EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE FORCE
STILL GOING SMALLER All too regularly, a chemical munition will be unearthed during construction at a current or former military site, or warfighters will encounter one while forward deployed. Tere needs to be a simpler, less expensive way to deal with these situations than having to ship and set up the CRaCANS in a location that may be on the other side of the country or the other side of the world. Tat capability, now under development, is called Blackdog. It has two components. Te first is a mechanism called Viper, which drills into the munition and drains out the chemical agent for neutralization. Te second is the Polycat system, which neutral- izes the drained agent in a bag. Each system can fit inside a single backpack and can be man-carried to the discovered munition.
Te Viper consists of mechanical drill with a vacuum-attached self-sealing probe that punctures the munition and enters the chamber containing the agent. Te drill is controlled by a sophis- ticated mechanical control unit (MCU), which is wirelessly attached to a display tablet and a camera to allow for the process to be conducted by field operators at a safe distance. Te MCU monitors the depth of the drill and operates the drill through a cable link. Once inside the munition, it draws a sample of the liquid for testing through a small pipe attached to the probe. If the sample tests positive as a chemical agent, it is time to pull the Polycat system out of its backpack.
While still under development, Polycat will be combined with the Viper, which is already used in the field, to form the combined Blackdog chemical agent destruction system. Te hose used for sampling the munition will be attached to a 15 kilogram “kill bag” containing an absorbent powder that neutralizes the agent. Te bag can neutralize up to six kilograms of agent. Alternatively, responders can use a 14.5 kilogram “kill drum” that also neutral- izes up to six kilograms of agent. Complete neutralization takes seven days, although most of the agent is neutralized in the first hour, making it safe for warfighters or a field response team to place the container in the back of a truck.
Working in tandem, Viper and Polycat give warfighters and field response teams the ability to carry the system to a remote location in the back of a vehicle or on their backs, set it up in minutes, sample the contents of the munition and, if positive, have the agent in a bag or barrel being neutralized in an hour, then move on.
Blackdog is the result of a joint industry call from the U.K. Ministry of Defence and the U.S. Department of Defense in 2018. With most of the world’s stockpiles of chemical agents
eliminated under the Chemical Weapons Convention, they focused on the need to respond to small caches of chemical agent found in munitions or in illicit laboratories and production facil- ities. Te U.K. companies, Polycat, Ltd. and Valent Applications Ltd., were selected to collaborate on a solution. Tey teamed up with DEVCOM CBC to take advantage of the center’s 100+ years of chemical agent experience and live agent testing facilities.
In July 2024, DEVCOM CBC scientists concluded a successful initial round of bench scale testing with live agent at the milli- gram level. Polycat, Ltd. and DEVCOM CBC plan to soon scale up to testing in three-liter quantities to further prove the concept.
For DEVCOM CBC lead project manager Laura Graham, this is an exciting development project. “Nothing in this niche exists, and it will be a valuable new tool for our field response teams,” she said. “Te spirit of collaboration with the Polycat and Valent teams has been terrific, and we are all very excited about it.”
AND SMALLER YET Still smaller is the thermite bag system. It can fit into a single peli- can case and weighs 85 pounds. Te concept behind it is simple; place a chemical munition found in the field inside a double bag with thermite grenades, fire them and the thermal reaction destroys the agent in the munition. DEVCOM CBC is perform- ing advanced development and testing on the prototype originally developed by Southwest Research Institute, a non-profit research and development organization in San Antonio, Texas.
Te double bag arrangement safely contains the temperature and expanding gases because the outer bag is reinforced with alumi- num sheeting similar to a fire suit. Te heat and pressure of the detonation decomposes the molecular structure of the agent, leaving inert remains that can be disposed of at a commercial disposal facility.
Once fielded, the thermite bag system will provide commanders in the field with a simple and effective option for field destruc- tion of individual chemical munitions and small chemical agent caches with a minimal logistics burden. After destruction, the intact bags can be placed in a container and then into the back of a vehicle for disposal. Te threat is disabled and the unit can keep moving.
DEVCOM CBC began advanced development in 2023, and it is currently at the testing stage. Te development team is ensuring that the thermite bag can fully contain the thermal reaction. Te next steps are to test the effectiveness of agent destruction, starting
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