The United States

chemical weapons A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as ...

program began in 1917 during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

with the creation of the U.S. Army's Gas Service Section and ended 73 years later in 1990 with the country's practical adoption of the

Chemical Weapons Convention The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), officially the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, is an arms control treaty administered by the Organisation for ...

(signed 1993; entered into force, 1997). Destruction of stockpiled chemical weapons began in 1986 and was completed on July 7, 2023. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD), at

Aberdeen Proving Ground Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at APG. There are 11 major commands among the tenant units, ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

, continues to operate.

History

The U.S. had participated in the formulations of the

Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...

which banned chemical warfare, among other things, but the U.S. never joined the article which prohibited chemical weapons.

World War I

, the U.S. established its own chemical weapons research facility and produced its own chemical munitions. It produced 5,770 metric tons of these weapons, including 1,400 metric tons of

phosgene Phosgene is an organic chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic, colorless gas; in low concentrations, its musty odor resembles that of freshly cut hay or grass. It can be thought of chemically as the double acyl chloride analog of ...

and 175 metric tons of

mustard gas Mustard gas or sulfur mustard are names commonly used for the organosulfur compound, organosulfur chemical compound bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, which has the chemical structure S(CH2CH2Cl)2, as well as other Chemical species, species. In the wi ...

. This was about 4% of the total chemical weapons produced for that war and only just over 1% of the era's most effective weapon, mustard gas. (U.S. troops suffered less than 6% of gas casualties.) The U.S. also established the First Gas Regiment, which left Washington, D.C., on Christmas Day, 1917, and arrived at the front in May 1918. During its time in France, the First Gas Regiment used phosgene in a number of attacks. The United States began large-scale production of an improved

vesicant A blister agent (or vesicant) is a chemical compound that causes severe skin, eye and mucosal pain and irritation in the form of severe chemical burns resulting in fluid filled blisters. Named for their ability to cause vesication, blister a ...

gas known as

Lewisite Lewisite (L) (A-243) is an organoarsenic compound. It was once manufactured in the United States, Japan, Germany and the Soviet Union for use as a Chemical warfare, chemical weapon, acting as a vesicant (blister agent) and lung irritant. Although ...

, for use in an offensive planned for early 1919. Lewisite was a major American contribution to the chemical weapon arsenal of World War I, although it was not actually used in the field during World War I. It was developed by

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

Winford Lee Lewis of the U.S.

Chemical Warfare Service The Chemical Corps is the branch of the United States Army tasked with defending against and using chemical weapon, chemical, biological agent, biological, radiological weapon, radiological, and nuclear weapon, nuclear (Chemical, biological, r ...

in 1917.Hilmas, Corey J., Jeffery K. Smart, and Benjamin A. Hill, “History of Chemical Warfare”, Chapter 2 in Lenhart, Martha K., Editor-in Chief (2008), ''Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare'',

Borden Institute The Borden Institute is a U.S. Army “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education”. In 1987, U.S. Army Colonel Russ Zajtchuk conceived the idea for a “Center of Excellence in Military Medical Research and Education,” u ...

: GPO, pg 40. (The Germans later claimed that they had manufactured it in 1917 prior to the American discovery.) By the time of the armistice on 11 November 1918, a plant near

Willoughby, Ohio Willoughby is a city in Lake County, Ohio, United States, along the Chagrin River. The population was 23,959 at the time of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. A suburb of Cleveland, it is part of the Greater Cleveland, Cleveland metropol ...

, was producing 10 tons per day of the substance, for a total of about 150 tons. It is uncertain what effect this new chemical agent would have had on the battlefield, however, as it degrades in moist conditions. After the war, the U.S. was party to the Washington Arms Conference Treaty of 1922 which would have banned chemical weapons but failed because it was rejected by France. The U.S. continued to stockpile chemical weapons, eventually exceeding 30,000 tons of material.

