DOD RELEASES MUNITIONS ACTION PLAN
April 24, 2002
The Department of Defense today announced the release of the Munitions Action Plan, a critical element of the Pentagon’s ongoing commitment to the readiness of America’s men and women in uniform and effective stewardship of the environment.
The goal of the plan is to provide a comprehensive and consistent approach to managing military munitions across the munitions life cycle. DoD leadership will use the plan to protect and enhance force readiness, maximize explosive safety and minimize the environmental impact of military weapons. “Equipping and training our armed forces with the right munitions — for the right mission, at the right time — is central to our ability to fight and win the nation’s wars,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. “Implementing the Munitions Action Plan will improve munitions management and is an important step in our efforts to address the challenges to force readiness.”
The plan applies only to conventional military munitions and contains 29 specific objectives that are designed to result in faster, better and more cost-effective accomplishments of common goals for the military during what is referred to as the “munitions life cycle.”
The “munitions life cycle” consists of five phases:
- Acquiring and producing munitions
- Using munitions on test and training ranges
- Managing the stockpile of military munitions
- Demilitarizing (making into scrap) excess, obsolete or unserviceable munitions
- Dealing with munitions left on ranges no longer operational
Created by DoD’s Operational and Environmental Executive Committee for Munitions, comments and input from the public regulators were considered in the plans’s earliest development stages. The plan has been distributed to a wide variety of public and regulatory stakeholders whose input will be reflected in future, updated versions of the document. Full text of the Munitions Action Plan may be found at https://www.denix.osd.mil/mapcrd.