United States chemical weapons program
The United States
History
The U.S. had participated in the formulations of the
World War I
In World War I, the U.S. established its own chemical weapons research facility and produced its own chemical munitions.[2] It produced 5,770 metric tons of these weapons, including 1,400 metric tons of phosgene and 175 metric tons of mustard gas. This was about 4% of the total chemical weapons produced for that war and only just over 1% of the era's most effective weapon, mustard gas. (U.S. troops suffered less than 6% of gas casualties.)[3] The U.S. also established the First Gas Regiment, which left Washington, D.C., on Christmas Day, 1917, and arrived at the front in May 1918.[2] During its time in France, the First Gas Regiment used phosgene in a number of attacks.[4]
The United States began large-scale production of an improved
After the war, the U.S. was party to the
World War II
Chemical weapons were not used by the U.S. or the other Allies during World War II; however, quantities of such weapons were deployed to Europe for use in case Germany initiated chemical warfare. At least one accident occurred: On the night of December 2, 1943, German Junkers Ju 88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships – among them John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it – which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment not consistent with those suffering from exposure and immersion. According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen" out of 628 mustard gas military casualties.[Navy 2006][Niderost] Civilian casualties were not recorded. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war. Large quantities of chemical weapons were also deployed to India, from where they could have been delivered to Japan by B-29 bombers. At the end of the war, over 50,000 mustard gas bombs, 10,000 phosgene bombs and other chemical munitions were dumped into deep water in the Bay of Bengal.[7]
The US military conducted experiments with chemical weapons like lewisite and mustard gas on Japanese American, Puerto Rican and African Americans in the US military in World War II to see how non-white races would react to being mustard gassed, with Rollin Edwards describing it as "It felt like you were on fire, Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape." and "It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted". White soldiers were not experimented on.[8]
Cold War
After the war, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing three new
The U.S. also investigated a wide range of possible nonlethal,
The growing protests over the U.S. role in the Vietnam War, the use of
Renunciation
On November 25, 1969, President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare.[14] He issued a unilateral decree halting production and transport of chemical weapons which remains in effect. From 1967 to 1970 in Operation CHASE, the U.S. disposed of chemical weapons by sinking ships laden with the weapons in the deep Atlantic. The U.S. began to research safer disposal methods for chemical weapons in the 1970s, destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration at Rocky Mountain Arsenal and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralization at Tooele Army Depot and Rocky Mountain Arsenal.[15]
The U.S. entered the Geneva Protocol in 1975 at the same time it ratified the Biological Weapons Convention. This was the first operative international treaty on chemical weapons that the United States was party to.
In May 1991, President George H. W. Bush unilaterally committed the United States to destroying all chemical weapons and renounced the right to chemical weapon retaliation. In 1993, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which required the destruction of all chemical weapon agents, dispersal systems, and chemical weapons production facilities by April 2012. In 1997, the United States formally agreed to destroy its stockpile by ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention. The international treaty bans the use of all chemical weapons and aims to eliminate them throughout the world.
Decommissioning and destruction
The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s, removing some outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of BZ beginning in 1988. In June 1990, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Convention came into effect. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan made an agreement with Chancellor Helmut Kohl to remove the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons from Germany. As part of Operation Steel Box, in July 1990, two ships were loaded with over 100,000 shells containing GB and VX taken from U.S. Army weapons storage depots such as Miesau and then-classified ammunition FSTS (forward storage/transportation sites) and transported from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, a 46-day nonstop journey.[16]
The U.S. prohibition on the transport of chemical weapons as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention meant that destruction facilities had to be constructed at each of the U.S. nine storage facilities.
Congress established the
The U.S. met the first three of the treaty's four deadlines, destroying 45% of its stockpile of chemical weapons by 2007. By January 2012, the final treaty deadline, the United States had destroyed 89.75% of the original stockpile.[18] Only the stockpiles in Kentucky and Colorado remained. The final chemical weapon was not destroyed until July 7, 2023.[19][20][21]
Treaties
The United States was a party to some of the earliest modern chemical weapons ban treaties, the
Chemical weapons disposal
At the time that the chemical weapons treaty came in force, the U.S. stored its chemical weapons at eight U.S. Army installations within the Continental United States (CONUS). The stockpiles were maintained in exclusion zones[22] at the following Department of Army installations (the percentages shown are reflections of amount by weight):
- Tooele Army Depot (TEAD), Utah (42.3% of total stockpile)
- Pine Bluff Arsenal (PBA), Arkansas (12%)
- Umatilla Depot Activity(UMDA), Oregon (11.6%)
- Pueblo Chemical Depot (PCD), Colorado (9.9%)
- Anniston Army Depot (ANAD), Alabama (7.1%)
- Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), Maryland (5%)
- Newport Army Ammunition Plant(NAAP), Indiana (3.9%)
- Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD), Kentucky (1.6%).
