Conventional Ammunition Demilitarization (Demil) - A Growing Challenge

The current demil stockpile is estimated at almost 480,000 short tons of conventional ammunition and more than 300,000 missiles and missile components. At an approximate cost of 1,800 per ton to demil this stockpile with future additions or generations, the demil liability to DOD is almost 2 billion through the current budget and program years. At the current funding level, the stockpile, instead of getting smaller, continues to grow. Most of the demil stockpile is stored and maintained by the U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command JMC at its major depots and ammunition plants, where they also receive, store and outload ammunition in direct support of the warfighter. The presence of demil stocks in the same place as the critical mission and training stocks results in storage inefficiencies, increased costs and decreased opportunity to apply Lean Six Sigma LSS principles to improve efficiency. In addition, under the Base Realignment and Closure program, the JMC lost a significant amount of covered storage space without a corresponding decrease in stored stockpile. Demil is more critical than ever to ensure that excess, obsolete and unserviceable munitions items do not consume valuable covered storage space. In this regard, the JMC is the Demil Programs major customer. In fact, for every ton of conventional ammunition demilitarized, approximately 7 to 9 square feet of covered storage space can be opened to store ammunition required by the warfighter.