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U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center: A Century of Solutions

By Mr. Richard Arndt (ASA (ALT))April 26, 2017

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- The year 2017 marks U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center's 100th year of operations, a century of excellence and dedication by generations of scientists, engineers, technicians and all their administrative support personnel. Together, they have safeguarded the nation through a century of tumultuous events and unprecedented challenges.

While ECBC is widely known to be the nation's principal research and development resource for non-medical chemical biological defense, less well-known is its rich history stretching back to World War I. When President Woodrow Wilson established the Edgewood Arsenal in 1917, the nation was in a rush to develop a chemical weapons capability, both offensive and defensive, to meet the new weapon the Germans began using in 1915.

This was followed by World War II and the Cold War when Edgewood maintained a chemical weapons readiness which successfully deterred further use of this class of weapons in every military conflict in which the United States participated.

The next chapter in chemical weapons history began in 1969 when President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and all methods of biological warfare. This new policy direction culminated in 1997 when the United States ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention banning the possession of chemical weapons and requiring the destruction of existing stockpiles, precursor chemicals, production facilities and weapon delivery systems.

ECBC supported and continues to support the United States' chemical demilitarization program. This is a massive undertaking to destroy the nation's entire chemical arsenal, through its unmatched scientific expertise and laboratory infrastructure. The center also uses its field response capability to assist other nation's around the world destroy their recovered chemical weapons. ECBC made headlines around the world in 2014 by developing and operating a new chemical agent destruction system to destroy Syria's 600 metric ton declared stockpile of chemical warfare material at sea in international waters.

ECBC's next 100 years will be even more exciting. ECBC constantly retools to meet the next generation of chemical biological challenges confronting the world. In the second decade of the 21st century, these challenges include emerging chemical and biological compounds, asymmetrical warfare in the far corners of the world, drones on and over the battlefield, and non-state actors seeking opportunities to attack the homeland. ECBC will do its part to make the nation ready for any and all of these contingencies.

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U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to provide innovative research, development and engineering to produce capabilities for decisive overmatch to the Army against the complexities of the current and future operating environments in support of the Joint Warfighter and the Nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Material Command.

ECBC 100th Anniversary Video

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