The processing of every military system at the end of its life cycle – the retirement phase – remains a largely unnoticed event. Disposing of legacy equipment is not an overly entertaining story and usually makes the headlines only for the wrong reasons.
The growing technological complexity of systems and underlying legal regulations create a considerable challenge for those in the business of demilitarisation, dismantling and disposal (D3) of military assets. Add to that the growing importance of environmental protection. NATO has accepted this challenge.
NATO’s Agenda
Although largely unknown to the wider public, NATO has been working in the field of environmental protection for many years. While the focus in the past has been put on military missions in operational theatres, the NATO Secretary General raised it to the next level in 2021 by introducing the NATO 2030 initiative. It recognises environmental factors such as strategic security risks and NATO’s responsibility to respond meaningfully.
The new focus has subsequently been incorporated into business strategies of literally all NATO bodies. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), for example, has a matching ambition and seeks to “introduce green initiatives aimed at reducing energy usage, increasing recycling, as well as tackling Demilitarisation, Dismantling and Disposal (D3)”. The latter will be achieved by “contributing to the development of the environmentally friendly disposal of customer surplus equipment through the offer of attractive and economic services in the D3 domain”. The role of D3 as a key contributor is recognised therefore and the moment has come to look at ways how D3 projects can meet expectations and deliver quantifiable results.
The D3 Challenge
At first sight, the phasing out of military equipment may not look like a major challenge. After deciding to retire a military system, the first question Ministries of Defence need to answer is the disposal strategy. The traditional options are sale, gift, donation, conversion to another use (such as training), or destruction. Selecting an option will depend on a number of considerations, as well as the nature and condition of the item. Take the example of a legacy main battle tank: counting the tanks and pooling them at a single site is the easy part. Still, in order to determine the best D3 approach, the designated system manager or surplus office will have to answer a set of questions that have an impact:
- Arms transfer obligations – do the original acquisition contracts/agreements include provisions for advance authorisations and specific demilitarisation procedures, for example, from the country of origin (USA Foreign Military Sales and similar)
- International treaties – does the disposal have to follow specific demilitarisation procedures and require specific accounting in accordance with international treaties, such as the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty?
- Legal obligations – which international and national laws and regulations apply to labour, health and safety, environmental protection, and management of waste and hazardous substances, such as asbestos?
- Classified or controlled components – which items have a security classification that demand special treatment and tracking? Which items have to follow special processes and authorisation schemes for their destruction, including cryptographic and military GPS elements?
- Sourcing – do I have organic or industrial sources in-country with the necessary permissions and capabilities? If not, can third-country sources be used? Can the material be exported safely at all? Which regulations apply locally at the source’s site
- Certification – how does the disposal have to be certified to satisfy national and international requirements? What types of evidence are recognised? Which authorities can issue such a certification?
As if these questions are not already tough enough to answer and demand a certain degree of knowledge and experience, there are additional factors that make matters even more complicated:
(1) D3 should be carried out with minimum costs or, in an ideal world, pay for itself, or even generate profits
(2) D3 has to comply with stringent environmental regulations. Not a single country can afford to have its reputation damaged in the global media on top of legal and financial sanctioning
(3) D3 has to contribute to a green agenda. Many countries are committed to achieving sustainable economies by 2050, often referred to as “decarbonisation”. Fostering a circular economy is another goal.
D3 can be a rather complex and time-consuming undertaking, requiring a broad knowledge of several key areas and a profound understanding of the costs, benefits, and risks associated with each disposal option and the military system itself.
While cost and compliance requirements have been applied literally to every project in the defence domain for a long time, the focus on environmental aspects is a relatively new development. It has quite a significant impact on D3 projects and requires that a strategic perspective be adopted early on to ensure the highest level of environmental protection.
Providing D3 Solutions
It is good news for everyone that security and environmental aspects have become the dominant drivers for developing viable D3 solutions. They all contribute to making D3 safer and cleaner. Unfortunately, it does not make things easier or cheaper.
