Huntsville, Alabama Redstone Arsenal is set to receive its first permanent ordnance destruction facility. Spearheaded by the U.S. Army Engineering and Support Center, Huntsville, the Prototype Recovered Ordnance Destruction System (PRODS) will thermally destroy recovered munitions, significantly accelerating ongoing clearance operations at the installation.

By integrating a static detonation chamber with an advanced off-gas treatment system, PRODS aims to safely dispose of munitions and related materials without the need for open detonation leaving behind only safe scrap metal for recycling or standard disposal.

Historically, Redstone Arsenal has relied on lower-capacity, portable disposal units, creating potential bottlenecks. The permanent, high-throughput capability of PRODS is expected to increase disposal speeds by up to 75%, ensuring UXO recovery efforts are not hindered by storage limitations and backlog.

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Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Tennessee The U.S. Army announced plans to use a new explosive called IMX-101 to replace TNT in artillery rounds. The goal is to completely replace TNT in all large caliber munitions by 2023. The Army ordered approximately $780 million worth of it so far in an effort to make battlegrounds safer for troops.

The new explosives are part of a class called Insensitive Munitions eXplosives or IMX. IMX-101 reportedly has the same explosive power as TNT, but it is less dangerous for handlers. It was developed by BAE Systems in partnership with the Army. BAE Systems has the contract to run Holston Army Ammunition Plant, a GOCO (Government Owned Contractor Operated) facility.

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The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) released a report on the status of the Unexploded Ordnance Data Analysis System (UXODAS). According to the status report, the ultimate goal of the UXODAS is become a common platform to "enable interoperability and data incorporation into a single software package, providing the capability and tools to import, process, interpret, and visualize the results of UXO geophysical surveys from a variety of sensors".

The UXODAS system is designed to work with total field magnetometers (TFM), frequency-domain electromagnetic induction (FDEM) systems, and time-domain electromagnetic induction (TDEM) systems. The UXODAS system is designed to accept raw geophysical sensor data and positional data and apply tools to merge and correct the data including area coverage (i.e., survey area gap analysis), time synchronization, and drift corrections before applying detection and discrimination algorithms. The desired outputs of the system include target dig sheets, target rankings, discrimination / target identification, and confidence indicators. For target identification using FDEM data, a signature-matching algorithm was developed and integrated into UXODAS.

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