Col. Franz J. Amann, commander of the Pine Bluff Arsenal for the past three years, will turn over command of the arsenal to Col. David L. Musgrave during a July 17 ceremony at the Army installation.
Amann’s next assignment will be as chief of staff of the Joint Elimination Coordination Element, U.S. Strategic Command at the Aberdeen Proving Ground near Aberdeen, Md.
During Amann’s arsenal tour, he noted the Chemical Agent Disposal Facility and its personnel from March 2005 to 2010 destroyed the last remaining chemical munitions, stored at the arsenal, two years ahead of schedule.
He praised the arsenal employees, noting they were responsible for the “best safety record in the industry.” He described the success of the mission as being “inexorably intertwined with our community.”
The local support here helped avoid delays in destruction of chemical weapons, unlike the Blue Grass facility in Kentucky and at the Pueblo facility in Colorado, Amann added. The latter two sites are using alternative technology.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“I have really enjoyed my tour here as commander of the arsenal,” Amann said during a recent interview in his arsenal office. “We are meeting the war fighter demand with very capable employees at the arsenal.”
A native of Switzerland, the naturalized citizen moved to the United States as a child with his family and grew up in South Carolina, where his father was employed in the textile industry.
Amann is a distinguished military graduate of The Citadel and was commissioned as an officer with the Army’s Chemical Corps in 1985. He holds a bachelor of science degree in biology and a master’s degree in business.
At one time the arsenal stored 12 percent of the nation’s stockpile of chemical weapons, according to the Pentagon. Closing of the chemical weapon stockpile was long planned, Amann said.
With the elimination of the stockpile, which the arsenal had maintained since World War II, some 1,100 contract, civilian and government workers were scheduled to lose their jobs in the phased reduction in force. A number of jobs were eliminated in 2010 and 2011.
“The bottom line is we knew we were going to work ourselves out of a job,” Amann said.
URS and SouthWest Research employees at the arsenal’s Chemical Agent Disposal Facility are involved with the demolition and decontamination of the facility, said Mark Greer, site project manager.
Performing closure activities may take up to 12 months, Greer said.
“The closure process is scheduled to take 32 months in accordance with our life cycle baseline (at least through mass demolition), which could put the final group of employees leaving around late first quarter or second quarter 2013,” a URS spokesman said.
Greer indicated some decontamination equipment from the arsenal’s Chemical Agent Disposal Facility will be shipped to the Blue Grass and Pueblo sites for their chemical weapons destruction efforts.
Much of the facility here will be dismantled, with portions buried at the arsenal’s landfill and the balance at other landfills, Greer said.
The arsenal still employs about 1,000 workers in operations that were not linked to chemical-weapons disposal. Those employees assemble white phosphorus munitions and restore military vehicles, Amann explained, part of the installation’s core mission as an arsenal.
Arsenal civilian employees will continue to repair decontamination equipment shipped here, including masks and protective over-garments.
“We are a business… everything is based on what we do,” Amann said. “It is directly related to military requirements.”
That mission may change in scope with the war ending in Iraq and winding down of combat action in Afghanistan, he added. “The DOD (Department of Defense) budget is outside my scope to comment.”
In early May it was announced that Vivione Biosciences LLC, a Little Rock-based manufacturer of a new high performance diagnostic system, is occupying laboratory space at the arsenal to develop and expand the company’s presence in food safety and health areas.
Work at the arsenal involves the company’s RAPID-B diagnostic system, which has ability to detect salmonella and E. coli in a matter of six hours, compared to several days in a conventional lab, company officials said.
The system can diagnose tuberculosis in 30 minutes, compared to five weeks for more conventional methods, said Kevin Kuykendall, Vivione CEO.
He said the flow cytometer “looks for bacteria” and has many applications in areas of water and food safety, noting the system was developed to be both rugged and portable.
“The bottom line is the arsenal is not going away,” Amann told a standing-room-only crowd at the Vivione announcement ceremony.
He said last week that labs and surplus storage facilities may mean a new mission for the arsenal, noting his recent focus has been on expanding “our product portfolio.”
Amann is the only commander to serve a three-year tour. His predecessors were here for two-years.
He said he and his wife, Mary Athannissiou, a native of Athens, Greece, felt very welcome by the area community. They have been joined by their daughter, Marita, who has been residing in Athens.
Musgrave, like Amann, has held a number of staff and command positions. In his most recent assignment, he served as the aide-de-camp to the commanding general for U.S. Forces Iraq in Operation New Dawn.