NSA Crane, Indiana – Crane Army Ammunition Activity has a mission to recycle as much as possible. It’s good for the environment, supports local and regional businesses, and adds to the CAAA financial bottom line.
Production in the organization’s large machine shop, for instance, creates a lot of metal waste. All the refuse metal is collected and sent to nearby recycling companies on a regular basis.
Demilitarization of munitions provides another source of metals, plastics and chemicals. Those, too, are targeted for reuse.
“We recycle as much metal as we can,” said Tony Barger, a demilitarization commodity manager for CAAA’s Manufacturing and Engineering Directorate. “We work hard to be environmentally responsible, especially when it comes to evaluating items to be (demilitarized). We remove as much metal (from munitions) as we can before sending an item to a detonation or burn range. We often collect a lot of plastic as well.”
Barger added that separating or breaking down munitions by material type creates efficiencies in the recycling process. Aluminum, brass and other metals eventually wind up in other products intended for industrial or consumer use. Selling pre-separated metals also recoups more tax dollars since the downline, private industry recycling process is easier.
“We do everything we can to remove as much of the items that can be recycled versus simply throwing things away in a landfill or otherwise destroying them. We spend a lot of time and effort in doing so because it’s the right thing to do.” Barger said, adding that the CAAA team works hard to be good financial stewards as well as good environmental stewards.
Wadie Shahat, an explosives operator supervisor with CAAA, said the process of demilitarizing munitions creates a lot of different scrap materials. “When we demil old ammunition that’s been sitting in storage magazines for years and years and years, we create a lot of waste that we need to get rid of.”
The process replaces outdated or obsolete munitions and makes room for newer, modern munitions to better support the warfighter.
Shahat added that the demil process includes certification that materials to be recycled are completely stripped of any explosive hazard or source of potential harm.
In FY23, CAAA’s demo operation alone accounted for almost 3,200 tons of metal slated for processing. In FY24, the tonnage number dipped slightly to 2,800 tons of metal, but the overall amount of material collected for recycling has been fairly consistent, if not somewhat increasing, over the past nearly five years that Barger has been involved with the program.
Revenue from the program has been around $370k per year for the past three years, Barger noted. Revenue from the program supports various operations within CAAA and associated depots.
“There’s a need to remove old, possibly unusable, ammunition from our inventories,” Barger added. “Recycling demilitarized products makes sense as the best way to handle the byproducts with the bonus of recouping some tax dollars and helping local businesses along the way.”
Crane Army Ammunition Activity produces and provides conventional munitions in support of U.S. Army and Joint Force readiness. It is part of the Joint Munitions Command and the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which include arsenals, depots, activities and ammunition plants. Established Oct. 1977, it is located on Naval Support Activity Crane.
| Date Taken: | 04.14.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.14.2025 10:11 |
| Story ID: | 495235 |
| Location: | INDIANA, US |
| Web Views: | 21 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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