Posted on 05/12/2021 3:37:00 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
The US military delivered the last of its artillery shells carrying VX for destruction this week.
VX is a highly lethal and persistent nerve agent outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention.
The US hopes to eliminate all of its chemical weapons by the end of 2023 to meet its treaty goals.
The US military delivered the last batch of the nation's stockpiled 155 mm projectiles carrying VX nerve agent for destruction this week, according to the US Army Chemical Materials Activity.
Blue Grass Chemical Activity crews moved the last of the nearly 13,000 projectiles filled with the highly lethal and persistent VX nerve agent and stored at Blue Grass Army Depot to the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant, which has already destroyed 133.2 tons of chemical agent since 2019.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Wonder where are the binary agents? Are they covered by the treaty as they are not explicitly chemical agents in binary form?
Hopefully they dropped em off at the white house. Biden could put some on his pudding.
Should this really be in the news?? Not if I was President.
Russia is laughing, along with China, Iran, etc., etc.
I’m sure the CCP will have no problem destroying them in a timely manner. ;) /s
“Should this really be in the news?? Not if I was President.”
It’s not a secret. They’ve been doing it for years.
I think all the VX rounds we had in the 70’s and 80’s were binary. When I was in the 155mm SP Artillery, 13E Fire Direction Center, the only thing we needed to know about firing chemical rounds was the weight variation from the standard “95 lb. 4 square” of the HE rounds.
I could think of better uses for it. Does that make me a bad person?
Well, wind direction would have been useful too...
Prevailing winds in the Fulda Gap were from west to east. For firing data, we used Met +VE (Meteorology report plus Velocity Error) for registration.
Well, I’m sure the Chinese are doing the same... /s
I think all the VX rounds we had in the 70’s and 80’s were binary.
= = =
If they are binary, are the components configured in the same round, or put together before firing?
If binary, the components are fairly tame, and destruction should be clean and easy.
And if binary, the agent is NOT VX, yet.
The concept of the binary rounds was to have the containers with the two components to break when the round was fired and be mixed into VX by the spin of the shell enroute to its target. At least that was the theory I recall being told. We never fired any, thus I don’t know. I don’t think the Army wanted to have one explode on the Grafenwoehr impact area or the impact areas at Ft. Knox and Ft. Hood.
I think the problem rounds at Blue Grass Depot were old ones prior to the binary ones. Seems that I once read they were from the late 40s and 50s.
Nasty stuff.
I’m glad we’ve never had to find out. I had a great uncle who died in the 1920’s after being gassed while serving in France with the 42d Infantry Division win WWI.
I was part of a team to work out the details with the Soviets to demil/destroy our respective stockpiles.
Sorry to hear about your great uncle - they didn't know it at the time but Mustard (HD) is a very active carcinogen - so you can maybe survive the blistering and the blinding - but it will kill you in the end.
I don’t envy you being on that detail. I’m guessing that all went well with it.
Ping
L
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