http://[url]http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=105001780[/url]
[b][green]GREEN GUNS[/green]
Bite Your Tungsten[/b]
The Army moves toward environmentally sensitive ammo.
[i]BY BRENDAN MINITER
Monday, March 18, 2002 12:01 a.m.[/i]
If the war goes on for a few more years, America's enemies will no longer have to eat lead.
That's because Military planners have spent the past eight years developing an environmentally sensitive bullet. The push to adopt green ideas within the military is decades old. But since the whole point of weapons is to kill people and blow up, burn down and destroy things, can military planners really protect the birds and the trees without endangering the servicemen who protect all of us?
"It is a balance," admits Col. Stanley H. Lillie, who runs the U.S. Army Environmental Center. Cleanup costs and other environmental pressures are a driving force in the greening of the military, he says. But, he argues, environmental and military goals go hand in hand. "A good environment"--meaning a clean one--"is also good for training," and the Army wants to be a good steward of its lands, he says. After all, it's the soldiers and their families who have to live on Army bases.
That's where the new lead-free bullets come in. U.S. forces fire off hundreds of millions of rounds every year, almost entirely in target practice. Most servicemen have to qualify with a rifle at least once a year; others head to the range more often; and, of course, a lot of ammo is expended testing new weapons and modifying old ones. All this leaves millions of lead bullets in the ground.
It's getting to the point where concern over spent ammunition risks hindering military readiness. The Environmental Protection Agency took the unprecedented step in 1997 of ordering a halt to live-fire training and an immediate cleanup of spent ordnance in Camp Edward, Mass. The range reopened in 1999 with "green ammo"--bullets that have a tungsten-alloy core rather than a lead one. But while it was closed National Guard units and others had to travel to New Jersey or elsewhere for live-fire training.
In Hawaii's Makua Valley, military officials had an outright firefight on their hands. A few years ago some ordnance landed outside the intended impact zone and started a fire that burned hundreds of acres. An environmental outfit called EarthJustice (motto: "Because the earth needs a good lawyer") filed suit and won a temporary injunction to block live-fire training in the valley.
That nonsense came to an end shortly after Sept. 11. "Our president gave the U.S. military a two-word order: 'Be ready,' " Maj. Gen. James Dubik told reporters. "Our needs to train in Makua Valley is urgent and immediate." EarthJustice has settled the suit, and live-fire exercises have resumed.
Soon all the rounds all branches of the U.S. military fire will be "green ammo." That concerns some critics, who note that China, a potential adversary, is the world's largest producer of tungsten. Officials point out the metal--which is also used in light-bulb filaments--is mined in North America, Europe and throughout Africa as well as Asia. Besides, they say, in the event of a tungsten shortage, the switch back to lead wouldn't be difficult.
[red](cont...)[/red]