The NSPA has been supporting NATO and Partner nations under the auspices of a dedicated D3 Support Partnership (SP) for almost a decade. Today, NSPA’s D3 portfolio spans from ammunition disposal via site remediation to entire military systems’ demilitarisation and hazardous material treatment and disposal. Recent efforts have focused on establishing a framework of readily useable contracts with specialised and globally operating industry partners. These contracts shall not just enable a rapid response to emerging D3 enquiries, but also support a maximum scope of military systems and D3 related activities.
D3 Development Phase
The Development Phase is the starting point of each D3 project and assesses the peculiar challenges in a structured way. While most of the legal and security aspects are evaluated by NSPA experts and in close co-operation with the requesting customer nation, the identification and assessment of the hazardous material usually requires the involvement of a specialised company. The NSPA has several laboratories under contract that can provide on-site sample taking and subsequent chemical analysis in laboratories.
As so often is the case, the devil is in the detail: there are countless regulations for the proper accounting and treatment of hazardous materials to protect the environment and human life. Fifty years ago, many of the substances eventually found to have an adverse impact on the health and/or the environment, were considered harmless and applied in large volumes. Asbestos fittings, lead paints, cadmium and hexavalent chrome coatings, polychlorinated biphenyl containing electric/electronic components, mercury switches and radioactive illuminations are only some of the substances you will likely find in legacy military equipment. These are rarely documented and necessitate that a new mapping of all hazardous materials is carried out with a clear identification of each substance, particular quantities and conditions.
The D3 strategy is then tailored to address the project-specific hazards. It describes the recommended approach for the removal of hazardous items, their handling, interim storage, protective measures and disposal processes.
D3 Execution Phase
The Execution Phase starts by selecting the best-qualified and most cost-effective company for the selected D3 strategy. Compliance with applicable standards and previous relevant experience are checkpoints during this selection process. Due to the large variety of D3 tasks, NSPA contracts address a large range of military, non-military and dual-use systems, to include the air, land and sea domains, as well as their sub-components, support equipment or infrastructure.
Contracted D3 activities include the recovery of material, transportation, on-site dismantling, demilitarisation, material segregation, storing, tracking and tracing of controlled items. The actual recycling and disposal of recovered materials is equally included in NSPA contracts and provides several options, such as for the specialised waste processing, re-use or sale. At the end of the process, a Certificate of Disposal and any additionally requested evidence will be issued by the NSPA to document the successful execution.
Turning a Liability into an Asset
Compliant D3 comes at a cost. Consequently, warehouses and storage areas are full of old military equipment and have been left untouched for decades – “out of sight, out of mind”. Every nation faces issues with leftovers from the Cold War, albeit of different magnitude.
The NSPA has proven that a perceived liability can be turned into a profitable business. Global market prices for scrap steel, aluminium and copper have been continuously at a level where the sale of recovered material exceeded the actual D3 and recovery costs.
Another profitable example is the D3 of M113 Armoured Personnel Carriers with a weight of around 12 tonnes, largely built from aluminium. At 2021 prices, the scrap metal value achieved was around €4,000 to €5,000 per vehicle and the D3 costs were between €1,000 to €2,000 per vehicle. Both examples show that a net profit between €2,000 and €3,000 per vehicle can be a realistic planning figure. Taking into account that as of today there are still hundreds, if not thousands of these vehicles waiting for D3, some nations may well be sitting on hidden treasure.
Reducing the Military Carbon Footprint
Societies have become increasingly sensitive about the conservation of resources, energy efficiency, fighting climate change and risks associated with the globalised traffic of hazardous goods. Recycling is critical for the protection of our environment, contributes to the preservation of natural resources, is essential for new manufacturing and creates jobs. Metals can be recycled without loss of quality and qualify ideally for a circular economy. Every tonne of recycled scrap steel (and contained alloying elements) prevents the extraction of new metal from ores.
The savings are quite impressive: recycling one tonne of scrap steel saves 1.4 tonnes of iron ore, 0.8 tonnes of coal, 0.3 tonnes of limestone and 1.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide (even 4.3 tonnes for high quality steel used in military vehicles). On average, in terms of environmental savings, 72 per cent energy consumption can be saved, water use is reduced by 40 per cent, water pollution by 76 per cent and carbon dioxide emissions by 58 per cent.
