![]() The projectiles and mortars comprised about 8.5% of the country's original chemical weapons stockpile of 30,610 tons of agent. In southern Colorado, workers at the Army Pueblo Chemical Depot started destroying the weapons in 2016, and on June 22 completed their mission of neutralizing an entire cache of about 2,600 tons of mustard blister agent. ![]() Despite their use being subsequently banned by the Geneva Convention, countries continued to stockpile the weapons until the treaty calling for their destruction.įILE - In this photo provided by the US Army, steam from the pollution abatement system rises from a smokestack at the Army's disposal plant as a rocket is destroyed at the nation's first chemical weapons incinerator Aug. is officially underscoring that these types of weapons are no longer acceptable in the battlefield and sending a message to the handful of countries that haven't joined the agreement, military experts say.Ĭhemical weapons were first used in modern warfare in World War I, where they were estimated have killed at least 100,000. The munitions being destroyed in Kentucky are the last of 51,000 M55 rockets with GB nerve agent - a deadly toxin also known as sarin - that have been stored at the depot since the 1940s.īy destroying the munitions, the U.S. ![]() 30 deadline to eliminate its remaining chemical weapons under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997 and was joined by 193 countries. "Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile - bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons." "For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate our chemical weapons stockpile," President Joe Biden said in a statement released by the White House. ![]() ![]() Workers at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky destroyed rockets filled with GB nerve agent, completing a decadeslong campaign to eliminate a stockpile that by the end of the Cold War totaled more than 30,000 tons. The last of the United States' declared chemical weapons stockpile was destroyed at a sprawling military installation in eastern Kentucky, the White House announced Friday, a milestone that closes a chapter of warfare dating back to World War I. ![]()
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