World War II

Chemical weapons were not used by the U.S. or the other

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not an explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are calle ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

; however, quantities of such weapons were deployed to Europe for use in case Germany initiated chemical warfare. At least one accident occurred: On the night of December 2, 1943, German

Junkers Ju 88 The Junkers Ju 88 is a twin-engined multirole combat aircraft designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works. It was used extensively during the Second World War by the ''Luftwaffe'' and became one o ...

bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, sinking several American ships – among them ''John Harvey'', which was carrying mustard gas. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it – which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment not consistent with those suffering from exposure and immersion. According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen" out of 628 mustard gas military casualties. Civilian casualties were not recorded. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war. Large quantities of chemical weapons were also deployed to India, from where they could have been delivered to Japan by B-29 bombers. At the end of the war, over 50,000 mustard gas bombs, 10,000 phosgene bombs and other chemical munitions were dumped into deep water in the Bay of Bengal. The US military conducted experiments with chemical weapons like lewisite and mustard gas on Japanese American, Puerto Rican and African Americans in the US military in World War II to see how non-white races would react to being mustard gassed, with Rollin Edwards describing it as "It felt like you were on fire, Guys started screaming and hollering and trying to break out. And then some of the guys fainted. And finally they opened the door and let us out, and the guys were just, they were in bad shape." and "It took all the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted". White soldiers were used as "normal" control group. Demonstration cluster bomb

Cold War

After the war, the Allies recovered German artillery shells containing three new

nerve agent Nerve agents, sometimes also called nerve gases, are a class of organic chemistry, organic chemicals that disrupt the mechanisms by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by the blocking of acetylcholinesterase (ACh ...

s developed by the Germans ( Tabun,

Sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic organophosphorus compound.Soman), prompting further research into nerve agents by all of the former Allies. Thousands of American soldiers were exposed to chemical warfare agents during

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

testing programs (see Edgewood Arsenal human experiments), as well as in accidents. In 1968, one such accident killed approximately 6,400 sheep when an agent drifted out of

Dugway Proving Ground Dugway Proving Ground (DPG) is a United States Army facility established in 1942 to test biological and chemical weapons, located about southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah and south of the Utah Test and Training Range. Location Dugway Provin ...

during a test. The U.S. also investigated a wide range of possible nonlethal, psychobehavioral chemical incapacitating agents including psychedelic

indole Indole is an organic compound with the formula . Indole is classified as an aromatic heterocycle. It has a bicyclic structure, consisting of a six-membered benzene ring fused to a five-membered pyrrole ring. Indoles are derivatives of indole ...

s such as

lysergic acid diethylamide Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD (from German ; often referred to as acid or lucy), is a Semisynthesis, semisynthetic, Hallucinogen, hallucinogenic compound derived from ergot, known for its powerful psychological effects and ...

(also experimenting to see if it could be used for effective

mind control Mind control may refer to: Psychology and neurology * Brainwashing, the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques * Brain–computer interface * Hypnosis * Neuroprosthetics, the technology of cont ...

) and

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

derivatives, certain tranquilizers like

ketamine Ketamine is a cyclohexanone-derived general anesthetic and NMDA receptor antagonist with analgesic and hallucinogenic properties, used medically for anesthesia, depression, and pain management. Ketamine exists as its S- (esketamine) a ...

fentanyl Fentanyl is a highly potent synthetic piperidine opioid primarily used as an analgesic (pain medication). It is 30 to 50 times more Potency (pharmacology), potent than heroin and 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Its primary Medici ...

, as well as several glycolate anticholinergics. One of the anticholinergic compounds, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, was assigned the

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

code BZ and was weaponized at the beginning of the 1960s for possible battlefield use. This agent was allegedly employed by American troops as a counterinsurgency weapon in the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

but the U.S. maintains that this agent never saw operational use. The North Koreans and Chinese have alleged that chemical and biological weapons were used by the United States in the

Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...

; but the United States' denial is supported by Russian archival documents. The growing protests over the U.S. role in the Vietnam War, the use of

defoliant A defoliant is any herbicidal chemical sprayed or dusted on plants to cause their leaves to fall off. Defoliants are widely used for the selective removal of weeds in managing croplands and lawns. Worldwide use of defoliants, along with the d ...

s there, and the use of riot control agents both in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

and inside the U.S. (as well as heightened concern for the environment) all gradually increased public hostility in the U.S. toward chemical weapons in the 1960s. Three events particularly galvanized public attention: a 1968 sheep-kill incident at Dugway Proving Ground, Operation Cut Holes and Sink ‘Em (CHASE) — a program involving disposal of unwanted munitions at sea — and a 1969 accident with sarin at Okinawa.