In 2018, almost 94 million tonnes of steel scrap were recycled in the European Union, representing 56 per cent of the total European steel production. The total savings in carbon dioxide emissions are a staggering 157 million tonnes. This is the equivalent of the annual emissions from all cars driving in France, the United Kingdom and Belgium combined.
Steel is certainly the most prominent metal to look at due to its ubiquity in many legacy systems. Nevertheless, aluminium and copper are even more attractive metals for recycling – the benefits for the environment are a multiple of those for steel due to the higher amount of energy required for their extraction from ores. For example, one tonne of recycled aluminium conserves more than 4 tonnes of bauxite ore, and manufacturing new products from recycled aluminium can save up to 95 per cent of the energy needed compared to virgin materials.
The two above-mentioned NSPA D3 projects for the LEOPARD I and M113 alone have resulted in environmental savings of approximately 88,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide and 110 million kWh of energy, a value that can be compared to the energy which a 1,000 MW coal power plant can generate in five days. This energy would require the burning of 45,000 tonnes of coal. These numbers provide an initial idea of the potential savings still out there and the positive impact of D3 activities to protect our planet.
D3 Outlook
Predicting the future is always uncertain. However, some clear trends cannot be ignored and will play a central role for the D3 of military systems:
1) Demand: there are still large inventories of phased out and surplus equipment in most nations that are stored in a more or less orderly way. The perception of them being a potential safety and security threat is likely to increase;
2) Technical Complexity and Diversity: we will see the advent of more composite elements (glass, carbon, aramid fibres with epoxy materials), sometimes layered with steel, honeycomb structures and other fused materials. Additive manufacturing (3D printing) will introduce a large variety of different plastic materials. Computer and other electronics will be omnipresent and further miniaturised, sometimes deeply embedded in structural parts. The trend for more electrification will go along with the addition of batteries, wiring and electric motors. The recovery, segregation and re-cycling of these materials will be considerably more difficult;
3) Compliance and Environment: environmental aspects will gain more importance for future D3 projects. This is a direct consequence of tighter regulations being implemented and a public desire for more transparency of potentially “dirty and dangerous” projects, even many years after project completion;
4) Management of Hazardous Materials: Nations must adopt a proactive approach to ensure that all hazardous materials are properly mapped upfront, with a clear intention to address and update associated disposal risks throughout the entire life-cycle;
5) Costs: it is quite obvious that the growth of technical complexity, diversity of equipment and materials, dangerous substances, removal and disposal of hazardous material, strict compliance, and increasingly stringent legal and environmental requirements will make D3 more expensive in the future;
6) Generating Revenues: the desire to make money from surplus equipment by selling rather than destroying will increase. Firstly, due to budget constraints, to ensure that taxpayer’s money is not wasted after high-value defence systems are phased out. Secondly, to promote a circular economy and avoid waste. Transfers of systems to other eligible users are therefore likely to become the primary objective of most future D3 projects. Specialised market knowledge and access will be crucial, as the potential customer base is often very limited and rather discreet. A broad spectrum of tools will be needed to reach out to these customers on a global scale, exploiting the advantages of e-sales platforms.
Conclusion
D3 is an often overlooked aspect of a military system’s life-cycle. Its manifold challenges in terms of technical and legal requirements demand a comprehensive and professional project management that builds on D3 specific expertise. The NSPA has proven that the separation of a development and execution phase ensures an early understanding of compliance requirements, a broader understanding of costs, benefits and risks, and identification of sales options. Access to global customer markets and the rapid activation of a specialised and multi-skilled contractor framework will be essential for a successful implementation.
Every D3 project can also become a tangible contribution to a nation’s “green agenda” by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, saving the world’s finite resources and contributing to significant energy savings. This is quite a turnaround when looking back more than fifty years when dumping into the sea was a widely accepted approach. The future of D3 will face more challenges, but there is no way back and no viable alternative, as we see the demand on the rise. There are many reasons for every system manager to plan for the system’s retirement phase already today, no matter when it will happen eventually.