http://deseretnews.com/dn/print/1,1442,635187112,00.html
Deseret Morning News, Friday, February 24, 2006
Weapons detector to undergo Utah tests
By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News
A mobile detector system
designed to warn soldiers if they are under invisible chemical,
biological or radiological arms attack is about to face some tough
tests.
  Deseret Morning News graphic |
The tests won't come in Iraq with
real weapons. They will come in the Utah desert, with what the Army
says are relatively safe materials designed to simulate characteristics
of real, deadly chemical and germ weapons.
Dugway Proving Ground this week
published a legal notice in Utah newspapers saying it performed a
required environmental assessment of the planned tests, and found they
will have "no significant impact" on people or the environment.
It will accept public comments on
that report and its findings until March 20 — and then tests are
scheduled for April on the detector system with a long name: the Joint
Services Lightweight Nuclear Biological Chemical Reconnaissance System.
Documents say the tests — which
worry at least one local watchdog group — are designed to challenge the
detector "with real-world threat scenarios using realistically
delivered chemical warfare agent simulants and agent of biological
origin simulants."
Last July, the Deseret Morning
News reported that Pentagon inspectors were complaining that several
similar detection systems now in use might not actually work or survive
in contaminated areas that they are designed to detect.
The Morning News obtained reports
by the U.S. Army Audit Agency complaining that several such detection
systems either had not been rigorously tested in tough battlefield
conditions, or had failed such tests earlier conducted at Dugway.
In this new round of tests, Dugway documents say the exercises will be "under intense, realistic threat conditions."
Three-man crews riding either in
specially equipped Air Force Humvees or eight-wheel Marines Light
Armored Vehicles are scheduled to traverse 14,000 acres of test areas
within the Rhode Island-sized base to determine how well the system can
detect and handle simulated chemical and germ attacks — and map
boundaries of their contamination.
Some attacks are designed to be smaller, as if detonated and spread by an improvised explosive device along a road.
Some larger attacks are planned,
as if they were delivered by an artillery barrage. (Some preset
explosive detonations will simulate that).
And some "extra large" releases
are planned, as if delivered by a Scud missile. A specially equipped
helicopter spreading chemicals is designed to simulate that.
Documents say up to 30,000 pounds of C-4 explosives will be used in tests to vaporize and spread the simulants.
The Army banned using real
chemical or germ weapons in open-air tests at Dugway after a 1969 nerve
gas accident there killed 6,000 sheep in nearby Skull Valley (and may
have caused long-term health problems for some ranchers). So it will
use in these tests what the Army says are safer "simulants."
That includes the biological
agent Bacillus subtilis (Nigervariety). Medical texts say it is not
considered dangerous to healthy adults but could cause infections for
those who are sick or weak. About 16 pounds of it are planned to be
used in tests, and are planned to be spread by a crop duster or a
ground-based agricultural sprayer.
Chemical arms simulants will
include methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil), triethyl phosphate (used
in production of some resins and pesticides), acetic acid (the compound
that gives vinegar its sour taste and odor), polymethyl methacrylate (a
clear plastic) and diethyl malonate (a plasticizer for polymers).
Plans call for up to 28,500 liters of those chemicals to be spread by explosives or helicopter.
One watchdog group says it is
concerned about the tests, mainly because of past secretive experiments
(and accidents) that proved to be more dangerous than the Army
disclosed at the time.
"We are always concerned if you
stick soldiers and sailors in tests that might adversely affect their
health and welfare, now or in the future. We would have to do some
further review before we consider it benign," said Steve Erickson,
director of the Citizens Education Project and a longtime critic of
Dugway.
"We want troops to be well-protected if they are put in harm's way, but this raises red flags that remind us of atomic veterans and Project SHAD (an at-sea series of tests that hit target ships with chemical and germ agents)," incidents where supposedly safe tests hurt or sickened soldiers who participated, he said.
E-mail: lee@desnews.com
© 2006 Deseret News Publishing Company
