Stockpile

From Page 10 hundreds of chemical weapons attacks linked to the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Nearly 100,000 people were killed by chemical weapons in World War I, according to the United Nations. Since then, the weapons have been responsible for at least 1 million casualties worldwide, the U.N. says.

The elimination process has been arduous, officials said. The munitions contain explosives and chemical agents, and each can become unstable over time.

Legislation required the Defense Department to determine ways to destroy the weapons and agents without burning them, which lawmakers and advocates feared could pose environmental hazards and have adverse health effects on people living near the facilities where the work was completed.

“These weapons were not designed to be taken apart,”

Kingston Reif, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control, told reporters Monday. “They had to be painstakingly disassembled in reverse.”

The work was done at two facilities, the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. Robots were used to reduce risk to workers.

In Colorado, mustard agents were drained from shells, diluted in hot water and other elements, and then introduced to microbes

NON-DENOMINATIONAL that broke them down further, said Michael Abaie, who oversaw the disposal program. The process is akin to using bacteria in septic system, he said.

At the Kentucky depot, nerve agents were mixed with hot water and caustic soda to reduce their toxicity before being shipped to another facility for incineration, Abaie said.

Some weapons, mostly older mustard rounds, had solidified and couldn’t be drained. They were inserted into a detonation chamber, where the material

NON-DENOMINATIONAL was heated, rendering gas safe enough to be purified and released, according to Abaie and an Army webpage detailing the process.

Over the next three to four years, the sites will undergo decontamination before being decommissioned and demolished, officials said.

“While the [weapons’] destruction is complete,”Abaie said, “we still have much more work to do.”

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From Page 6 for MG23 was not limited to a small group of planners, rather it was a whole of force effort taking heed to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Jr.’s directive to “Go Faster.” When he took command in October 2021, Minihan propelled the command toward droves of unconventional but risk-informed approaches, guiding the way AMC projects mobility forces across the globe.

As Minihan concluded his visit in California, the Travis team spread across the globe supporting MG23 and the air mobility mission.

SrA Alexander Merchak/U.S. Air Force photos LEFT: U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan speaks at an all-call amidst Mobility Guardian 2023 at Travis Air Force Base, July 11.

FAR LEFT: U.S. Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, Air Mobility Command commander, fires an M4 with 5.56 simunition training rounds during a visit amidst Mobility Guardian 2023 at Travis Air Force Base, July 11.