Chemical security

DARPA’s New Method For Demilitarising Chemical Weapons

Chemical weapons have been banned under international law since the 1990s, but many countries still hold on to pretty large stores of some of the deadliest agents known to man. Hundreds of Syrian civilian died in a gruesome attack in 2013, which prompted the intervention of international bodies in order to eliminate the country’s stockpiles. By August 2014, some 600 tonnes of chemical agents were destroyed aboard the US Navy container ship MV Cape Ray.

Destroying – or demilitarising – chemical weapons, however, is no easy task. “The Cape Ray did a great job achieving its objective, which was to demilitarize Syria’s chemical weapons,” said chemist and DARPA programme manager Dr Tyler McQuade. “The downside is, the weapons had to be transported a long distance, and we did the demilitarization on the Mediterranean. If anything had gone wrong, it could have been really horrible for the local environment.”