Renunciation

On November 25, 1969, President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare. He issued a unilateral decree halting production and transport of chemical weapons which remains in effect. From 1967 to 1970 in Operation CHASE, the U.S. disposed of chemical weapons by sinking ships laden with the weapons in the deep

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

. The U.S. began to research safer disposal methods for chemical weapons in the 1970s, destroying several thousand tons of mustard gas by incineration at Rocky Mountain Arsenal and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralization at Tooele Army Depot and Rocky Mountain Arsenal. The U.S. entered the

Geneva Protocol The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, usually called the Geneva Protocol, is a treaty prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in ...

in 1975 at the same time it ratified the Biological Weapons Convention. This was the first operative international treaty on chemical weapons that the United States was party to. In May 1991, President

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...

unilaterally committed the United States to destroying all chemical weapons and renounced the right to chemical weapon retaliation. In 1993, the United States signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which required the destruction of all chemical weapon agents, dispersal systems, and chemical weapons production facilities by April 2012. In 1997, the United States formally agreed to destroy its stockpile by ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention. The international

treaty A treaty is a formal, legally binding written agreement between sovereign states and/or international organizations that is governed by international law. A treaty may also be known as an international agreement, protocol, covenant, convention ...

bans the use of all chemical weapons and aims to eliminate them throughout the world.

Decommissioning and destruction

The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s, removing some outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of BZ beginning in 1988. In June 1990, Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on

Johnston Atoll Johnston Atoll is an Unincorporated territories of the United States, unincorporated territory of the United States, under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force (USAF). The island is closed to public entry, and limited access for mana ...

in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

, seven years before the

came into effect. In 1986, President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...

made an agreement with Chancellor

Helmut Kohl Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (; 3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as chancellor of Germany and governed the ''Federal Republic'' from 1982 to 1998. He was leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to ...

to remove the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons from Germany. As part of Operation Steel Box, in July 1990, two ships were loaded with over 100,000 shells containing GB and VX taken from U.S. Army weapons storage depots such as Miesau and then-classified ammunition FSTS (forward storage/transportation sites) and transported from

Bremerhaven Bremerhaven (; ) is a city on the east bank of the Weser estuary in northern Germany. It forms an exclave of the Bremen (state), city-state of Bremen. The Geeste (river), River Geeste flows through the city before emptying into the Weser. Brem ...

, Germany, to Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, a 46-day nonstop journey.Broadus, James M., et al. ''The Oceans and Environmental Security: Shared U.S. and Russian Perspectives'',
Google Books
, p. 103, Island Press, 1994, (), accessed October 25, 2008. The U.S. prohibition on the transport of chemical weapons as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention meant that destruction facilities had to be constructed at each of the U.S. nine storage facilities. Congress established the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) program in 1996 to safely test and demonstrate at least two alternative technologies to the baseline incineration process for the destruction of the nation’s remaining stockpile of assembled chemical weapons. Beginning in 1999, ACWA was tasked by the Secretary of Defense to demonstrate six incineration alternatives to destroy the remaining U.S. chemical weapons stockpile stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado, the final two stockpiles in the United States. By 2000, ACWA had demonstrated six technologies. Neutralization followed by biotreatment was selected for the Colorado stockpile, and neutralization followed by supercritical water oxidation was selected for the Kentucky stockpile. The U.S. met the first three of the treaty's four deadlines, destroying 45% of its stockpile of chemical weapons by 2007. By January 2012, the final treaty deadline, the United States had destroyed 89.75% of the original stockpile.Army Agency Completes Mission to Destroy Chemical Weapons
, USCMA, January 21, 2012 Only the stockpiles in Kentucky and Colorado remained. The final chemical weapon was not destroyed until July 7, 2023.

Treaties

The United States was a party to some of the earliest modern chemical weapons ban treaties, the

and the Washington Arms Conference Treaty of 1922 although this treaty was unsuccessful. The U.S. ratified the

which banned the use of chemical and biological weapons in interstate warfare on January 22, 1975. In 1989 and 1990, the U.S. and the Soviet Union entered an agreement to end their chemical weapons programs, including "binary weapons". The United States ratified the 1993

, which came into force in April 1997. This banned the possession of most types of chemical weapons. The United States and Russia possess the largest remaining chemical stockpiles among Convention members according to the Centre for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, as of 2014. The convention also banned chemical weapons development, and requires the destruction of existing stockpiles, precursor chemicals, production facilities and weapon delivery systems.

Chemical weapons disposal

At the time that the chemical weapons treaty came in force, the U.S. stored its chemical weapons at eight U.S. Army installations within the

Continental United States The contiguous United States, also known as the U.S. mainland, officially referred to as the conterminous United States, consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States in central North America. The te ...

(CONUS). The stockpiles were maintained in exclusion zones at the following Department of Army installations (the percentages shown are reflections of amount by weight): * Tooele Army Depot (TEAD), Utah (42.3% of total stockpile) *

Pine Bluff Arsenal The Pine Bluff Arsenal is a United States Army installation in Jefferson County, Arkansas, about eight miles northwest of Pine Bluff and thirty miles southeast of Little Rock. Pine Bluff Arsenal is one of nine Army installations in the United ...

