This appears to be the key to me. While it's true that chemical units do decontamination work, that is not all that this says.
A "practical training schedule" means that they are going ou to do some actual detecting. To do actual detecting, they must have the chemicals on hand for the troops to practice on.
That means, at a minimum, that they had small quantitities for training their troops.
Such small quantities would be deadly in the hands of a terrorist delivery system.
(T6 will correct me if I'm wrong.)
That is absolutely correct XZINS. The Applied training means exactly that they were physically detecting these Chemical Weapon Agents since they do have “Theoretical training” as well where they prepare their troops to do the “Applied Training” with real Chemical Weapon Agent.