A new missile recycling plant may shore up the Anniston Army Depot as it prepares to weather the next round of military base closures in 2003.Last week, the $17 million prototype plant received a $5 million appropriation from the House Armed Services committee. The Army will pull the additional $12 million from other programs, said Congressman Bob Riley, R-Ashland.
The depot recently received $1 billion of a $4 billion contract for General Dynamics and General Motors-Canada to build a new light armored vehicle. The new contracts add insurance and may help spare Anniston from the next round of base closures.
The Pentagon announced last week that upcoming base closures could save the government $3.5 billion a year. Since the Army left Fort McClellan in 1999, local officials and business leaders had worried that the Anniston Army Depot may be next on the chopping block.
The new plant may help allay some of those fears. With its completion in two years, it will recycle missiles currently stored at the depot, converting them to scrap metal and processing the explosives for other weapons or selling them for use in mining and other industries, said Bruce Britton, assistant director of the Anniston Munitions Center.
Previously the Army had buried aged and outdated missiles in 14- foot-deep pits before detonating them and destroyed 20,000 Shalaleigh missiles in this manner at the Anniston Army Depot.
Now the depot has to rid itself of an aging stockpile of TOW missiles (tube-launched optically sighted and wire-guided system) and MLRS (multiple launch rocket system).
"We already have a lot of TOW missiles so it seemed like a logical place to build a prototype facility," said Congressman Bob Riley, R-Ashland. The Army stores other stockpiles of TOW missiles as far away as Korea and Germany.
Although the recycling plant is a prototype, Riley said it is the same size as a full-scale facility and its presence would make the depot competitive when the contract to recycle the weapons goes out to bid.
