The fear comes not from the threat of foreign spies, but rather the possibility of being undercut by competing private manufacturers. Across the base, other workers put together green rubber gas masks, funneling smoky air through them to test them for leaks. signed an international treaty pledging to eliminate its chemical weapons stockpiles.
"Once that's done, we as the Army should be vacating those premises and sending them back for uses yet to be determined but outside of the Army's purview," Mahall said.
"We are a business," the former Special Forces warrior said.
The Army has destroyed two stockpiles -- the Johnston Atoll depot 800 miles southwest of Hawaii and the weapons once stored at Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Ground."
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"If there was a need for it, we'd make a round," Barnett said. In Anniston, Ala.
In 1997, the U.S. However, he said he would have no qualms turning the base's manufacturing operations back to building lethal rounds. Mortars built along the arsenal's assembly lines provide high-intensity or infrared light for soldiers at night.
Demand for the arsenal's ordnance continues at a strong pace, as soldiers will continue their deployment for the near future in Afghanistan and Iraq. Kentucky's Blue Grass Army Depot stores conventional ammunition and handles other maintenance operations. - During the Cold War, the Pine Bluff Arsenal held the secrets of the nation's stockpile chemical and biological weapons against prying Soviet eyes. Each round bears a serial number starting with the letters "PB. The Army and private contractors face a 2017 deadline set by Congress to eliminate the weapons.com/
WHITE HALL, Ark. That is expected to take 18 to 24 months to complete.S. Depots holding the weapons in Colorado, Indiana, Oregon and Utah will "go away" when destruction operations end, said Greg Mahall, a spokesman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency.
All those factors make the arsenal a promising site for future projects, Barnett said. Now, arsenal commander Col., workers on the Army base also overhaul combat vehicles and recycle missiles.
The rounds drop into metal containers and workers use a hydraulic lift Driving System Suppliers to place them onto pallets. "Soldiers deserve the very best and that's what they're getting from us. military. At a manufacturing line making infrared mortars, workers screw together and attach fins to the 30-pound rounds. While many of those destroying the weapons likely will leave the area after cleanup operations end in the coming years, the colonel said he wants to attract other work for the arsenal's production lines. The Food and Drug Administration's National Center for Toxicological Research, a separate operation, sits next to the arsenal in the neighboring town of Jefferson."
The arsenal also refurbishes and maintains shelters and equipment used to decontaminate people and equipment after an attack with chemical or biological weapons. About 2,500 people work at the base, including the contractors destroying the base's chemical weapons. Bill Barnett worries about disclosing how many gas masks and mortar rounds workers can produce in a day."
As the arsenal prepares to eliminate its remaining mustard gas, the base about 35 miles southeast of Little Rock finds its mission changing as the United States destroys the weapons it and other eight other arsenal sites once housed. "It's a very unique environment. While some only housed the biological and chemical agents, other bases now manufacture weapons or other items needed as the nation fights two other wars abroad.
The remaining bases have other specialties.
Barnett, an Army ranger who served in the desert during the Persian Gulf war, said he likely used some of the smoke rounds made at the Pine Bluff Arsenal during the war. Over time, the arsenal began manufacturing chemical and biological weapons, storing them in earthen igloos that also housed German rockets studied after World War II.
In Pine Bluff, the 13,000-acre arsenal that once housed some of the Army's deadliest weapons now manufactures nonlethal ordnance.apparatus-instrument."
"To me, it's like my signature, his signature, her signature -- we take a lot of pride in that," said Roch Byrne, director of ammunition operations at the arsenal.Tag:apparatus instrument,weapon-less future,Chemical weapon
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The Army announced earlier this month it had finished destroying the 275,000 gallons of VX nerve agent stored at its Newport Chemical Depot and a contractor was beginning work to dismantle and remove the equipment used to destroy it.
The Pine Bluff Arsenal, conceived a month before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, had the task of building grenades and bombs for the growing U. "We're obviously always out there looking to expand the market if we can do that