Sometime this year the Army for the first time may have unfettered use of a $42 million Battle Area Complex for Stryker armored vehicle training at Schofield Barracks, a project that started in 2005.
In the annals of impediments to Army projects, the Schofield "BAX," as it’s known, has had some doozies.
The Army in early 2006 revealed that depleted uranium from a 1960s nuclear weapons system known as the Davy Crockett had unexpectedly cropped up during cleanup of unexploded ordnance on a portion of the BAX.
A short while later the Army said that chemical weapons including chloropicrin, an asphyxiator used during World War I, were also being unearthed from the red dirt of the 1,400-acre range.
Cultural concerns that same year put the brakes on work when an unexploded ordnance removal crew bulldozed across a buffer protecting the Haleauau heiau, pushing debris near the sensitive site.
In 2008 the price tag for the Schofield BAX, to be used for Stryker maneuvers and fire, was $32 million — $10 million less than the $42 million cost given by the service in a November Army-produced news story.
The live-fire range, with roads and stationary and moving targets for Strykers, support vehicles and soldiers on foot, was built in the center of what used to be an old munitions impact area, the Army said, and the discovery of the depleted uranium added to the costs.
So did the discovery of chemical weapons, the Army said.
The Army applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008 for a license to possess the weakly radioactive depleted uranium, found at both Schofield and at the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island, and officials say they are in the final stages of negotiation.
Maureen Conley, an NRC spokeswoman, said she was not aware "of any sort of game-changing issues that remain," adding, "We’re, I think, still actively reviewing (the application), and hopefully at some point in the near future, we’ll have a license."
U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii said in an email Friday that "multiple factors" have delayed construction and use of the BAX, which was completed in February.
"These factors include the discovery of legacy chemical munitions and M101 spotting rounds from the Davy Crockett, which contain depleted uranium; consultation on the identification and protection of cultural resources; the discovery of iwi (bones) and consultation with claimants on treatment and protection, in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act; and Stryker litigation," the garrison said.
Three Native Hawaiian groups filed a lawsuit in 2004 claiming the Stryker Brigade would harm the environment. Four years later the BAX and other Stryker projects started moving again.
The state Office of Hawaiian Affairs separately brought suit against the Army in 2006 over the cultural impacts of the Stryker Brigade.
In November soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry, used a Stryker vehicle 105 mm Mobile Gun System to briefly validate test targeting and tracking systems at the BAX.
It was the first time live rounds had been fired there, the Army said.
The Army also asked for and received NRC waivers to conduct training at the BAX from Jan. 20 through Feb. 20, and again between March and June 30, officials said.
In a Jan. 14 request for a waiver from NRC training and use restrictions, Maj. Gen. Al Aycock with the Army Installation Management Command said vehicles would be restricted to roadways that had been cleared of all radiological material.
All high-explosive rounds were to be fired into an impact area outside the radiological control area.
The Army said it has not requested any additional waivers or extensions since June 30.
Hawaii island peace activist Jim Albertini said in an email in late May that he had been part of an update involving the Army and NRC about the proposed depleted-uranium license in Hawaii.
"It was clear from the phone conference that the NRC will issue a license shortly for the Army to possess DU (depleted uranium) … with little or no restrictions," Albertini said.
The move would allow for the spread of the radiation contamination, he said.
Albertini added that the NRC had "sold out" in its job of protecting the people’s health and safety.
The NRC said in a "fact sheet" for the Hawaii application that the license, once granted, will require the Army to perform specific actions designed to protect public health and safety and the environment. Those include a radiation monitoring program.
The NRC said the depleted uranium is slightly radioactive and poses some chemical toxicity danger to the kidneys if ingested, either through inhaling dust or drinking contaminated water, for example.
But the NRC also said the depleted uranium in Hawaii is on training ranges not accessible to the public, and its high density and large fragment size mean it cannot easily become airborne or move off-site.
About twice the density of lead, depleted uranium was used in M101 spotting, or aiming, rounds for the Davy Crockett, a recoilless rifle system in use from 1960 to 1968 that fired a tactical nuclear warhead. The spotting rounds mimicked the trajectory of the main warhead.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determined that 714 of the spotting rounds containing about 299 pounds of depleted uranium were sent to Hawaii between 1962 and 1968. Evidence of spotting round use was confirmed at Schofield and Pohakuloa.
The Davy Crockett weapons system was classified in the 1960s, and records of its use were closely guarded, the NRC said. Depleted uranium spotting rounds in "licensable" quantities have been found at Army bases in 14 other states.
The discovery of old chemical weapons at Schofield also was expensive for the Army — both in terms of another delay for the BAX and to destroy the rounds.
Through 2008 the Army spent at least $7 million to neutralize phosgene and chloropicrin rounds dating from between World War I and II that were dug up from the impact area — the largest cache of fired but unexploded, or "dud," chemical weapons ever found in the United States.
