The last US-declared stockpile of chemical weapons was destroyed at a military facility in eastern Kentucky, Republican Senate Chairman Mitch McConnell announced Friday, a milestone closing a chapter of warfare dating back to World War I.
According to the Department of Defense, the last M55 missile filled with the nerve agent sarin was destroyed at the Blue Grass Army Depot on Friday.
Depot workers are conducting a decades-long campaign to clear a chemical weapons cache that totaled more than 30,000 tons by the end of the Cold War.
“Chemical weapons are responsible for some of the most horrifying episodes of human loss,” McConnell said in a statement. “Though the use of these deadly warfare agents will always remain a blot on history, today our nation has finally fulfilled our promise to rid our arsenal of this evil.”
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President Biden said in a statement, “Successive administrations have decided that these weapons should never be developed or used again, and this achievement not only confirms our long-standing commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, but also marks the first time that an international body has been established.” has demonstrated the destruction of an entire class of declared weapons of mass destruction.” He also thanked “the thousands of Americans who, for more than three decades, have devoted their time and talent to this noble and challenging mission.”
Mr. Biden also urged nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention to do so “so that the global chemical weapons ban can reach its full potential.” And he said, “Russia and Syria should return to compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and their admit to undeclared programs that committed brazen atrocities and attacks.”
Army Minister Christine Wormuth said in a statement: “After years of planning, design, testing and deployment, these obsolete weapons have been safely disposed of. The Army is proud to have played a key role in making this demilitarization possible.”
The weapons destruction is a major turning point for Richmond, Kentucky and Pueblo, Colorado, where an Army depot last month destroyed the last of its chemical warfare agents. It is also a pivotal moment for arms control efforts worldwide.
The US was given a September 30 deadline to eliminate its remaining chemical weapons under the International Chemical Weapons Convention, which came into force in 1997 and to which 193 countries had signed. The munitions destroyed in Kentucky are the last of 51,000 M55 missiles containing sarin, a deadly poison also known as GB nerve agent. The missiles have been stored at the depot since the 1940s.
By destroying the munitions, the US is officially underscoring that these types of weapons are no longer acceptable on the battlefield and sending a signal to the few countries that have not joined the deal, military experts say.
Friday’s announcement came as the Biden administration also decided to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions, a weapon that two-thirds of NATO countries have banned because it can cause many civilian casualties. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Ukraine had pledged to use the munitions — bombs that open in mid-air and release numerous smaller bomblets — carefully.
Chemical weapons were first used in modern warfare during World War I, and it is estimated that at least 100,000 people died. Despite their subsequent ban by the Geneva Convention, countries continued to stockpile weapons until the treaty called for their destruction.
In 1986, Congress ordered the destruction of US chemical weapons stockpiles, and the US first began destroying those stockpiles on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific in 1990. The U.S. Army used six other locations across the continental U.S., namely in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon, and Utah, to continue stockpile destruction work through 2012.
In southern Colorado, workers at the Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot began destroying the weapons in 2016 and on June 22 completed their mission to neutralize an entire stockpile of about 2,600 tons of mustard blister agent. The projectiles and mortars accounted for about 8.5% of the country’s original chemical weapons stockpile of 30,610 tons of warfare agents.
Nearly 800,000 chemical munitions containing mustard gas have been stored since the 1950s in rows of heavily guarded concrete and dirt bunkers that dot the landscape near a large swath of farmland east of Pueblo.
The destruction of the weapons allays long-standing concerns from citizen leaders in Colorado and Kentucky.
“The (weapons) that were out there posed no threat,” Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar said. But he added, “One always wondered what could happen to them.”
In the 1980s, the community around the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky rose up against the Army’s original plan to incinerate the facility’s 520 tons of chemical weapons, leading to a decades-long dispute over the disposal of those weapons. They were able to stop the proposed incinerator and then, with the help of the legislature, got the army to propose alternative methods of incinerating the weapons.
Craig Williams, who became the leading voice of community opposition and later a partner with political leaders and the military, said residents were concerned about possible toxic pollution from burning the deadly chemical warfare agents.
Williams pointed out that the military had destroyed most of its existing weapons inventories by burning weapons in other, more remote locations, such as Johnston Atoll or a chemical depot in the middle of the Utah desert. But the Kentucky site bordered Richmond and was only a few dozen miles from Lexington, the state’s second largest city.
“A mile from the (planned) smokestack, we had a middle school with over 600 kids,” Williams said.
The Kentucky facility has stored mustard gas and the nerve agents VX and sarin since the 1940s, much of it in rockets and other projectiles. The state’s disposal facility was completed in 2015 and began disposing of weapons in 2019. She uses a process called neutralization to dilute the deadly materials so they can be disposed of safely.
Workers at the Pueblo site used heavy machinery to meticulously and slowly load aging weapons onto conveyor systems that led to safe rooms, where remote-controlled robots did the dirty and dangerous work of removing the toxic mustard substance that was supposed to cause skin blisters and inflammation of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
Robotic devices removed the fuses and detonators from the guns before the mustard was neutralized with hot water and mixed with a caustic solution to prevent the reaction from reversing. The by-product was further broken down in large tanks where microbes floated, and the mortars and projectiles were decontaminated at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius) and recycled as scrap metal.
FILE – In this photo provided by the U.S. Army, workers at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant in Richmond, Kentucky, begin destroying the first missile from a stockpile of M55 missiles containing the nerve agent GB on July 6, 2022 . US Army via AP, file
Problematic munitions that were leaking or overfilled were sent into an armored stainless steel detonation chamber, where they were destroyed at around 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (593 degrees Celsius).
The Colorado and Kentucky sites were the last of several, including Utah and Johnston Atoll, where the country’s chemical weapons had been stored and destroyed.
Kingston Reif, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction and Arms Control, said the destruction of the last US chemical weapon will “close an important chapter in military history that we look forward to closing.”
A canister that contained mustard gas is recycled Thursday, June 8, 2023 at the U.S. Army’s Pueblo Chemical Depot in Pueblo, Colorado. David Zalubowski/AP
Officials say clearing US stockpiles is a big step forward for the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only three countries – Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan – have not signed the treaty. A fourth, Israel, has signed but not ratified the treaty.
However, arms control advocates hope this latest US move could persuade the remaining countries to join. However, they also hope that it could serve as a model for the elimination of other types of weapons.
“It shows that countries really can ban a weapon of mass destruction,” said Paul F. Walker, vice chairman of the Arms Control Association and coordinator of the Chemical Weapons Convention Coalition. “If they want to do it, all they need is political will and a good verification system.”