Munitionsmaker: McAlester Army Ammunition Plant is the nation’s premier producer of bombs, and its largest munitions storage and shipping center
TUCKED away in the middle of the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma is McAlester Army Ammunition Plant–the Defense Department’s premier producer of bombs and the nation’s largest facility for storing and shipping munitions.
Many of the ammunition plant’s 1,300 civilian employees are former or retired military members, and many have children or grandchildren serving in the military. Their support of today’ s warfighters could not be any more enthusiastic.
“I’ve been in combat, and have turned around to pick up ordnance and found there’s nothing there. That’s not a good feeling,” said 61-year-old Vietnam veteran Bob Dean, a forklift operator at MCAAP.
“It’s good to know that someone is 100-percent behind you, and that’s what I want the Soldiers to know about the employees at McAlester Army Ammunition Plant,” he said.
“The ammunition plant exists solely for the benefit of the warfighters,” said plant commander COL Gary B. Carney. “Everything we do is focused on quality. We want to reassure the warfighters that if ordnance comes from McAlester Army Ammunition Plant, they’ve got the best-quality munitions America can produce.”
Army veteran Joe Morrison, an explosive operator at the plant, said his work at the production line now has even more meaning.
“My work is not only for the warfighter, but for something much more personal,” he said. “My son Tim is assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and recently deployed to Iraq.”
MCAAP produces bombs weighing 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 21,000 pounds. Of those bombs, the 2,000 and 5,000 pounders also come as “bunker-buster” penetrators. In addition to the explosive-filled bombs, the plant also produces inert practice bombs.
As of September 2006 the Air Force had dropped 18,737 bombs in support of operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
While the Air Force was making good use of the ammunition plant’ s products, McAlester actively replenished its stockpile in fiscal 2005 with almost 24,000 explosive bombs and more than 74,000 inert bombs.
MCAAP also produces other munitions, ranging from the 5-inch 54-cal. cartridge case to the Joint Stand Off Weapon. The MCAAP mission also includes ammunition and missile renovation, maintenance and demilitarization.
In 1999 the plant teamed up with the Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center in Picatinny, N.J., to perfect a process that melts out TNT from obsolete 105mm and 8-inch projectiles. The result is that MCAAP has melted out and reused more than 18 million pounds of TNT in new bombs, not only protecting the environment by recycling, but also saving taxpayers’ money. A similar process was developed to reclaim specification-grade tritonal, which is a mix of TNT and aluminum powder. More than 4 million pounds of tritonal have been reclaimed since 1999.
To ensure quality, MCAAP employees use state-of-the-art digital X-ray technology and chemical laboratory equipment.
“We X-ray bombs to verify that the explosive fill has no quality defects that would prevent the bomb from functioning as designed,” said quality-assurance specialist Lisa Everett. “The last thing we want is for one of our products to malfunction in combat.”
Items that can be inspected by the X-ray range in size from a small primer up to a 5,000-pound penetrator bomb.
“The X-ray facility ensures the bombs are properly filled, while the explosives lab checks to ensure the explosive material meets specifications in composition, hardness, density and percentage of moisture,” said Brad Black, chief of the Non-destructive Test Division.
The plant has a near-perfect record when it comes to meeting required delivery dates. MCAAP stores and delivers just about any ammunition a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine requires; from 5.56mm rifle rounds to various projectiles, mortars, grenades, rockets, missiles and bombs.
And the Oklahoma plant has shipped more than 41,702 tons of assorted munitions in direct support of operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.
When the munitions and bombs arrive downrange, they usually arrive in containers called “milvans,” each of which can hold up to 16 tons of ammunition. Inside the milvans, munitions are banded to wooden pallets and braced by wood.
Wood pallets are used to ship everything except bombs, according to James Franks, director of the Logistics Operations Division. MCAAP also produces the wooden pallets.
Cecil Sanders, a MCAAP shipping supervisor, said the pallets are not just for internal use–up to 60,000 are made each year for other customers.
In order to ship wooden pallets overseas, the ammunition plant is required to heat treat the pallets for 30 minutes, to destroy insects that may inhabit the wood. The Defense Department only owns four such heat chambers, two of which are located at MCAAP.
The plant also fabricates about 6,000 metal pallets a year, which are specially designed to hold bombs of all shapes and sizes.