(PBA), Arkansas (12%) * Umatilla Depot Activity (UMDA), Oregon (11.6%) * Pueblo Chemical Depot (PCD), Colorado (9.9%) * Anniston Army Depot (ANAD), Alabama (7.1%) *

(APG), Maryland (5%) *

Newport Army Ammunition Plant The Newport Chemical Depot, previously known as the Wabash River Ordnance Works and the Newport Army Ammunition Plant, was a bulk chemical warfare, chemical storage and destruction facility that was operated by the United States Army. It is loc ...

(NAAP), Indiana (3.9%) * Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD), Kentucky (1.6%). The remaining 6.6% was located on

in the Pacific Ocean. According to the

U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency The United States Army Chemical Materials Activity (CMA) is a separate reporting activity of the United States Army Materiel Command (AMC). Its role is to enhance national security by securely storing the remaining U.S. chemical warfare materie ...

, by January 2012 the United States had destroyed 89.75% of the original stockpile of nearly 31,100

metric ton The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the sh ...

s (34,300

ton Ton is any of several units of measure of mass, volume or force. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. As a unit of mass, ''ton'' can mean: * the '' long ton'', which is * the ''tonne'', also called the ''metric ...

s) of nerve and mustard agents declared in 1997. The U.S. disposed of the more dangerous modern chemical weapons before starting the destruction of its older mustard gas stockpile which presented additional difficulties due to the poor condition of some of the shells. Of the weapons destroyed up to 2006, 500 tons were

and the majority were other agents such as VX and

sarin Sarin (NATO designation GB nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic organophosphorus compound.Pueblo Chemical Depot in

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

and Blue Grass Army Depot in

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

. These two facilities held 10.25% of the U.S. 1997 declared stockpile and destruction operations are under the

Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives The Program Executive Office, Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives (PEO ACWA) was responsible for the safe and environmentally sound destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles previously stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky, and the ...

. Other non-stockpile agents (usually test kits) or old buried munitions are occasionally found and are sometimes destroyed in place. Pueblo and Blue Grass constructed plants to test novel methods of disposal. Chemical stockpile destruction in Colorado was initiated in March 2015 by the Explosive Destruction System located on the Pueblo Chemical Depot. The destruction facility for Pueblo began disposal operations in September 2016, while the destruction facility for Blue Grass began disposal operations in June 2019. Both Pueblo and Blue Grass were scheduled to complete by the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty commitment of Sept. 30, 2023. U.S. Public Law mandates stockpile destruction by Dec. 31, 2023. In 1988–1990, the destruction of munitions containing BZ, a non-lethal hallucinating agent occurred at Pine Bluff Chemical Activity in

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

. Hawthorne Army Depot in Nevada destroyed all M687 chemical artillery shells and 458 metric tons of binary precursor chemicals by July 1999. Operations were completed at Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System, where all 640 metric tons of chemical agents were destroyed by 2000, as well as at Edgewood Chemical Activity in

, with 1,472 metric tons of agents destroyed by February 2006. All DF and QL, chemical weapons precursors, were destroyed in 2006 at Pine Bluff.

Newport Chemical Depot The Newport Chemical Depot, previously known as the Wabash River Ordnance Works and the Newport Army Ammunition Plant, was a bulk chemical storage and destruction facility that was operated by the United States Army. It is located near Newpor ...

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

began destruction operations in May, 2005 and completed operations on August 8, 2008, disposing of 1,152 tonnes of agents. Pine Bluff completed destruction of 3,850 tons of weapons on November 12, 2010. Anniston Chemical Activity in

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

completed disposal on September 22, 2011. Umatilla Chemical Depot in

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

finished disposal on October 25, 2011. Tooele Chemical Demilitarization Facility at Deseret Chemical Depot in

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

finished disposal on January 21, 2012. Blue Grass Army Depot in

finished disposal on July 7, 2023 marking the destruction of all chemical weapons stockpiles declared to the

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW; French: ''Organisation pour l'interdiction des armes chimiques'', OIAC) is an intergovernmental organisation and the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), ...

, the international body implementing the CWC. The final weapon to be destroyed was a sarin nerve agent-filled M55 rocket. The total cost for the program to destroy chemical weapons was over $40 billion.

References

{{US military navbox Military projects of the United States World War I crimes by the United States