the Middle East. A new type of earth-friendly ammo cartridge for grenade launchers and other weapons will replace older shells that were guilty of polluting the ground.

Environmentally-friendlier ammo addresses a problem that grows more urgent by the day, as once-isolated military bases now have more development and civilians living nearby, and toxins from the ordnance stick around long after the shooting stops.

During the World War II era, some 1,400 sites occupying about 10 million acres of U.S. land were used as training grounds to prepare soldiers for war. Grenades and other ammo were used in abundance, with no thought for the land beneath, since most of it was considered to be the boondocks. Some of this ammo would explode on impact like it was supposed to, but some would not. The duds would just burrow underneath the ground and sit there until a lengthy, expensive process of digging would remove the cartridge from its resting place.

As more infrastructure and people have sprung up around these training bases, military officials saw the environmental impact of the duds becoming a serious issue. Toxins from the lead cartridges can produce severe health effects, including contaminating drinking water for those living near the firing ranges.

What is the solution? Redesign the ammo, according to a German company called Rheinmetall Defence. Last month, the company introduced the MK281 40mm training round to U.S. Marines at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA.

Unlike the old toxic lead-based ammo, MK281 cartridges are made of such materials as biodegradable plastics and glass. And instead of containing pyrotechnics, the new shells use chemicals that, when reacting with each other, produce a flash of light. Because the MK281 is not metal and doesn’t actually explode, when the ammo remains in the ground, it does not contaminate nearby water supplies. Clever little ammo!

Another major perk to the new cartridges is the fact that there will no longer be duds, since the explosion factor has been removed. This means that the DoD will be saving mega moolah per year on ammo and dud clean-up duty. Props to the German company for saving American taxpayer dollars!

A 2003 report (pdf) from the Defense Science Board Task Force regarding unexploded ordnance estimated that the DoD spent about $200 million on the arduous task of carefully digging for some million or so duds spread throughout 10 million acres of land.

That may seem like a lot of money, but the task force informed the DoD that, while $200 million was a really nice gesture, the realistic bill would be more to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

A clearly agitated task force posed their concerns: “The current DoD funding commitment to this problem is quite limited in view of the scale of the problem. A $200 million per year funding applied to a tens of billions of dollars problem implies that the DoD gives this issue low priority and clearly doesn’t care if it takes 100 years to solve.” (pg 16 of pdf)

Six years and a new ammo design later, nothing is perfect, but at least the DoD is learning that the term “green” can mean more than the color of defense contract dollars. There are still millions of metal duds lying on the ground, waiting to be picked up, but innovative technology will eventually eliminate the problem, allowing soldiers to train in a new era that will make the Obama administration proud. Let the pigs fly!

Ellie