The Pine Bluff Arsenal's Directorate of Ammunition Operations reached a major production milestone the last week in March when workers made their 1.5 millionth M18/M83 smoke grenade consecutively without a failure.
"That is unbelievable," said Roch Byrne, AO director, explaining that the production line had already passed the milestone, and is now at 1.6 million. "This is such a huge quality milestone for us. This really does say a lot for our workforce. From a quality standpoint, there is absolutely no where else anyone should go for their M18/M83 smoke grenades."
The M18 grenade program has experienced a lot of growing pains and changes since it began production in 2006 after a two-year shut down. With the introduction of the starter patch, the overall quality of the product has improved, but Byrne, said that he can't give all the credit to this piece of engineering.
"It is the men and women who make the starter patches, make the glatt mix, are on the fill and press lines and the ones who do the pack out," he said. "The patch allowed it to happen but they are the ones truly responsible."
Byrne said the folks here at Pine Bluff Arsenal know how to make grenades, and when all the parts are in place, they can make some grenades. "Having all the right pieces in place goes back to December 2006 when we started back up," he said. "At that time we were having technical issues with a starter slug, fuse and starter cup. Our delay times were exceeding our requirement."
The production of the starter patch was pushed by Byrne. "I didn't design it but I pushed its usage very hard," he said. "If it wasn't for a certain Army major, the project manager representative at the time, we wouldn't be here. He allowed us to go down that road with the patch when we were having all those technical issues. Once we got the green light and started making grenades with the patches, we haven't missed on a single one yet."
The starter patch looks like a wafer and sits between each slug (which is shaped like a doughnut) of pyrotechnic color smoke mix. The patch allows for a different ignition method because the fuse ignites the patch and puts the fire between the layers, thus pushing the smoke mix. The introduction of this patch has greatly increased start times and decreased lag times with the M17/M83 grenades.
Byrne said they just wrapped up the M18 green campaign with approximately 190,000 made, and have started on yellow. "We have approximately 187,000 of those to make," he said. "We will take a momentary pause soon to allow our government furnished material to catch up with us. We are ahead and need to allow the parts to catch up."
The men and women who put the grenades together are the ones that Byrne says deserve all the successes of the M18 program. "They are the ones who put together the quality product. They are the ones that deserve the credit for where we are today," he said.
If all the pieces fall together, AO hopes to surpass the two million mark on the M18 and M83 grenades sometimes later this fall.
During the temporary grenade shutdown, Byrne said the AO is going to concentrate a bit on the M485 155 mm illumination round. "We are waiting on equipment for the M485 lines. So, until it arrives we are going to continue as is until we can shut down and replace the equipment with new," said Byrne.
"This should all happen within a two to three week span - fairly quickly. The new equipment will help us out immensely on the number of rejects we are getting. We are making slow improvements but good ones."
Black powder operations for the M120 program is coming on hot and heavy, said Byrne. "This is a program that has been moved up. We were originally set to start it in October this year," he said. "We have already started body loading these because they were needed desperately. In conjunction with Crane and the PM shop we have moved it up. We should start LAPing those out in May."
Everything that AO does is a team effort. "For our products to be as good as they are it takes everyone, not only the folks that build the product but the ones that order the parts, get them to the lines, do the quality inspections and burn times," he said. "It is truly a PBA team effort."
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