Chemical warfare has long been banned from the battlefield, but safely eliminating the world’s aging mustard gas, sarin and other chemical weapon stockpiles has proven difficult. Although the U.S. military has been working with Defense Department contractors for more than a decade to develop technology that could neutralize its chemical arsenal without the need for detonation, the Associated Press recently reports that the Army is now proposing the use of explosives to destroy some of the 125,000 weapons being stored at chemical depots in Colorado and Kentucky. This might speed the process some, but the Army acknowledges that it will still miss the 2012 deadline set by Congress in 1997. [More]
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