Russia Develops Ammunition ‘Destroyer’

A technology to wipe out obsolete ammunition has been introduced bythe Russian military. The aptly named “Destroyer” is set to replace the current dangerous practice of just blowing up old bombs and rockets, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported on Wednesday. Triggered by an electric discharge, the Destroyer has a metal rod containing an incendiary mixture that is attached to an old military round and burns out the explosives inside it. “There’s no detonation or blast wave in the process. Not even much noise, just a pop on ignition”, Yevgeny Meshkov, a spokesman for the Central Military District, was quoted as saying. Developed by an unspecified enterprise in the Urals, the Destroyer passed testing and is being introduced throughout the military district, which houses dozens of arms depots. The Russian Defense Ministry currently has 6 million tons of obsolete ammunition rounds in store and plans to destroy half of them by 2014. Some 160,000 tons of these would be undone using the Destroyer, according to the Rossiiskaya Gazeta.