The remaining 6.6% was located on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
According to the
The original commitment in Phase III required all countries to have 45 percent of the chemical stockpiles destroyed by April 2004. Anticipating the failure to meet this deadline, the Bush administration in September 2003 requested a new deadline of December 2007 for Phase III and announced a probable need for an extension until April 2012 for Phase IV, total destruction (requests for deadline extensions cannot formally be made until 12 months before the original deadline). This extension procedure spelled out in the treaty has been utilized by other countries, including Russia and the unnamed "state party". Although April 2012 is the latest date allowed by the treaty, the U.S. also noted that this deadline may not be met due to environmental challenges and the U.S. decision to destroy leaking individual chemical shells before bulk storage chemical weapons.[25][26]
The primary remaining chemical weapon storage facilities in the U.S. became Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado and Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky.[27] These two facilities held 10.25% of the U.S. 1997 declared stockpile and destruction operations are under the Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives.[28] Other non-stockpile agents (usually test kits) or old buried munitions are occasionally found and are sometimes destroyed in place. Pueblo and Blue Grass constructed plants to test novel methods of disposal.[29] Chemical stockpile destruction in Colorado was initiated in March 2015 by the Explosive Destruction System located on the Pueblo Chemical Depot. The destruction facility for Pueblo began disposal operations in September 2016, while the destruction facility for Blue Grass began disposal operations in June 2019. Both Pueblo and Blue Grass were scheduled to complete by the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty commitment of Sept. 30, 2023. U.S. Public Law mandates stockpile destruction by Dec. 31, 2023.
In 1988–1990, the destruction of munitions containing
See also
- List of U.S. chemical weapons topics
- M23 chemical mine
- Rocky Mountain Arsenal
- United States and weapons of mass destruction
- Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives
References
- ^ "Facts: U.S. Chemical Demilitarization Program Overview - Program Executive Office Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternative". www.peoacwa.army.mil. 2023-07-07. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
- ^ a b Gross, Daniel A. (Spring 2015). "Chemical Warfare: From the European Battlefield to the American Laboratory". Distillations. 1 (1): 16–23. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
- ^ a b c Hilmas, Corey J., Jeffery K. Smart, and Benjamin A. Hill, “History of Chemical Warfare”, Chapter 2 in Lenhart, Martha K., Editor-in Chief (2008), Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare, Borden Institute: GPO, pg 40.
- ^ Addison, James Thayer (1919). The story of the First gas regiment. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin company. pp. 50, 146, 158, 168. Retrieved 14 April 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-8493-1434-6.
- ISBN 0-8047-2619-1.
- ^ "Chemical Weapon Munitions Dumped at Sea: An Interactive Map". August 2017.
- ^ Dickerson, Caitlin (22 June 2015). "Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested Troops By Race". NPR.
- ^ "Is Military Research Hazardous To Veterans' Health? Lessons Spanning Half A Century". December 8, 1994. Archived from the original on August 13, 2006. Report for the Committee On Veterans' Affairs
- ^ 007 Incapacitating Agents
- ^ Julian Ryall (10 June 2010). "Did the US wage germ warfare in Korea?". London: Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
- ^ "North Korea Persists in 54 year-old Disinformation". US Department of State. 9 Nov 2005. Archived from the original on 2005-11-12. Retrieved 2005-11-12.
- ^ Hilmas, Op. cit., pg 59.
- ^ Biological Weapons Convention
- ^ "45 Percent Chemical Weapons Convention Milestone". Archived from the original on 8 June 2011.
- ISBN 1559632356), accessed October 25, 2008.
- ^ "Department of Defense Report Chemical Demilitarization Program Semi-Annual Report to Congress (PDF)" (PDF). Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives. May 2009.
- ^ a b c Army Agency Completes Mission to Destroy Chemical Weapons Archived 2012-09-15 at the Wayback Machine, USCMA, January 21, 2012
- ^ a b "U.S. destroys last of its declared chemical weapons, closing a deadly chapter dating to World War I". AP News. 2023-07-07. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
- ^ a b "US Completes Chemical Weapons Stockpile Destruction Operations". U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
- ^ a b "OPCW confirms: All declared chemical weapons stockpiles verified as irreversibly destroyed". OPCW. Retrieved 2023-07-08.
- ^ "Public Law 99-145 Attachment E" (PDF).
- ^ "United States Seeks Extension for Chemical Weapons Destruction - US Department of State". Archived from the original on 2008-05-18. Retrieved 2013-09-11.
- ^ U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, http://www.cma.army.mil/ Archived 2006-04-27 at the Wayback Machine, accessed September 28, 2007
- ^ Chemical Weapons Convention
- ^ "Statement by Ambassador Eric M. Javits United States Delegation to the Eighth Conference of States Parties of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 20 October 2003" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on September 10, 2008. Retrieved September 11, 2013.
- ^ Chemical Weapons United States
- ^ "Closing U.S. Chemical Warfare Agent Disposal Facilities". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2013-06-25.
- ^ "ACWA Program Timeline". Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives. 30 November 2012.
- ^ "U.S. destroys last of its declared chemical weapons". CBS. 7 July 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
- ^ Johnson, Stu. "The U.S. has destroyed the last of its declared chemical weapons stockpile". NPR.